[HN Gopher] Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into maki...
___________________________________________________________________
Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted
charges
Author : brarsanmol
Score : 329 points
Date : 2023-03-15 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ftc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ftc.gov)
| bluetidepro wrote:
| > Additionally, the order bars Epic from blocking consumers from
| accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges.
|
| This could be bigger than people realize. This is very common in
| many tech companies like Uber/Doordash/Sony/etc. where if you do
| a chargeback, you often get blacklisted on their service. It
| would be amazing if this starts to end this practice, and you can
| actually have authority to get your money back from your credit
| card and not be penalized by the service for it when they refuse
| to actually help.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This order doesn't broadly apply beyond Epic. It seems to me
| that they're blocking Epic from locking accounts _specifically
| because_ of the dark patterns they used to get users to
| accidentally spend money.
|
| I doubt this would be applied to other companies _unless_ they
| also found those companies used confusing UIs to get people to
| pay. Which is still good news nonetheless, as the main issue
| for me is all these dark patterns in the first place.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| You could be right, but at least it start to set some sort of
| tone to this practice, even if it's not the final nail in the
| coffin for ending it.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I wonder how they manage that on countries that have proper
| consumer rights government agencies.
| xahrepap wrote:
| I wonder if CC companies have a way of punishing companies for
| this. At least in my circles, the sense of security from having
| charge-backs is a huge reason a lot of people even use CCs. If
| Visa told Uber/Epic/etc "you can't use our network if you're
| going to undermine our features".
|
| Though it would smell a bit like a giant squashing ants...
| anti-trust and all that. :/ So maybe government getting a
| handle on Dark Patterns is the best way to do things.
| fidgewidge wrote:
| Note that chargebacks are mostly a US thing. In Europe you
| basically can't charge back and last time I enquired about
| even blocking a company from making new charges I was told
| that doing this required me to block the entire card and get
| a new one issued.
|
| It'd really very odd to see Americans insist that they should
| have the right to take a service, get the money back for it
| from the business i.e. get the service for free, and then go
| back and get service again! That's pretty unfair towards the
| business.
| michpoch wrote:
| There's no problem with making chargebacks in Europe. Maybe
| you should move to another bank?
| fidgewidge wrote:
| Maybe, but I've never heard anyone I know in Europe ever
| refer to making a chargeback or even raising the
| possibility of doing one. It certainly isn't common.
| Perhaps it depends on what country you're in.
| jdquey wrote:
| > I wonder if CC companies have a way of punishing companies
| for this.
|
| Yes, if they get enough people doing chargebacks. The
| challenge is most of these big co's seem to be in the "too
| big to punish" camp. This is both you need a large amount of
| chargebacks and perhaps they may not want to fire the
| companies (though this is speculative).
|
| > At least in my circles, the sense of security from having
| charge-backs is a huge reason a lot of people even use CCs.
|
| I'm with you that this is still important and valuable
| because many companies don't blacklist you. Furthermore I'd
| rather have that protection and testing a service which could
| be no service than no service at all.
| everforward wrote:
| I wouldn't expect them to drop the company as a client; I
| don't think that really serves anyone.
|
| My suggestion would be to levy higher transaction fees on
| the business, and provide refunds to customers out of that.
| If a company is going to ban users for filing chargebacks,
| raise their transaction fees by 0.5% or 1% and have the CC
| company issue refunds themselves out of that pool.
|
| At the end of the day, it's really a problem for the
| government to solve, though. Companies being able to get
| away with such blatantly anti-consumer policies is
| indicative of a substantial distortion in the market. I
| don't think this is something that would happen if there
| were robust competition in the market.
| wobblykiwi wrote:
| They kind of did, see #46 here: https://www.ftc.gov/system/fi
| les/ftc_gov/pdf/1923203EpicGame...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'd love to see this formalized as a rule/right. I essentially
| can't file a chargeback against Amazon or Steam, ever, because
| of the likely repercussions to the rest of my libraries there.
| vuln wrote:
| > my libraries
|
| You may have curated but you do not own your library. You
| purchased _access_ to said library.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My understanding of that semantic distinction (one
| virtually everyone on HN holds, I'd wager) is quite clear
| from context, I think, or I wouldn't be worried about the
| scenario.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| "You purchased access to your house, you do not own it.
| Move along citizen."
| gnaritas99 wrote:
| [dead]
| camhart wrote:
| There is the business side of this to consider. Disputes are
| expensive--companies are forced to pay significant fees whether
| they win or lose the dispute. A dishonest customer lying to
| their bank about your product/service should be able to be
| banned from using your product/service. Otherwise, what's to
| stop them from maliciously charging then filing disputes over
| and over again?
|
| To be clear, I'm talking about a different case, where the
| customer doesn't reach out for help, and doesn't give you an
| opportunity to correct the problem (which most banks ask them
| to do first but they just lie about it). With my business, this
| is the case for 9 out of every 10 disputes (and I have a very
| low dispute rate). The other 1 time is they just mistakingly
| reported it as a dispute because they didn't recognize it, but
| after you reach out they correct it with their bank (but guess
| what, you still have to pay the dispute fee when that happens).
|
| When your SAAS product costs $5 / month, and the dispute fees
| are $15 / dispute or more, and customers go back and file
| disputes on the previous X months of charges, and they never
| give you a chance to make it right, it becomes a problem worth
| banning them over.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| > Otherwise, what's to stop them from maliciously charging
| then filing disputes over and over again?
|
| Their bank?
| afterburner wrote:
| This is just common in general. Nobody that you chargeback is
| going to want your business again. It's just that tech
| companies usually hold something you want (your account)
| effectively hostage, whereas a restaurant or whatever you can
| just stop going to. This does make it worse.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| That's fine for a hotel, but it's not fine for services where
| you also loose access to your inventory.
| gnaritas99 wrote:
| [dead]
| luckylion wrote:
| We could regulate that: if you want to close the account (and
| thus withdraw all the bought items), refund all the money
| they paid for it.
| afterburner wrote:
| That won't work for something like Steam. It would mean you
| got unlimited games for free.
| johngladtj wrote:
| How so?
| luckylion wrote:
| That's why it's a great deterrent against punitive
| account closures. Right now, you pay 100% and get 0%. In
| that case, you'd get 100% of what you currently have on
| your PC, but pay 0%.
|
| There's a compromise: they stop accepting any new
| business from you, but keep everything you've bought
| available: you pay 100%, you get 100%. It's what they
| should do, but they don't want to, because the current
| situation gives them a lot of power.
|
| Hence a new regulation that tips the scales in the other
| direction to make Steam & co adopt a reasonable stance.
| The alternative would be to flat out force them to
| provide access indefinitely, but why not give them a
| chance to buy you out of your account if they really
| don't want to do business with you?
| ryandrake wrote:
| > This is just common in general. Nobody that you chargeback
| is going to want your business again.
|
| Similarly, no company that I chargeback against do I want to
| do business with anymore. A chargeback is a "burn the
| bridges" moment. You have tried everything reasonable, and
| the company is now defrauding you. Why on earth do you want
| to continue doing business with them?
| daveidol wrote:
| This may be true for honest people, but I've been dealing
| with people recently abusing the chargeback system because
| they just don't want to pay. (It's mostly young users in
| Brazil)
|
| Very frustrating as a seller.
| Sodman wrote:
| The problem is that your accounts with these businesses can
| accrue innate value over time. If you have spent 4 figures
| on buying video games on steam, and then want to dispute a
| fraudulent charge, access to all previously purchased items
| can be suddenly and permanently revoked. No to mention data
| like friends lists, game saves, etc.
|
| Even worse, for XL companies who force one account across
| multiple products, the two things can be completely
| unrelated. If Google is refusing to RMA my pixel 7 phone
| which arrived defective, I can't issue a chargeback on that
| phone purchase because they'll remove my access to the last
| 10 years of family photos, my email, my domains, and my GCP
| servers.
|
| Sure you could argue that this is the exact reason you
| should diversify these things across different companies,
| but in some cases the tight integration between these
| products is a compelling feature. The price for that
| feature shouldn't include removing consumer purchase
| protections.
| Bjartr wrote:
| It's common, but not universal. I once charged back gift
| cards that had been purchased through my hacked Zune store
| account (which tied into my main Microsoft account). I had
| some email back and forth with support and informed them that
| that's what I had done and why and they unlocked my account.
| That said, I wouldn't rely on that today.
| Kiro wrote:
| Why would you chargeback in Fortnite instead of just refunding?
| The only reasons I can think of are fraudulent ones.
| LanceH wrote:
| They weren't getting refunded because kids were genuinely
| using their parents' credit cards. Parents are alleging fraud
| to the cc companies, but not reporting this as fraud legally.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the Fortnite cash shop, but do they
| refund hard currency or just "points"/ fun bucks?
| elpool2 wrote:
| If you purchased something in-game with "v-bucks" then you
| can get your v-bucks back if you still haven't actually
| used the item in a game yet, or if it was purchased in the
| last 30 days (up to 3 times). They don't usually refund
| actual money, as far as I can tell.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| I take it you have never tried to use the support system of
| many of these services? Yeah, you may sometimes get a good
| rep that will actually help you and refund you. More often
| times than not you are forced to jump through massive hoops,
| auto replies, no help, etc. to the point that you have to do
| a chargeback. Also, chargebacks are not always a guarantee,
| VISA (or whoever) does their own investigation to make sure
| you're in the right, so you would only likely go that route
| when you're confident that the service is in the wrong.
| Kiro wrote:
| I refund routinely on Steam. The only times it doesn't work
| is if I've played more than 2 hours which seems fair. I
| don't see why I would be entitled to making a chargeback
| after I've played the game for that long. That would be
| like renting a movie, watch it and then make a chargeback.
| piperswe wrote:
| Steam will even still give you refunds after 2 hours if
| you have a reason that convinces the customer service rep
| (e.g. performance or compatibility issues that you spent
| 3 hours running the game trying to fix)
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| > Why would you chargeback in Fortnite instead of just
| refunding?
|
| It's really cool that Steam has a working refund system
| but I'm not sure it helps with the explanation of why
| refunding on Epic is an insurmountable challenge.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| You're missing the point. The point being there is plenty
| of use cases that are not fraudulent ones.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I run an ecommerce business, and pretty much always always
| block customers who file a chargeback or dispute.
|
| They're completely draining to deal with, usually fraudulent,
| and the only way to win one is to prove beyond reasonable doubt
| that the buyer is lying.
| paulmd wrote:
| Came here to say this too. This just needs to be the rule
| generally. Steam and Amazon do the same thing - get hacked and
| get charged for some items, if you dispute the Steam charge you
| lose your $5000 account, that's not a fair playing field and
| effectively negates the protection offered by credit card
| networks. _Hopefully_ steam resolves it, that 's always the
| first line of defense, but if they don't, you still can't
| charge me for it.
|
| It should really be a blanket rule against revoking access to
| previously purchased items in any form. If I get hacked and the
| perp buys something on my amazon account, I shouldn't lose
| access to music I've purchased etc.
|
| And as someone else notes - this also is a problem with Google
| revoking your account (or losing access to it) and then losing
| access to other services that auth against Google single-sign-
| on.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Most use case are not hacks aren't they? If you charge back
| because not happy for example? Every time you charge back
| Steam or Epic has to pay $10 or so to the bank if I recall.
| devmor wrote:
| There are many acceptable (to the financial institution)
| reasons to perform a chargeback.
|
| Treating them all in the same manner is a business problem
| on the merchant's end.
| flangola7 wrote:
| There are other reasons to use a chargeback than just
| fraud.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Which is?
| cwkoss wrote:
| - Deceptive advertising
|
| - Removal of advertised features
|
| - Broken UX / Failure to deliver purchase successfully
|
| (I think that last one is going to be increasingly common
| as people spin up a bunch of thin-clients over GPT-4 and
| other AI tools - I've already tried buying an AI art
| thing and it was just completely broken and had to do a
| refund through googlepay).
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Other examples would be the goods or services paid for
| never being actually delivered or being significantly
| differently that what was promised.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| > music I've purchased
|
| They really ought to stop using "buy"/"purchase"
| metaphorically to mean something more like "one time fee for
| an indefinite lease that ends upon account termination." If
| they simply used a word better suited to the reality of the
| situation, then it wouldn't be a surprise that the account
| (which is a privilege, not a right) is a dependency of using
| what you paid for. Maybe something like "micro-upgrade [my
| account]."
|
| Obviously eliminating that dependency is even better, but
| baby steps.
| mahathu wrote:
| Didn't they use to let users download mp3s when they bought
| an album? Did that change?
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Ah, you're behind the times. You may be remembering 2008
| when Amazon had those big "DRM Free" messages and
| t-shirts and talked a lot about how music wanted to be
| free. It was a big part of their sales pitch. That faded
| away, and then some music started using DRM. However, if
| you purchase a music song or album, you can still mostly
| download MP3s, as far as I know.
|
| On the other hand, if you use Amazon Unlimited or Amazon
| Music Prime, you cannot download music as MP3s. You need
| to use a player that supports their DRM.
| hug wrote:
| > On the other hand, if you use Amazon Unlimited or
| Amazon Music Prime, you cannot download music as MP3s.
| You need to use a player that supports their DRM.
|
| This seems entirely reasonable: No one thinks that by
| subscribing to Unlimited that they're actually purchasing
| a copy of every single song forever. It's very much known
| that it's a subscription.
| sirmarksalot wrote:
| The bigger issue is that because of the market power of
| these digital storefronts, it doesn't matter what your
| mental model of the transaction is, you don't have a choice
| in the matter. Yes, online stores with better terms exist,
| but they don't tend to have the games that you'd want to
| buy.
|
| I always get a warm feeling when a game I'm interested in
| has an itch.io link, but I'm not gonna delude myself into
| thinking it'll ever replace Steam, even if Steam had to
| stop calling itself a store. Steam is just far too
| established, and the network effect is just way too strong.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think a lot of platforms would change the terms of
| their digital products if they could not use the term
| "Buy" otherwise.
| yatac42 wrote:
| > > music I've purchased
|
| > They really ought to stop using "buy"/"purchase"
| metaphorically to mean something more like "one time fee
| for an indefinite lease that ends upon account
| termination."
|
| That doesn't really apply to buying music though, does it?
| If Amazon banned my account, that wouldn't prevent me from
| listening to the MP3s I've bought from them. It would only
| prevent me from re-downloading them from their servers if I
| somehow lost all of my local copies.
|
| But if I buy a CD from a physical store, they also don't
| give a me another copy for free if I lose it (even without
| account termination entering into it), so I'm not really
| any worse off with the digital download.
| justinclift wrote:
| > But if I buy a CD from a physical store ...
|
| This is literally the nature of physical vs digital
| goods.
|
| We can, and should, do better for customers than the
| current systems from Steam and Amazon (among others)
| allow.
| yatac42 wrote:
| Which current systems?
|
| For games on Steam and movies basically anywhere, the
| current system is that after I buy the game/movie, I can
| watch/play it for as long as I have access to the
| account. If I lose the account or the service shuts down,
| I'm fucked. That sucks.
|
| For games on GOG or MP3s basically anywhere, the current
| system is that I buy it and then I can play the
| game/music forever as long as I don't lose the downloaded
| files. If I do lose the files, I can still redownload
| them as long as the service is still operating and I
| still have access to the account.
|
| The second system seems fine to me.
| justinclift wrote:
| Good point, I've specifically mentioned Steam and Amazon.
| yatac42 wrote:
| Yes and buying music on Amazon (which is what the comment
| I originally responded to was about), you get system
| number 2, i.e. a DRM-free MP3 download.
|
| Buying movies on Amazon is a different matter entirely,
| but the comment and my reply were specifically about
| music.
| optionalsquid wrote:
| > Steam and Amazon do the same thing - get hacked and get
| charged for some items, if you dispute the Steam charge you
| lose your $5000 account, that's not a fair playing field and
| effectively negates the protection offered by credit card
| networks.
|
| As far as I know, you won't actually lose your account if you
| perform a chargeback against Steam, but the account does get
| restricted in a number of ways, preventing further purchases,
| access to community features (including trading), multiplayer
| on VAT enabled serves, and more. The official documentation
| does not list the specific restrictions [0], but the (fairly
| old) screenshot in this thread does [1]. Moreover, the
| restrictions seem to temporary in some cases, even without
| the account holder reverting the charge-back [2]. Both
| sources are old, but I don't recall hearing of any changes in
| this regard, nor could I find anything in that vein.
|
| [0] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/783F-5E0F-9834
| -22...
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/2inknm/help_steam
| _re...
|
| [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/2qa7fx/visa_has_c
| har...
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I think ultimately the only way to solve this is to legislate
| some notion of digital "ownership."
|
| Steam SOLD me a game. Amazon SOLD me an e-book. Shut down my
| account or refuse to do further business with me as you like,
| that's your right, but if you SOLD me something, you can't
| have it back. You need to either make it available to me or
| return my money. If Amazon wants to put the word "buy" on a
| button, then something needs to be sold. Otherwise the button
| needs to read "acquire revokable license" or something.
|
| And, of course, this leads to the reason it'll never happen:
| first sale doctrine. If I own something, I need to be able to
| transfer it to someone else.
| vuln wrote:
| You purchased _access_ to the media for as long as the
| company decides to host it. You don't physically own the
| media. Think of it as renting or a lease.
| olliej wrote:
| Having it physically isn't relevant. Plenty of people still
| buy games as physical media, and those games, including
| single player, all stop functioning the moment the company
| turns off the DRM - errr, "advanced feature" -- servers.
|
| Having something physical is meaningless when every piece
| of software comes with T&Cs that say it's dependent on
| server support.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > Think of it as renting or a lease.
|
| Then they should be forced to clearly explain that and not
| be allowed to put words like "buy" and "purchase" in their
| advertising because those words have very specific
| meanings. That they've been allowed to basically get around
| deceptive advertising laws by inserting some legalese into
| their TOS, which are deliberately written in the most
| inaccessible way as possible, is repugnant.
| jjulius wrote:
| We shouldn't _think_ of it as renting or a lease, companies
| should _call it_ renting or leasing. Otherwise, they 're
| pissing on my leg and telling me that it's raining.
| ticviking wrote:
| But they don't advertise our relationship in that way.
|
| They say, "Buy for kindle" or "Buy in iTunes"
|
| The contract they advertise doesn't match the fine-print in
| their clickwrap contract
| paulmd wrote:
| That may be true, but the EU can simply outlaw those types
| of contractual arrangements going forward, and require that
| prior purchases be either defaulted into the new purchase
| arrangement or refunded.
|
| Welcome to governments that are actually responsive to
| protecting their citizens. It doesn't have to be the way it
| is in the US with corporations holding all the cards,
| that's just regulatory capture in action.
|
| That's how the EU works in general, the balance is shifted
| way towards consumer protections - even if companies don't
| like it, tough. You get a default 2 year warranty on
| everything, no questions asked, and if the items fails past
| that due to an inherent defect in design or manufacture,
| they have to replace it even if it's outside the warranty
| window. And that's just normal, that's how everything is
| expected to run. USB cables, charges, all that crap, the EU
| does what it thinks is best for its citizens' lives, and
| while specific things sometimes do go wrong, on net it's a
| massive benefit to everyone's quality of life.
|
| Companies exist to serve us, folks, not the other way
| around. It doesn't have to be this way. "Oh we put
| something in the terms of service"? Yeah bullshit.
| Mandatory binding arbitration in your contract of adhesion?
| Arbitrate on deez nuts.
|
| The US is completely obscene by the standards of the rest
| of the developed world.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| [dead]
| vuln wrote:
| It would be interesting to see the EU try and force a
| company to host something in perpetuity. Interesting
| thought exercise.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| They could just _actually sell things_ instead. As in,
| sell _for real_ , not some at-our-discretion lease.
| Nobody's forcing companies to gate access and add DRM and
| all that. Such a change probably wouldn't result in
| perpetual hosting, but in _actually selling things_. Or,
| in only providing rentals. Either way, the situation
| would be clearer to the end user.
| jerf wrote:
| It doesn't have to be quite as simplistic. You can give
| them choices. There could be IP escrow companies you
| could pay. You can give them the choice of hosting in
| perpetuity or releasing something on some date. You can
| tie all these choices to a tax structure, progressive
| charges, etc. You could make the cheapest thing to simply
| sell the product outright. In theory you could even tie
| these additional protections to the a condition of making
| the release public at some point as a way of
| incentivizing companies not to use copyright protection
| on something that is not likely to be that valuable in 95
| years, though that's unrealistically utopian of me to
| suggest.
|
| My main point is that it doesn't have to be that
| simplistic.
| paulmd wrote:
| Companies going out of business is a different thing but
| Amazon, Google, and Epic are not in any risk of going out
| of business.
|
| If you're worried about shell-company games, well, that
| can be legislated against too. So far the EU hasn't, as
| far as I'm aware, let any companies out of any
| previously-mandated penalties for violating consumer
| protection with "That was google, this is ABC" bullshit.
| They are, as I stated, much much less interested in
| playing games than the US is.
| csunbird wrote:
| EU isn't that unfair for companies, it is more likely
| that they would allow revoking of access rights, but
| require companies to compensate for thr damages (e.g.
| issue a refund for the full or partial purchase amount)
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| Consumer protection is similar in Australia, we have the
| ACL and it's great. I got my 4 year old, out of warranty
| macbook pro replaced for free because the screen
| backlight was having problems and the keyboard was not
| working properly.
| drstewart wrote:
| [flagged]
| paulmd wrote:
| > Or did you literally just try to make up something that
| the EU can do then use it to praise the EU and bash the
| US?
|
| The flamebait tone is unnecessary and is against the
| spirit of discussion here at HN as well as the rules, I'd
| kindly ask you to chill it a bit here.
|
| This isn't legislation that exists, this is me suggesting
| they should pass legislation, which is obvious from the
| ordinary context of my comment.
|
| Feels bad-faith but to give you the benefit of the doubt,
| if you are asking me to provide a track record of the
| EU's previous pro-consumer legislation, some examples
| would be phone connector/cable standardization, charger
| standardization, mandatory warranties, etc.
| chrononaut wrote:
| > The flamebait tone is unnecessary and is against the
| spirit of discussion here at HN as well as the rules, I'd
| kindly ask you to chill it a bit here.
|
| Not OP, but I imagine your tone was likely a contributing
| factor to their response.
|
| >> Welcome to governments that are actually responsive to
| protecting their citizens.
|
| ..
|
| >> Yeah bullshit. Mandatory binding arbitration in your
| contract of adhesion? Arbitrate on deez nuts.
|
| >> The US is completely obscene by the standards of the
| rest of the developed world.
| lttlrck wrote:
| > Welcome to governments that are actually responsive to
| protecting their citizens.
|
| Same?
|
| I don't disagree, but this is as much flamebait as the
| response you're complaining about...
| indymike wrote:
| The button needs to say "rent" or "lease". A "buy" button
| should not result in a rental.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| You're not doing that either. You're buying a revocable
| license to access. That's actually worse than renting or
| leasing.
|
| In the case of Amazon Music, if you haven't fallen for
| the subscription nonsense, you actually are buying the
| MP3 files. You can download them and then it's on you to
| move them around as you need. Amazon will also "keep a
| copy in the cloud for you, and let you play it wherever."
| You lose that when you lose your account, but if you went
| to the trouble to download your MP3, that's yours.
| raph43l wrote:
| [dead]
| spacemadness wrote:
| I could see these being difficult logistical problems for
| companies but that gives them no right to socialize the
| problem by playing hardball and holding accounts hostage.
| That problem is in their domain to solve, and sorry that
| being a profitable business is tough but, again, solving this
| is not on the customer.
| drstewart wrote:
| How is it "socializing the problem" other than being a
| buzzword phrase that's been thrown around lately in other
| contexts that feels like it fits?
| devmor wrote:
| Yeah that phrase doesn't really apply here. They're not
| pushing the solution onto any portion of the population -
| they're just straight up blackballing users.
| dnissley wrote:
| I imagine the solution will simply be to charge higher
| prices across the board. We will all pay for the ability to
| charge back and not lose account access, including
| subsidizing the most flagrant abusers of such a policy.
| This could be a good trade off, but I think it's important
| to highlight that there is definitely no free lunch here
| and that legislating this problem away will have some
| downstream effects.
| akhosravian wrote:
| What's the actual cost for chargebacks here? Presumably
| they are quite capable of revoking licenses to the
| purchased item. This is slightly hairier for in app
| purchases laundered through a game currency run by a
| third party, but still seems doable. Is there a reason
| the cost isn't asymptotically close to 0 here?
|
| In the worst case they stop allowing an account to make
| new purchases while keeping what they've bought. Is that
| an objectionable outcome?
| cwkoss wrote:
| Alternately (or additionally), I'd love for regulatory
| prohibition of implied ownership of these sorts of items.
|
| Ex. if access is revokable, it's illegal to use the word
| "Buy" alone - have to use "Rent" or "License" or "Buy
| License" or something that doesn't imply ownership (because
| ownership is not being offered)
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I don't feel like this is a meaningful change.
|
| If steam changed all the "Buy" to "Rent" on it's website,
| nothing would _actually_ change.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Customers would be informed. Many would leave for GOG.com
| indymike wrote:
| > effectively negates the protection offered by credit card
| networks
|
| This behavior for smaller companies will likely result in
| fines from Visa, MasterCard and other cards. You really are
| supposed to treat charge-backs like you would losing an
| arbitration if you are a merchant. I've watched many a
| merchant do shady things around charge-backs and find out the
| hard way (I used to own an MSP, was enlightening). Most of
| the time it was trying to sue someone after losing, and then
| getting their case tossed because the judge treated the suit
| like they were reviewing an arbitration... and most of the
| time the merchants were actually in the wrong (as in selling
| defective goods, not delivering services or over-charging).
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think it is reasonable.
|
| On other side the companies should then be able to sue you and
| you need to prove that charge was fraudulent. If you fail, you
| will carry full costs of both sides. Thus cutting down the
| fraud by chargebacks.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > On other side the companies should then be able to sue you
|
| Companies can sue you for false, damaging claims you make, or
| failure to complete your end of a contractual arrangement.
|
| > and you need to prove that charge was fraudulent
|
| Well, no, the initial burden of proof should remain on the
| entity seeking a remedy, but civil standard of proof
| (preponderance of the evidence) means that that initial
| burden is not hard to meet.
| indymike wrote:
| This is really how the system works in most places. If a
| chargeback result is unjust, the merchant can sue. In most
| places court costs and attorney fees are awarded to the
| winner. Most of the time, merchants just assign the account
| to a collection agency after 90 days and hope for something.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Banning users who charge back is standard practice on all video
| game stores. They equate it to fraud in their terms of service.
| Imagine having an account worth thousands of dollars and losing
| everything because you decided to exercise your rights.
|
| I'm so happy to see authorities are finally doing something
| about this abuse.
| smugma wrote:
| Does Apple App Store do this?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Absolutely. Check out this document for example:
|
| https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-
| services/itunes/us/term...
|
| > All Transactions are final.
|
| Purchased something by mistake? Tough.
|
| > If technical problems prevent or unreasonably delay
| delivery of Content, your exclusive and sole remedy is
| either replacement of the Content or refund of the price
| paid, as determined by Apple.
|
| Unhappy? Your only recourse is to beg Apple for your money
| back. They may say no.
|
| > From time to time, Apple may suspend or cancel payment or
| refuse a refund request if we find evidence of fraud,
| abuse, or unlawful or other manipulative behavior that
| entitles Apple to a corresponding counterclaim.
|
| These corporations think charge backs are evidence of abuse
| and fraud, so yeah.
|
| > c. Termination. This Standard EULA is effective until
| terminated by you or Licensor. Your rights under this
| Standard EULA will terminate automatically if you fail to
| comply with any of its terms.
|
| Your fraudulent chargebacks are reason enough for them to
| kill your account, invalidating every dime you ever spent
| on it.
|
| There's no point in even reading these silly documents.
| They're all the same, everywhere. Always assume they do
| this.
| dereg wrote:
| Apple has refunded me on pretty much all of my App Store
| purchases, including an accidental $200 dollar
| subscription. There is a refund mechanism.
|
| "Absolutely" is hyperbole.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > if you do a chargeback, you often get blacklisted on their
| service.
|
| Although, to be honest, if a problem has deteriorated to the
| point where I need to do a chargeback, I've already written off
| doing any further business with that company anyway.
| olliej wrote:
| Yes, but the problem is when you have already purchased a
| bunch of other things that can only be accessed through that
| service.
|
| They should be required to refund every purchase on an
| account that they close.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > They should be required to refund every purchase on an
| account that they close.
|
| I could not agree more.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| For many, that depends entirely on the availability of
| alternatives. With duopolies like Uber/Lyft, you survive
| after one kill and then you're done. Amazon hardly has a
| direct competitor. For merchants with plenty of direct
| competitors, I agree with you.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I understand. I prefer to minimize risk, though, so I don't
| use services like Uber/Lyft, and I stopped using Amazon and
| eBay entirely.
|
| Interestingly, I stopped using eBay precisely because they
| left me stuck with a fraudulent charge. The process of
| trying to dispute it using their system was so drawn out,
| though, that by the time eBay told me to go pound sand, it
| was too late to do a chargeback. But even so, I'm certainly
| not willing to risk trusting them again.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Amazon would be the one with the most competitors. Many
| Amazon sellers have their own websites, not to mention
| Aliexpress, Walmart, Target, HomeDepot, Bestbuy, Monoprice,
| Staples, Costco, etc.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I'm referring to competitors of the overall Amazon
| experience, not really the individual products, in which
| the main value proposition for me is the extremely fast
| shipping. Those other stores typically don't offer it at
| a reasonable price, because they don't have warehouses a
| stone's throw from most customers.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| Yes and no. Sometimes it's more grey than that in services
| like Uber or Doordash where it could be at the fault of one
| bad apple and not the company at a whole. Or as others said,
| sometimes you are at the mercy of losing a massive library of
| content if you get blacklisted like on Steam or Amazon, for
| example.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > it's more grey than that in services like Uber or
| Doordash
|
| I understand this perspective, but my opinion is that the
| company running things is responsible for the people
| working under their banner. If the company doesn't make
| something right, that's on the company in the end
| regardless of who specifically did something wrong. So it
| doesn't look gray to me.
|
| > sometimes you are at the mercy of losing a massive
| library of content
|
| True, and that's a tough spot. Personally, that risk is why
| I never use a service that can put me in that sort of
| position. But I do understand that others may be willing to
| take this risk. It's still a risk, though, and I expect
| that the people who choose these sorts of services are
| aware of that and accept that they might lose.
| criley2 wrote:
| I don't think this concept will fly broadly in America, it
| violates the way the American constitution sets up private vs
| public. Forcing private businesses to do businesses with the
| public without discrimination is only allowed in certain cases.
| Are you open to the public, providing an important service?
| (Like taxi, hotel, etc?) Then you cannot discriminate. Are you
| not-essential, with limited rules based membership? Then you
| can discriminate.
|
| In this case, telling a private business they are forced to
| entertain customers who have robbed them, it's outrageous. And
| while I understand that chargebacks CAN be legitimate, they
| also CAN and often are illegitimate. When I worked in small
| business computer repair, we literally got out of the business
| of selling expensive machines because more than half of all
| orders were fraudulent and were charge backed with zero
| recourse -- we lose the machine, we lose the money. We lost an
| incredible sum of money to thieves this way, and so being told
| we are forced to do business with them would have destroyed our
| business.
|
| If you wanted to create a new class of online public service
| like Twitter and Google and increase regulation on them as one
| might do hotels, that's one thing. But a blanket requirement
| that all businesses must entertain customers who chargeback is
| a nonstarter, imo.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| The problem is that the businesses have made customer's
| ability to access their previous purchases dependent upon
| continuing to have a business relationship with the account.
| If, when closing the account, the business paid back full
| value for everything they were removing access to, the ruling
| might be different. But they aren't doing that.
|
| If you are a business doing more normal business, selling
| something with no sort of required subscription, something
| the customer does not depend upon you for, then you are still
| free to stop doing business with them (minus a few cases
| related to protected classes).
| lancesells wrote:
| It might be even easier than being paid back full value
| (which is difficult). How about you still have your account
| but you can no longer purchase anything else?
| indymike wrote:
| This would be a just way to do it. Making a dispute over
| $20 cost the complainer $2000 in digital goods seems like
| a good way to create hate and discontent... and lawsuits.
| criley2 wrote:
| > The problem is that the businesses have made customer's
| ability to access their previous purchases dependent upon
| continuing to have a business relationship with the account
|
| That's not a problem really. Think of country clubs. Your
| investment is completely lost the second you stop paying.
|
| I understand that folks may dislike the subscription model,
| but it's not illegal.
| Sodman wrote:
| I don't think the problem is the subscription model
| exactly. If I'm paying $15 / mo for netflix, it's very
| clear that my $15 gets me one month of access, to
| whatever's available in their library at the time.
| Similarly, if I pay $10/mo for Gym access and the Gym
| decides it no longer wants to do business with me, that's
| fine because A) there's more Gyms for me to go to, and B)
| I never had any expectation that anything from that Gym
| would be 'mine' forever, it was always an ephemeral
| access to the service conditional on my recurring
| payments.
|
| The problem is for services where I pay a la carte to
| build a "personal" library of things, like steam games,
| Google Play movies, Amazon Kindle books, etc. I've paid a
| one-off price for the digital content with the
| expectation that I will have access to that content
| indefinitely. If I am abusing the platform, causing
| issues for others, or generally and blatantly violating
| ToS in a major way, then I think that's a different
| story. But if I need to dispute one transaction, then the
| ability to immediately remove all access to previously
| purchased content immediately, indefinitely, and
| frequently without review or appeals - is very anti-
| consumer.
|
| It effectively nullifies existing consumer protection
| laws. I will never issue a chargeback or complaint
| against Valve (Steam) or Google, even if I have a
| perfectly legitimate reason to do so - as loss of those
| accounts after all of these years would likely be more
| costly to me than most erroneous charges I'm likely to
| see.
| smugma wrote:
| Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft/XBox and Google do this.
|
| It's not relevant to Netflix.
|
| Does Apple also do this?
| tagyro wrote:
| My comment is going to get downvoted (or worse, ignored), but
| here I go again:
|
| We, as software engineers (or working in the field), have the
| power to not implement these features when our employer asks us
| to do it.
|
| Everyday we read about organisations using dark patterns in their
| (software) products and then we come to HN to complain about it.
|
| How did these features get built? By whom?
|
| Yes, I realise not everyone has the privilege to say "NO", but at
| least some of us can and should push back.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Yes, I realise not everyone has the privilege to say "NO",
| but at least some of us can and should push back.
|
| I agree wholeheartedly. I would (and have) quit jobs where I
| was required to do things I considered unethical. Having to do
| that can suck and be a financial blow, but I think being able
| to keep my soul is worth it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think a lot of us do push back on the product owners and
| designers when something seems obviously bad. But I don't think
| it's good advice to encourage people to unilaterally declare
| themselves the gatekeeper just because they write the code.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > encourage people to unilaterally declare themselves the
| gatekeeper just because they write the code.
|
| That's not the call to action. The call to action is to
| refuse to participate in unethical behavior.
| YeahNO wrote:
| Articulating why a certain function is bad design or is
| actively harmful is not the same as gatekeeping. I have lost
| opportunities because I chose to follow my ethics over my
| bank account. I do not regret those decisions.
|
| Software developers should have a professional code of
| ethics. Other professions have them, why not computer
| scientists, computer engineers, and software developers?
| There is the ACM/IEEE-CS Software Engineering Code, but I
| don't know any professionals outside academia that remain ACM
| members, IEEE membership might remain relevant for computer
| engineers, so I may well be wrong in that regard.
| tagyro wrote:
| When I studied (industrial) engineering, we had a creed and
| naive me still believes in that.
|
| https://order-of-the-engineer.org/about-the-
| order/obligation...
| intelVISA wrote:
| We're young as a profession, once ML automates away a lot
| of the low hanging fruit I'd imagine we'll go a similar
| path.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| You seem to have started with the premise that getting
| management to behave ethically is hopeless, but that maybe
| engineers could refuse.
|
| Management can always find someone willing to behave un-
| ethically if they look.
|
| Regulation and criminal liability tends to be the only way to
| eliminate shady business practices.
| tagyro wrote:
| I was "management" in an infamous bank.
|
| When I realised that I had a choice, I resigned.
|
| Again, I do realise that I'm privileged and not everyone can
| afford to simply resign, but a lot of us can and we, the ones
| who can, have no excuse.
|
| We are the "new" crack dealers
|
| 2Pac - Changes You gotta operate the easy
| way - I made a G today but you made
| it in a sleazy way Sellin' crack to the kids
| - I gotta get paid Well hey, well, that's the
| way it is
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Management can always find someone willing to behave un-
| ethically if they look.
|
| True, but that doesn't mean you should participate.
|
| I think there are two things here -- refusing to participate
| in bad behavior is about maintaining your own humanity and
| holding true to your own ethical code. That it may not
| correct the company's behavior is irrelevant to this. The
| point is to not let the company corrupt you.
|
| The other thing is how to correct the behavior of misbehaving
| companies. This is what you're addressing, and I think your
| conclusion is largely correct.
|
| These are not mutually exclusive. Both are very important.
| imiric wrote:
| Never mind dark patterns. If engineers had that kind of moral
| fibre to choose doing the right thing over getting paid, social
| media as we know it today wouldn't exist, and adtech giants
| wouldn't rule the web.
|
| The reality is that most of us think we're making the world a
| better place, when truthfully we're just trying to make a
| decent living, while making the unscrupulous shot callers rich.
| And that's the percentage that does actually want to make an
| honest living. Others will happily apply their knowledge to
| deceive and exploit, and then go on to make successful
| companies of their own. The circle of tech.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Cogs can't push back; experts can, and should.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| unions
| grog454 wrote:
| > software engineers (or working in the field), have the power
| to not implement these features when our employer asks us to do
| it.
|
| Realize that you're statment is a euphemism. What you really
| mean is we have the choice between implementing a dark pattern
| or finding another job and letting someone else implement it.
| Stated this way it's a lot easier to understand people's
| behavior.
| JamesonNetworks wrote:
| GPT-4 def wont care
| alden5 wrote:
| Here's a software engineer at twitter who was asked to
| implement granular per user location tracking and the feature
| got scrapped because the entire team just refused to
| implement it https://mobile.twitter.com/stevekrenzel/status/1
| 589700721121...
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| Maybe what we need are unions. I realize it's hard to do with
| H1Bs, contractors, remote work, and offshoring. But maybe we
| should try anyway?
|
| One could be tempted to think we're overpaid or have it too
| good as is, but we're basically lightning wizards making
| rocks think for us from sometimes thousands of miles away
| from where we physically are. When put that way it doesn't
| seem so farfetched to pay us a lot of money for our works.
| Errsher wrote:
| Ah yes, the banality of evil.
|
| s/implementing a dark pattern/performing any immoral or
| unethical act/g
| mydogcanpurr wrote:
| In capitalism, you're always free to starve. In Nazi
| Germany, you're always free to be executed or imprisoned
| for refusing orders.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That has always been a massive copout.
| [deleted]
| Eduard wrote:
| > What you really mean is we have the choice between
| implementing a dark pattern or finding another job and
| letting someone else implement it.
|
| You incorrectly reduced the available options.
|
| Here are a couple more options:
|
| - convince your peers and supervisors why using dark patterns
| is trash
|
| - just don't implement dark patterns and rather focus on
| useful features and bugfixes
|
| - be loud about your distain of such request for dark pattern
| implementation and tweet, blog, write about it.
|
| - ...
| tagyro wrote:
| These are all valid options and one could (and should)
| attempt them before resigning.
|
| (Though, realistically speaking, either one will probably
| get you fired, sooner or later.)
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| I've honestly never understood the point of buying skins.
| Admittedly I guess game monetization is difficult, I'm not going
| to pay to get nothing, and I'm not going to play pay to win games
| either. Most games I play are paid upfront.
| 19h wrote:
| Pretty sure if Tencent wasn't involved the FTC wouldn't be this
| invested into making Epic bleed ..
| yalogin wrote:
| Who gets this penalty? The FTC?
|
| Why do these penalties always end up as a fine for the company?
| They should also be forced to simply go and refund the amount
| they overcharged at least and preferably add a multiple too.
| verall wrote:
| >Under the FTC's order, Epic must pay $245 million, which will
| be used to provide refunds to consumers.
| last_responder wrote:
| I will anxiously await my check for $0.25
| [deleted]
| pwinnski wrote:
| Mostly lawyers.
| angryjim wrote:
| I've had repeated issues using Fortnite gift cards, some I bought
| myself. Zero help from Epic. I bet others have as well.
| awill wrote:
| Epic love to complain about Valve, but consumers all love Valve.
| Epic? Not so much.
| Loughla wrote:
| I deal with Valve, because I have to. There is not a good way
| to get video games that doesn't involve pirating, unless you
| use a platform like Steam.
|
| The fact that I do not really own the games is a huge pain in
| my ass, but I love video games, and want to spend my actual
| money on them, so I'm kind of stuck.
| justin66 wrote:
| > consumers all love Valve
|
| Where do people get ideas like this?
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| That's the second time now I read about Epic Games paying a fine
| for doing something obviously shady and illegal. I slowly get the
| impression that Epic Games might be a bit more scammy than your
| average company.
| acomjean wrote:
| As an adult who's partner plays Fortnite with her cousins and
| occasionally gets dragged in, I haven't seen this. I've spent
| maybe 25, and it seemed pretty obvious what was going on. Maybe
| I just haven't found the dark pattern path. It should be clear
| what's going on before charging.
|
| I don't love the "v bucks" vs real dollars they charge for
| things. though I get that the reward for those who grind isn't
| actual dollars.
|
| As someone who let a younger person play on my laptop, I will
| note my balance was quickly brought down to 0 though I had some
| new "emotes".. lesson learned.
|
| I'd rather just pay once for games, though that seems to be on
| its way out.
| hinkley wrote:
| I play Civ VI on my tablet to wind down, and I'm not happy
| about owning the whole thing on Steam and only half on iOS.
| They need a license transference process.
|
| If memory serves Klei might have a solution for this but I
| haven't bought anything on steam in some time so I may be
| thinking of some other game.
| bellgrove wrote:
| It would be nice to get a discount on already owned games
| when purchasing on another platform, but I disagree that it
| should just be free (if I understood what you mean about
| license transference). Porting a game to another platform
| is non-trivial - I think a fair compromise would be a
| discount. Otherwise the cost of games in general would have
| to go up to subsidize the labor to bring content to all
| platforms.
| airstrike wrote:
| I'm honestly more upset about how shitty it is to download
| DLCs and mods on iOS. The whole thing is botched beyond
| belief
| bena wrote:
| Yeah, it makes their kerfuffle with Apple look a bit different.
|
| Because Apple charges 30%. And Apple can keep that if there is
| a refund.
|
| In this case, Epic is returning money. They would ideally be
| net zero on this whole debacle. You mistakenly bought $10 worth
| of skins, Epic collected that $10. Then you get refunded $10,
| Epic returns that $10. In the App Store scenario. You
| mistakenly bought $10 worth of skins, Apple collected that $10,
| gave $7 to Epic. Then you get refunded $10, Apple returns that
| $10, and then collects that $10 from Epic. Epic loses $3 on the
| exchange.
|
| And if this is just refunding the purchases, it's kind of a
| good deal for Epic. As they essentially got an interest free
| loan from their customers.
| RussianCow wrote:
| > And if this is just refunding the purchases, it's kind of a
| good deal for Epic. As they essentially got an interest free
| loan from their customers.
|
| Just a minor note: I believe credit card transaction fees are
| not refunded to the vendor, so there is still a non-zero cost
| to refunding customers which likely doesn't make it a "good
| deal".
|
| (Disclaimer: It's been over a decade since I did anything
| related to payments, so this may be out of date, or I may be
| misremembering it.)
| bena wrote:
| No, that sounds if not outright correct, at the very least
| in the ballpark of close enough.
|
| And I'm not totally up on the transaction fees, but they're
| typically in the low single digit percentages. And you only
| get hit once. So even on the higher side, you're looking at
| making up 3%. Which is way more likely than making up 30%
| in the same timeframe.
| pseudostem wrote:
| What you said, and what I'm retorting with requires data, lots
| of it. But my understanding is that given unchecked power in a
| domain, almost all of them do the same.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Yeah, I appreciate Valve more and more. Epic has the gall to
| present themselves as underdogs fighting for consumers
| against Valve, Apple, etc. Meanwhile Valve quietly hums along
| making gaming better for everyone.
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| I think I agree with you, but to play devil's advocate, the
| video game industry is struggling to monetize their work.
|
| No one wants to pay for games anymore, no one wants a pay to
| win system in a game, and cosmetic items seem like a waste of
| money to most. The result is the gaming industry pulling out
| all the tricks to try to separate the consume from his or her
| wallet to pay for content.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > the video game industry is struggling to monetize their
| work.
|
| The video game industry is exceedingly profitable. It makes
| more money than the movie industry, at nearly $100 billion
| per year.
|
| I don't think it's struggling to monetize. It seems quite
| successful at that.
| thewebcount wrote:
| > No one wants to pay for games anymore
|
| Is that true, or are games so broken that nobody is willing
| to pay for them anymore. I've completely stopped buying
| almost any game that isn't on Apple Arcade because I know
| those games will be free of pay-to-win mechanics and nickel-
| and-diming you with more charges and dark patterns. On
| Apple's service, they all have to ask if they want to steal
| my data and resell it. I always say "No." I have a Steam
| account for playing older games I bought a while ago, but I
| buy maybe 1 game per year on it, if even, and only because
| it's not available anywhere else I'm willing to spend money.
| I'm playing more games than ever before now, too!
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It had no problem monetizing their work BEFORE the
| microtransaction hellscape we have now, which has made these
| companies insanely profitable.
| hinkley wrote:
| It's sure a good thing we let them run their own App Store for
| Apple products then.
|
| Definitely a win for the little guy. /s
| lapcat wrote:
| The crApp Store is full of dark patterns. All Apple ever
| cared about was getting its 30% cut of those dark patterns,
| including from Epic.
| hinkley wrote:
| If we wanted to 'fix' both the price overhead on the App
| Store and the Freemium problem there then the best way to
| do that would be for Apple to reduce their cut on initial
| purchases but keep in-game purchases at 30%.
|
| Right now they're doing nothing to discourage these
| patterns.
|
| I cut Apple some slack because I worked in mobile when the
| iPhone was still a product demo. If you think Apple are
| assholes, you don't remember what carriers were like. Some
| of them were in the middle of figuring out how to white
| label phones so they could completely control the wireless
| space instead of share control with Moto, Nokia, Ericcson,
| etc. AT&T wanted you to buy an AT&T branded phone, not a
| Nokia. If memory serves, HTC was one of those white label
| manufacturers at the time.
|
| The introduction of the Razr and the iPhone kept us from
| being in the worst timeline. And the App Store broke open
| an entire industry.
| lapcat wrote:
| > I cut Apple some slack because I worked in mobile when
| the iPhone was still a product demo. If you think Apple
| are assholes, you don't remember what carriers were like.
|
| I don't cut Apple any slack because I worked in desktop
| when the iPhone was still a product demo. If you don't
| think Apple are assholes, you don't remember what freedom
| was like.
| wantsanagent wrote:
| "After receiving five comments, the Commission voted 4-0 to
| approve the complaint and order against Epic and the responses to
| the commenters."
|
| What? Were these just five people who happened to be in the room?
| How do you receive only 5 comments?
| hinkley wrote:
| I worked a contract for a state appeals court way back in the
| day. I believe anything the judge considers is recorded as part
| of the case, so "comment" is more official than just raising
| your hand. Either you've filed a document or taken the witness
| stand. Either way lawyers are involved so that's a lot of
| friction.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| Only 245M? Should have gone for 2.45B. That would have hopefully
| made Epic reconsider its trashy existence on this planet.
| SimonPStevens wrote:
| Quite frankly in-game purchases has destroyed an entire industry
| for me.
|
| Mobile games are so filled with this junk I don't even bother
| looking at them any more.
|
| I avoid anything on PC that has a store, repeating season passes
| or virtual currency of any kind. It's even coloured my view of
| the types of add-on DLC that 20 years ago would have been a
| legitimate expansion pack, purely because it feels too similar to
| the dark patterns used in stores.
|
| I refuse to give money to the companies that push these financial
| cons on people.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a bit of a sweet spot with replayability and DLCs.
|
| I have a hard time finishing games. When they add new chapters
| to the game they've moved the goal posts as it were, and that
| doesn't feel good. If they introduce some new side quests and a
| new race, I've still finished the game (or let's be honest, got
| 90% of the way).
|
| But if I want to play Skyrim again as a telekinetic khajiit
| then I might pay for DLC.
| nottorp wrote:
| > But if I want to play Skyrim again as a telekinetic khajiit
| then I might pay for DLC.
|
| You must be new to Bethesda games. You buy the "game of the
| year edition" with all DLC included when it's on 70%
| discount. You don't buy at launch :)
| ridgered4 wrote:
| I already live in a pay to win world so the idea of unwinding
| in one seems insane to me.
|
| My biggest beef is when this is added in an update after I
| bought a game that didn't have it.
| bm3719 wrote:
| I also think of the games market this way. It's bifurcated
| between single purchase and on-going, and I'm not interested in
| constantly paying for stuff or needlessly complicating
| transactions, so the latter doesn't exist to me.
|
| I find the acceptance of in-game stores rather unfathomable,
| but apparently the market has spoken as it represents the
| majority of industry revenue. So, it's unfortunately not going
| anywhere. What's wrong with players willing to drop $1000+ on a
| single game and/or have their game mechanics and other
| activities tainted by constantly pulling out their wallet? I
| know people in RL that do this, some to great personal
| financial harm, and haven't really gotten a good answer yet.
| jsmeaton wrote:
| Hah. A few years ago my young child (6) racked up an $800 bill on
| consmetics playing on the Wii. It was my fault - I didn't require
| a password to make purchases and he spammed the buy button.
|
| To his credit he came straight to me and told me he got all of
| the items "for free".
|
| After a huge muck around I finally got a refund (dealing with a
| combination of Nintendo and Epic) but the outcome was that I
| could no longer use a credit card to make purchase on my account
| ever again.
|
| They've known for a long long time that accidental purchases
| happen and avoided having a decent path to refund (up until
| somewhat recently according to TFA) so I'm glad they're being
| slapped with regulations.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| >Under the FTC's order, Epic must pay $245 million, which will be
| used to provide refunds to consumers. The order also prohibits
| Epic from charging consumers through the use of dark patterns or
| from otherwise charging consumers without obtaining their
| affirmative consent. Additionally, the order bars Epic from
| blocking consumers from accessing their accounts for disputing
| unauthorized charges.
|
| Too bad there aren't punitive damages. Hopefully this action by
| the FTC chills other businesses that use dark patterns or ban
| users for charge backs. Not offering competent customer service
| is a liability not a cost savings.
| blitzar wrote:
| Duplicate / part of -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35168285 - Americans lost a
| record $10.3B to online scammers last year, FBI says
| cornstalks wrote:
| > _Additionally, the order bars Epic from blocking consumers from
| accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges._
|
| I really wish more companies were required to still allow account
| access after disputing a credit card charge.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'd like something that broadly prohibited any company that 1)
| acts as a gatekeeper for any third party services, or 2) offers
| digital "purchases" from blocking user access to their account
| without having to first prove overt nefarious actions that
| disrupt the service. And not some hand-wavy TOS violation, but
| it should be impossible to block someone more than temporarily
| without going through some kind of arbitration process.
|
| If a company doesn't want to deal with this hassle, don't offer
| up "Sign in with Google/Apple/Facebook/whatever" (I'm talking
| about Google/Apple/FB/whatever in this scenario), and don't
| "sell" digital goods that are hosted online.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Yeah, I would like to see where you at least maintain access
| to your existing (previous) purchases in the case of a
| dispute.
|
| I can understand cutting off a bad actor from making more
| purchases, but reclaiming their already paid for stuff feels
| pretty evil.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| That's because it is evil. Specifically, greed.
| altairprime wrote:
| The FTC's order can be reasonably interpreted as a warning shot
| to other US companies, but I'd still like to see "chargebacks
| may only reverse access to that which the purchase paid for,
| not to the right to access past and future purchases" enshrined
| in law.
| thyselius wrote:
| Does anyone here know exactly what these patterns are?
| haunter wrote:
| I play Fortnite so I can answer. Basically purchase in Fortnite
| was instant. You clicked/touched on the button > you bought it
| instantly. There were no confirmation screens, no "are you
| sure" etc nothing. One click purchase. And cancellation was
| very limited, basically non existent. Credit cards were also
| saved instantly so no further interaction needed for later
| purchases, so some kids ended up spending a lot without their
| parents knowledge at all.
|
| There are more examples here about the patterns
| https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/12/245-milli...
|
| They already changed the system like half a year ago, guess
| they knew about the penalty back then
| https://www.fortnite.com/news/updates-to-fortnite-purchase-c...
|
| Now for every purchase you have to hold the buy button for
| several seconds. You can't click/touch accidentally. Plus there
| is a proper refund system now.
| thunky wrote:
| Not disagreeing, but just a note that it is possible to play
| Fortnite without spending a single cent or giving out a
| credit card. It's not a pay to play game, so you're not
| limiting yourself by keeping your money. You just miss out on
| skins & emotes.
|
| So this line from the linked ftc post is incorrect:
|
| "Epic charges for in-game purchases designed to enhance game
| play"
|
| Money does not enhance game play.
|
| Epic also hands out in-game currency every so often, so you
| can even collect skins for free after some time.
|
| That said, kids gotta have the new skins.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Money does not enhance game play.
|
| Common misconception. In reality, allowing for IAPs has
| changed the design of the game greatly. For example, those
| cosmetics you don't consider important have been made non
| attainable from normal gameplay.
|
| Every little pixel sold as an IAP also means the design of
| the game is changed to give you an incentive to buy the
| IAP, instead of entertaining you.
| thunky wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean. When I say "game play"
| I mean the how the game is actually played. Things like
| available weapons or reachable maps affect game play.
| Cosmetics don't. Skins and emotes don't make you play the
| game differently therefore they don't enhance "game
| play". Just like wearing a fancy shirt doesn't enhance
| the game play of chess.
|
| Fortnite even allows you to enter competitive tournaments
| and compete for money without spending a dime. A player
| that spent $0 and is using the default skin is at no
| disadvantage vs a player that spent $1000.
| nottorp wrote:
| Don't think the whole player base is as obsessed with
| "competing". Most are there to socialize. Or who knows,
| "compete" on flashy skins.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| This is in sharp contrast to Roblox where a purchase attempt
| pops up a confirmation screen, a clear explanation of what
| you're purchasing, what the cost is, and what your balance
| will be post-purchase. And then it makes you wait a few
| seconds before it enables the "purchase" button itself.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't like how sometimes in streaming services clicking on
| a movie shows the details, while in other places it starts
| the movie. Now it's on my keep watching list which gets
| awkward on family accounts.
|
| But at least they don't auto play movies that you have to pay
| for. Which it sounds like is what's happening here.
| degenerate wrote:
| > In Spring 2018, Epic executives and managers discussed adding a
| confirm purchase button to prevent accidental purchases. Though
| employees were concerned that "it is a bit of a dark UX pattern
| to not have confirmation on 'destructive' actions," Epic feared
| that adding a confirmation button would add "friction," "result
| in a decent number of people second guessing their purchase," and
| reduce the number of "impulse purchases."
|
| > Epic has never allowed users to cancel or undo charges for
| Battle Passes or Llamas and did not begin allowing users to
| cancel Cosmetics charges until June 2019. Even then, Epic uses
| design tricks, sometimes referred to as "dark patterns," to deter
| consumers from cancelling or requesting refunds for unauthorized
| V-Bucks charges.
|
| > On July 20, 2018, an Epic Community Coordinator asked if there
| were any plans to add a confirmation step for in-game purchases,
| noting: "This is actually a huge complaints on our side and could
| remove most of the 'excuses' about accidental purchase: 'I wanted
| to press Replay, my PS4 was in sleep mode', etc. This is
| something I wanted to push forward but didn't have time to build
| a real case around, has this already been discussed in the past?"
|
| > In addition, Epic deliberately requires consumers to find and
| navigate a difficult and lengthy path to request a refund through
| the Fortnite app. To start, Epic hid the link to submit a refund
| request under the "Settings" tab on the Fortnite app menu, far
| removed from the purchase screen, even though requesting a refund
| is not a game or device setting. The Epic user experience ("UX")
| designer who helped design the refund request path reported that
| he put the link there in an "attempt to obfuscate the existence
| of the feature" and that "not a single player found this option
| in the most recent round of UX testing." When the designer asked
| whether he should make the feature easier to find, he was told by
| a superior, "it is perfect where it is at."
|
| Many more examples in this complaint doc:
| https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1923203EpicGame...
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Somewhat ironic. Remember Epic's attack on Apple's game store?
| At least Apple does not apply that many controversial patterns
| to their customer experience.
| elpool2 wrote:
| When you unlock an item in a battle-pass, you have to hold down
| the button for about a second to unlock it (and there's a
| little progress bar animation as it unlocks). This is great! it
| makes it much harder to accidentally unlock the wrong thing
| with a single button press. The downside to a wrong click is
| pretty negligible though, you're probably going to unlock
| everything in the battle-pass eventually anyway.
|
| But in the "store" part of the app, where you're purchasing
| things with the "v-bucks" in-game currency (which you've paid
| actual money for), the purchase was just a single button press.
| It was very easy to accidentally purchase when instead you
| meant to press the "back" or "preview item" button. Only
| recently did they change this to use the same "hold for 1
| second" pattern already used in the battle-pass.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| And despite Epic having great games, this is why I have not
| installed it or paid for any of their product so far.
|
| Also why steam is still the leader despite having a terrible
| UI: they have been very good to their customers.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Also why steam is still the leader despite having a
| terrible UI: they have been very good to their customers.
|
| Steams core customer is the game developers/publishers, who
| they take a ~30% (last time I checked) cut from the profits
| from.
|
| The people who buy games are simply users of Steam, and Steam
| has to treat them well, otherwise their actual customers
| (developers/publishers) won't get as much profits, and
| indirectly Steam.
| bioemerl wrote:
| Developers don't pay that 30 percent, users do.
|
| You could even say that steam is a customer of the
| developers (I buy your game at x to sell for y), and the
| average person is a customer of steam and the devs.
|
| I don't really see the customers or the developers as the
| core. Both groups tie into each other in a big network
| effect.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| That is a pointless distinction.
|
| 30% of the _price_ is distributed to Valve instead of
| developers.
|
| Whether that results in developers obtaining lower
| profits or users paying higher prices is entirely
| subjective; that depends on what would happen otherwise,
| which is categorically unprovable.
| echelon wrote:
| Developers do. It comes out of their margins.
|
| If game developers and publishers could get the same
| audience without steam and the 30% tax, they would in a
| heartbeat.
|
| They'd probably cut the price a little to expand sales
| and enjoy the wider margin. Margin that could be spent on
| salaries and growth.
|
| Thankfully Valve is investing its proceeds in developing
| competitive products that enrich the industry and not
| just skimming.
| j_maffe wrote:
| They are neither buyers nor sellers, they have a
| marketplace business model.
| https://www.bluecart.com/blog/marketplace-business-
| model#:~:....
| ridgered4 wrote:
| Is Steam UI terrible? It seems a little slower than I'd like,
| particularly initial load but otherwise it seems fine to me.
| And most software I use is so slow now it certainly doesn't
| stand out and has probably moved to the upper grade just by
| not getting worse over the years.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Yes, it is. It has all the problems of a web page plus all
| the problems of a native app. It's the worst of both
| worlds.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Yes, it's absolutely horrible. It's just a browser and it's
| not well done. It takes seconds sometimes for clicks to
| register. Often I get blank screens and have to go back to
| reload the page I want. Everything about this browser-based
| UI is slow and cumbersome and brittle.
| yyyk wrote:
| It's a Web-based UI which doesn't allow font size control
| or zoom, which deserves an achievement or something since
| nearly all of them allow this rather easily (either in UI
| or by editing CSS). Maybe a magnifier glass to help with
| the tiny font size.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What web engine is steam using? Has it always been a Web
| UI? I only started gaming on steam back in 2014, and it
| was a webui already back then so I'm curious!
| [deleted]
| asciii wrote:
| > the FTC said that Epic deployed a variety of design tricks
| known as dark patterns aimed at getting consumers of all ages to
| make unintended in-game purchases.
|
| Isn't it funny how they $h!t on Apple/Google gate keeping
| practices? Is this a part of Project Liberty to bypass stores and
| scam users?
| munk-a wrote:
| To be honest though - there are no good guys here. They're all
| awful.
|
| Google and Apple take insane cuts out of any money moving on
| their platform and while Epic uses predatory tactics to trap
| people into subscriptions Apple and Google do the same.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Apple makes it incredibly easy to manage and cancel
| subscriptions. Would that all companies matched them!
|
| One reason I don't begrudge them their 30% is that I could
| easily lose that much or more trying to get some vendors to
| cancel subscriptions if I didn't have the easy options Apple
| provides. Epic is clearly one of them.
| j_maffe wrote:
| You have the (only) only options Apple provides because
| they maintain a monopoly
| pwinnski wrote:
| What does that have to do with anything I said? Or is it
| just a reflex anytime anyone mentions Apple?
| fra wrote:
| I agree, they just handed Apple a huge moral victory. You fight
| publicly and sue for your own payment process, then you turn
| around and scam your users with dark patterns around payment.
| This would not have been possible with iAP!
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| Funny, despite Apple taking 30%, it is very obvious when you
| are making an iAP, you have to double click the power button
| and stare at the device.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
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