what people getting real refunds are saying...

TaoSpoons

_RiO_ wrote:

In your civil suit example, you are taking a cleaning job which puts you in the role of a business. In the role of a consumer you are typically far more protected (atleast in the EU) and businesses are severly limited in what types of sleazeball terms they can cook into a contract with a consumer and get away with.

Readers should probably bear that in mind as well.

You can't (as Phantron states) just put whatever you want in a contract or EULA and have it stick in a US court either. Specific terms that are unduly harmful to consumers may indeed get thrown out if a case reaches trial. However, a lot of those agreements are either industry standards or drafted by a competent lawyer. Those agreements basically hold up until they don't. Also, the cost of bringing anything to trial is usually daunting for the consumer. Advantage: businesses.

That said, yes, we've gotten pretty far afield from the initial topic and I will go back to lurking and not commenting now.

Vankysher

GothicKratos wrote:

For example, when you rent a movie from Blockbuster, they have a licensed agreement with the content creators to 'lend' you a copy of the content for a period of time. That's how that service works. Cable is very similar - they have a licensed agreement with outside content creators to distribute that content within certain parameters and you pay to receive that content within those parameters. Yet again, movie theaters work very similar, getting permission form the content providers to provide the content to you at a perceived premium.

Paying money for something doesn't entitle to you to unlimited access to that thing. When you pay to see a movie in the theater, that's what you get. When you pay for cable, that's what you get. When you pay for a rental, that's what you get. You pay for Hero Points, that's what you get.

Not necessarily picking on you but the idea of "ownership" and "digital property" has been taking shape for a while and has not entirely caught up in the legal realm.
Since there is a monetary value given to the covers, the question then becomes whether or not a customer truly owns it and to what extent is it no longer the product represented when originally purchased.

If the US Treasury FinCEN ruling is applied, D3 is not selling Hero Points but converting real currency to their virtual currency in order for a user to purchase digital goods (covers). They're sale of ISO, however, is most likely a digital good since there is no direct way to convert ISO into HP and vice-versa.

dkffiv

Another recent EULA case that I just remembered was the Sony Unix/Linux thing on PS3. A few people used it and really liked it (it was also advertised as a feature) but an exploit came out letting people play downloaded games on the console with it. EULA stated that Sony reserved the right to remove features from its system but it didn't hold up in court and they lost a class action lawsuit because it was advertised as a feature and taken away which they constituted as fraud. This instance clearly isn't the same as there was no advertisement of features or anything like that, but it goes to show that a EULA doesn't necessarily hold up just because you got people to agree to it.

Edit: Apparently its still tied up in the courts but the idea remains. In response to this Sony apparently updated the EULA stating "you can't form a class action lawsuit against us" but I believe there was precedent where even that doesn't hold up.

Arondite

Tannen wrote:

"Real refunds"? No, you're committing credit-card fraud. The fact that you feel justified doing it makes it much, much worse, because you'll actively work to convince people that it's okay to do. Momentary anger does not give you the right to defraud others.

You spent your money, you got your hps. That's where the buck stops. Literally. You can't claim that your money was spent on something that changed. You ponied up for hp, D3 gave you hp. You can spend that HP on many items in game. They don't know what you plan on buying with it. If you feel remorse about how you spent those hps, that's still not an excuse to be an ****. Many people have felt buyer's remorse before, and will feel it again in the future. More importantly you cannot use buyer's remorse as an excuse to keep the items that you bought and just reverse the charges on your credit card. That, by definition, is fraud.

The morally bankrupt that get a 'refund' and then continue playing the game deserve to be banned. All of them. No exceptions. If you get a 'refund' via a third party you've pretty much stated that you don't want to work with D3 at all, so don't try to cry foul if they ban you. I wouldn't blink an eye if someone did, eventually, pursue everyone that did it for credit card fraud -- because that's what you're doing, and someone (ironically, it's not D3, because they can probably claim these fraudulent claim-backs on insurance) is actually out of pocket over your reversed charges -- but that will probably end up being whichever company is funding your rage-inspired crimes.

As a side note, I must admit that I find it interesting that most people on the forums will exclaim loudly that people shouldn't cheat on the game, but are more than willing to tell them how to steal money in real life. Why not just post how to get infinite hp on the forums? Doing that'll get you sand-boxed as well, but no-one will claim that you have the moral high ground. As a side note, that infinite-hp-post will also be removed by the forum mods, because leaving it up would implicitly tell new forum-goers that they don't mind if you do it.

In summary: stop exclaiming that you're getting "real refunds". You're not. You're fraudulently obtaining money from someone (an insurance company, somewhere, hates you, I have no doubt) with false claims and should potentially face criminal charges.

Cheers.

You're half right and half wrong.

Everything you said applies to customers who claim the charges are unauthorized and get a chargeback through their credit card company.

Anyone who goes through Apple or Google is getting a refund, which doesn't match pretty much anything you said or complained of.

GothicKratos

Vankysher wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

For example, when you rent a movie from Blockbuster, they have a licensed agreement with the content creators to 'lend' you a copy of the content for a period of time. That's how that service works. Cable is very similar - they have a licensed agreement with outside content creators to distribute that content within certain parameters and you pay to receive that content within those parameters. Yet again, movie theaters work very similar, getting permission form the content providers to provide the content to you at a perceived premium.

Paying money for something doesn't entitle to you to unlimited access to that thing. When you pay to see a movie in the theater, that's what you get. When you pay for cable, that's what you get. When you pay for a rental, that's what you get. You pay for Hero Points, that's what you get.

Not necessarily picking on you but the idea of "ownership" and "digital property" has been taking shape for a while and has not entirely caught up in the legal realm.
Since there is a monetary value given to the covers, the question then becomes whether or not a customer truly owns it and to what extent is it no longer the product represented when originally purchased.

If the US Treasury FinCEN ruling is applied, D3 is not selling Hero Points but converting real currency to their virtual currency in order for a user to purchase digital goods (covers). They're sale of ISO, however, is most likely a digital good since there is no direct way to convert ISO into HP and vice-versa.

Very good example. The only real problem I have applying that information to this situation is that Hero Points aren't exactly like most in-game currencies. In a "normal game" in-game premium currency is typically used to by specifically one thing (usually characters, other times in-game equipment - always a static thing). It's easy to draw the line of 'buying /premium currency/ is equivalent to buying /in-game item/' because that's literally the only option.

In this game, Hero Points do a litany of things. You can buy shields, you can buy roster slots, and you can buy additional character covers in colors you've already earned.

When you buy Hero Points, you're not buying a specific in-game item. You've buying in-game currency. It's like turning in USD for Yen. You can then decide whatever you want to spend your Yen on. It's not like walking into Wal-Mart and buying some shoes and finding out they don't fit and asking for a refund.

We're not talking about a situation where a user bought some Hero Points and they want a refund of their Hero Points, either, because that would be a currency to currency refund. No reason not to give that refund, in my opinion.

At the end of the day, everyone is practically blowing smoke. Google/Apple won't even not give you your refund, not because of moral validity, but because it's just the easiest course of action, and D3/Demuirge would never take legal action (outside of maybe reporting it to you credit, but I doubt even that) because it would never be worth their time or money.

There's two camps. Camp One says that their purchase is indicative to the end reason - in this case, character cover(s). Camp Two says their purchase is for what they get up front - in this case, Hero Points.

We can all agree to disagree, since there is no real legal footing one way or another, because, as mentioned above, there's little gain for this type of suit for any parties involved, however, the idea of "chargeback fraud" has existed for a good two decades in the video game industry (and even longer outside of it).

The bottom line, in my opinion, is you bought some Hero Points, you spend your Herr Points on something, and that something has changed and you're upset. That's cool. However, by going through your credit card company, Google, Apple, or Steam to request a refund you are effective getting your Hero Points/Character Covers/etc and getting your money back. That's what a charger back is, and ladies and gentleman, chargebacks are fraud.

dkffiv

GothicKratos wrote:

Vankysher wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

For example, when you rent a movie from Blockbuster, they have a licensed agreement with the content creators to 'lend' you a copy of the content for a period of time. That's how that service works. Cable is very similar - they have a licensed agreement with outside content creators to distribute that content within certain parameters and you pay to receive that content within those parameters. Yet again, movie theaters work very similar, getting permission form the content providers to provide the content to you at a perceived premium.

Paying money for something doesn't entitle to you to unlimited access to that thing. When you pay to see a movie in the theater, that's what you get. When you pay for cable, that's what you get. When you pay for a rental, that's what you get. You pay for Hero Points, that's what you get.

Not necessarily picking on you but the idea of "ownership" and "digital property" has been taking shape for a while and has not entirely caught up in the legal realm.
Since there is a monetary value given to the covers, the question then becomes whether or not a customer truly owns it and to what extent is it no longer the product represented when originally purchased.

If the US Treasury FinCEN ruling is applied, D3 is not selling Hero Points but converting real currency to their virtual currency in order for a user to purchase digital goods (covers). They're sale of ISO, however, is most likely a digital good since there is no direct way to convert ISO into HP and vice-versa.

Very good example. The only real problem I have applying that information to this situation is that Hero Points aren't exactly like most in-game currencies. In a "normal game" in-game premium currency is typically used to by specifically one thing (usually characters, other times in-game equipment - always a static thing). It's easy to draw the line of 'buying /premium currency/ is equivalent to buying /in-game item/' because that's literally the only option.

In this game, Hero Points do a litany of things. You can buy shields, you can buy roster slots, and you can buy additional character covers in colors you've already earned.

When you buy Hero Points, you're not buying a specific in-game item. You've buying in-game currency. It's like turning in USD for Yen. You can then decide whatever you want to spend your Yen on. It's not like walking into Wal-Mart and buying some shoes and finding out they don't fit and asking for a refund.

We're not talking about a situation where a user bought some Hero Points and they want a refund of their Hero Points, either, because that would be a currency to currency refund. No reason not to give that refund, in my opinion.

At the end of the day, everyone is practically blowing smoke. Google/Apple won't even not give you your refund, not because of moral validity, but because it's just the easiest course of action, and D3/Demuirge would never take legal action (outside of maybe reporting it to you credit, but I doubt even that) because it would never be worth their time or money.

There's two camps. Camp One says that their purchase is indicative to the end reason - in this case, character cover(s). Camp Two says their purchase is for what they get up front - in this case, Hero Points.

We can all agree to disagree, since there is no real legal footing one way or another, because, as mentioned above, there's little gain for this type of suit for any parties involved, however, the idea of "chargeback fraud" has existed for a good two decades in the video game industry (and even longer outside of it).

The bottom line, in my opinion, is you bought some Hero Points, you spend your Herr Points on something, and that something has changed and you're upset. That's cool. However, by going through your credit card company, Google, Apple, or Steam to request a refund you are effective getting your Hero Points/Character Covers/etc and getting your money back. That's what a charger back is, and ladies and gentleman, chargebacks are fraud.

If your account gets banned you no longer have access to your HP/Characters/etc so aren't all parties effectively "even"? Devil's advocate of course, I think the simpler solution would be to offer 100% ISO / HP compensation if you choose to sell your character and then there wouldn't be any need for real money refunds. If the character ever gets buffed into being useful again the player would have to pay up again to regain access so I don't see a problem.

GothicKratos

dkffiv wrote:

If your account gets banned you no longer have access to your HP/Characters/etc so aren't all parties effectively "even"? Devil's advocate of course, I think the simpler solution would be to offer 100% ISO / HP compensation if you choose to sell your character and then there wouldn't be any need for real money refunds. If the character ever gets buffed into being useful again the player would have to pay up again to regain access so I don't see a problem.

This is assuming, of course, they do indeed get banned, yeah, that in a manner of speaking is "even", but you're even because they banned you for fraud.

That being said, despite my reputation of being a "white knight", I don't necessarily agree with their refund model - or rather, how it scales.

Here's what I think, as far as their model is concerned;

I think their offer for people whom bought X-Force (or previously Iron Fist) covers in the last month (I think that was the timeframe?) a full refund of those covers is good. I don't think anyone that has had them longer than that deserves a full refund, because you very likely benefited from them at some point in time. That being said, that weird caveat, that I'm not entirely sure if it's true, that you have to sell off your whole character is...not good. I realize they don't have a mechanic to "delevel" a cover so they have to have you sell it as a way to see you not getting a refund and keeping the covers too - but that's probably something you need to work on and talk about you're working on it. I know a lot of people are also running on the assumption they don't in turn send back remaining covers - and it that's true that's bad - but I have no proof one way or another so I won't comment on that aspect.

I think that their increased sale price is a good interim for those outside whatever timeframe they choose to select as a deadline, because, as I said, I don't think you deserve a full refund after a period of time of reaping benefits of the item. I think that's fair in principal. I do think they increased sale price is ball parked a little low, especially for 4*s, though. There is real merit to both the cases of finical and physical investment to earn those covers (I don't necessarily think it's as great as some of the more vocal forumites believe it is, but I don't agree the devs are on point either), so I feel there is a need to rise above and meet those investments with some courtesy....a full refund would not be my answer though.

If I was going to ballpark it personally, I would say, on average, a player probably buys, say, 2 covers on a characters? I ball park this, simply because I feel like it's somewhere between 1 and 3 for the vast majority of cover purchases (that's the most logical to me). I'd say that the buyback value of a character should be about 75% of the Hero Points needed to invest in two covers in that character, on top of approximately 50% currently invested in the character. I feel this rewards the players that worked hard in events to try and earn covers, as well as players that earned when with their paychecks.

Dankaminari

I would love to see the contracts between D3 and Apple/Google. My guess is that the contract is extremely favorable to Apple/Google and it gives them the right to charge back customer complaints/refund requests liberally. The idea that customers commit fraud by requesting refunds due to a changed game mechanic is ridiculous. From a property perspective, many here have purchased property (xforce covers at $25/piece) that are now worth much less. In fact, many of these purchases were allowed to continue while D3 KNEW that it planned to nerf xforce and devalue his covers. We've seen this pattern repeatedly (Iron Fist, anyone?). Yet it did not announce the change until very recently. How about that for fraud?

Whether individuals are lying to Apple and Google to get refunds is another story.

Unknown

A system to support refunding is actually quite hard, and since there does not seem to be any correlation between a game's success and whether they have any kind of reasonable return policy (yet) it's difficult to expect someone to take the initiative. Sure, if you're Blizzard and you say all ours games are supposed to make a billion dollars so we should start out thinking about the long term that might work, but for a company like D3 that probably isn't even very sure if this game was going to last this long when they first designed it you can't expect to have the manpower to be put into making a system that may turned out to be ultimately irrelevent because the game flopped for other reasons. It's easy from a programming point of view to say you should've designed everything to allow for room to grow but what good is spending the money to do all that when your product never got anywhere?

At this point I think the most likely scenario that results in more user's rights would be if a big game like Clash of Clans had a massive fallout, like say due to a data wipe or whatever, that cost people millions and then they get hit for many millions as a punitive fine in a class action suit and then this scares the rest of the industry into actually having a robust system to handle these things. As is right now most mobile games I'm aware if, if say some super hackers got into their server and wiped everything in a irrecoverable way, most of them will just say, 'sorry guys our game is going out of business now but at least we still have your money.' That's really not how games should be run.

Unknown

Whether requesting a refund from your app store and getting it is morally, or legally, wrong is debatable. Both sides have valid points on the legal side and the moral side, to an extent.

But the truth is, D3 created this problem because they are changing their game with the subtly of a bull in a china shop. Am I victim blaming right now? I dunno. You could make that argument I suppose.

But I have never, in all my time playing online games with in game purchases, seen people demand refunds for characters purchased on such a grand scale.

Because D3 doesn't nerf characters. They delete them.

Is it immature to respond to these nerfs with rage? Of course.
Is it silly to assume that the internet is a mature place? Even more of course.

Other games balance characters very slowly. Changing most things by 1-10% of overall power at a time. Let the change sink in and readjust if needed.

D3 seems to be disinterested with ever revisiting a nerf. Ever.

They just take a good character. Make them horrifically bad. And then wipe their hands of the whole situation and pretend the players are overreacting. (Magneto is kind of the only exception).

Which is bizarre, because I doubt it would take all that much to change Sentry's green cost from 12 to 10. or 8. I'm not pretending to be a code wizard, but it just can't be difficult. But they never bothered to do that. They have to know that Sentry is worthless, but they don't seem to care.

You have a playerbase that was taught, over te course of 4 or 5 months, that if you want to compete, buy this champion. Then they do. And you make that champion worthless.

Some call that false advertising. Others say it's D3's game and they can change it however they see fit. Both those points can be argued. The one thing that can't be argued? There's no way D3 didn't predict that that would happen. Unless, of course, they are so incompetent that they didn't even understand the repercussions of they changes they were making.

That's a sign of inexperience. Sure, they try to counteract all the bad things they've done occasionally...like offering an HP sale after gutting Thor.

I don't even know what my point is in writing this...

I guess the rundown is this:
1. D3 did something that they had to know would cause outrage.
2. People were outraged.
3. D3 is feigning surprise when people feel cheated?

You can't force people to spend money to compete and then get mad when they want their money back.

People have made endless analogies to how it feels. And some are valid in a sense. Others aren't. But the emotions are very real. When people buy something and end up with something else entirely, they're going to feel like it is fraud.

The bottom line is D3 is screwing up their game. It hasn't happened yet. It may not happen for a little while longer. But if you keep messing with your customers, to the point of them circumventing you to get what they feel is justice, you'll eventually run out of customers.

They aren't blizzard, where they have millions of customers and a hand full of players quitting doesn't matter. This game is still relatively small. They could be doing irreparable damage to their reputation that, once they realize how poorly they went about these changes, it may be too late to recover from.

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

snlf25 wrote:

Nobody here is claiming their kid did it or any such tinykitty. So the idea that they are committing fraud is laughable. No attorney would touch it and even if they did it would get laughed out of court.

You're basically complaining because you bought a Transformer toy and after a few months of play it doesn't quite work the same way it used to. It being a "digital good" doesn't exempt it from wear and tear (granted it is not the same kind of wear and tear) or devaluation over time (because all goods fluctuate in price over time).

The "pro-refunders" have made a lot of ridiculous comparisons over the last few weeks.

I saw one guy compare the thor nerf to someone repainting your car...or something like that. It was bad.

But I gotta say, this comparison is the worst I've seen so far.

Wear and tear implies that overuse has made it less effective. That would be like, if after 500 matches, Xforce's green lost damage. That isn't coded into the game at all.

That is not what nerfing is.

Nerfing would be if a representative from Bandai came to your house one day and said "We've determined that this toy is inordinately fun compared to our other toys. In order to balance this discrepancy in 'fun-ness' and encourage you, and other consumers, to buy more toys, rather than just using this super fun toy, we've decided to snap your transformer toy's head off. We hope you enjoy your new headless transformer. If you're interested in buying more toys from us now that your toy is less fun, we'll buy it back for a 10th of what you paid for it."

Unknown

Wow, I read this ****. The biggest takeaway, is that it would appear anyone asking for outlandish requests for a refund are being banned etc. That's their biggest fear obviously. If a guy asks for $2 back. No one is gonna care. If he asks for $1000, of course they are gonna care. Tossing in whether he lied or not, makes zero difference to anyone. So even if the guy who wanted $2 but asks over 100 times, again they are gonna pay attention. Call it what you will, but it's they're choice to give refunds, and it's clearly been explained by the companies, that it's their choice or even right to give refunds. This has essentially nothing to do with fraud because they make the final decision on refunds. If they give back the $1000, that's they're choice. How exactly does that become the customer's fault in anyway? It doesn't, that's their choice. Whether or not he's lying holds no relevance, because if they don't see that someone asking for $1000 back is no big deal, then good for them, that's just awful service and attention, that merits closing doors.

Arondite

Hoopa wrote:

Wow, I read this ****. The biggest takeaway, is that it would appear anyone asking for outlandish requests for a refund are being banned etc. That's their biggest fear obviously. If a guy asks for $2 back. No one is gonna care. If he asks for $1000, of course they are gonna care. Tossing in whether he lied or not, makes zero difference to anyone. So even if the guy who wanted $2 but asks over 100 times, again they are gonna pay attention. Call it what you will, but it's they're choice to give refunds, and it's clearly been explained by the companies, that it's their choice or even right to give refunds. This has essentially nothing to do with fraud because they make the final decision on refunds. If they give back the $1000, that's they're choice. How exactly does that become the customer's fault in anyway? It doesn't, that's their choice. Whether or not he's lying holds no relevance, because if they don't see that someone asking for $1000 back is no big deal, then good for them, that's just awful service and attention, that merits closing doors.

How to meme
How does I meme proper

snlf25

onimus wrote:

Whether requesting a refund from your app store and getting it is morally, or legally, wrong is debatable. Both sides have valid points on the legal side and the moral side, to an extent.

But the truth is, D3 created this problem because they are changing their game with the subtly of a bull in a china shop. Am I victim blaming right now? I dunno. You could make that argument I suppose.

But I have never, in all my time playing online games with in game purchases, seen people demand refunds for characters purchased on such a grand scale.

Because D3 doesn't nerf characters. They delete them.

Is it immature to respond to these nerfs with rage? Of course.
Is it silly to assume that the internet is a mature place? Even more of course.

Other games balance characters very slowly. Changing most things by 1-10% of overall power at a time. Let the change sink in and readjust if needed.

D3 seems to be disinterested with ever revisiting a nerf. Ever.

They just take a good character. Make them horrifically bad. And then wipe their hands of the whole situation and pretend the players are overreacting. (Magneto is kind of the only exception).

Which is bizarre, because I doubt it would take all that much to change Sentry's green cost from 12 to 10. or 8. I'm not pretending to be a code wizard, but it just can't be difficult. But they never bothered to do that. They have to know that Sentry is worthless, but they don't seem to care.

You have a playerbase that was taught, over te course of 4 or 5 months, that if you want to compete, buy this champion. Then they do. And you make that champion worthless.

Some call that false advertising. Others say it's D3's game and they can change it however they see fit. Both those points can be argued. The one thing that can't be argued? There's no way D3 didn't predict that that would happen. Unless, of course, they are so incompetent that they didn't even understand the repercussions of they changes they were making.

That's a sign of inexperience. Sure, they try to counteract all the bad things they've done occasionally...like offering an HP sale after gutting Thor.

I don't even know what my point is in writing this...

I guess the rundown is this:
1. D3 did something that they had to know would cause outrage.
2. People were outraged.
3. D3 is feigning surprise when people feel cheated?

You can't force people to spend money to compete and then get mad when they want their money back.

People have made endless analogies to how it feels. And some are valid in a sense. Others aren't. But the emotions are very real. When people buy something and end up with something else entirely, they're going to feel like it is fraud.

The bottom line is D3 is screwing up their game. It hasn't happened yet. It may not happen for a little while longer. But if you keep messing with your customers, to the point of them circumventing you to get what they feel is justice, you'll eventually run out of customers.

They aren't blizzard, where they have millions of customers and a hand full of players quitting doesn't matter. This game is still relatively small. They could be doing irreparable damage to their reputation that, once they realize how poorly they went about these changes, it may be too late to recover from.

So very perfectly stated. D3 should print this out and post it in every cubicle and put a copy on every desk. It's not too late...but it's almost too late. Very close to being too late to save this game.

itstime1234

GothicKratos wrote:

Vankysher wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

For example, when you rent a movie from Blockbuster, they have a licensed agreement with the content creators to 'lend' you a copy of the content for a period of time. That's how that service works. Cable is very similar - they have a licensed agreement with outside content creators to distribute that content within certain parameters and you pay to receive that content within those parameters. Yet again, movie theaters work very similar, getting permission form the content providers to provide the content to you at a perceived premium.

Paying money for something doesn't entitle to you to unlimited access to that thing. When you pay to see a movie in the theater, that's what you get. When you pay for cable, that's what you get. When you pay for a rental, that's what you get. You pay for Hero Points, that's what you get.

Not necessarily picking on you but the idea of "ownership" and "digital property" has been taking shape for a while and has not entirely caught up in the legal realm.
Since there is a monetary value given to the covers, the question then becomes whether or not a customer truly owns it and to what extent is it no longer the product represented when originally purchased.

If the US Treasury FinCEN ruling is applied, D3 is not selling Hero Points but converting real currency to their virtual currency in order for a user to purchase digital goods (covers). They're sale of ISO, however, is most likely a digital good since there is no direct way to convert ISO into HP and vice-versa.

Very good example. The only real problem I have applying that information to this situation is that Hero Points aren't exactly like most in-game currencies. In a "normal game" in-game premium currency is typically used to by specifically one thing (usually characters, other times in-game equipment - always a static thing). It's easy to draw the line of 'buying /premium currency/ is equivalent to buying /in-game item/' because that's literally the only option.

In this game, Hero Points do a litany of things. You can buy shields, you can buy roster slots, and you can buy additional character covers in colors you've already earned.

When you buy Hero Points, you're not buying a specific in-game item. You've buying in-game currency. It's like turning in USD for Yen. You can then decide whatever you want to spend your Yen on. It's not like walking into Wal-Mart and buying some shoes and finding out they don't fit and asking for a refund.

We're not talking about a situation where a user bought some Hero Points and they want a refund of their Hero Points, either, because that would be a currency to currency refund. No reason not to give that refund, in my opinion.

At the end of the day, everyone is practically blowing smoke. Google/Apple won't even not give you your refund, not because of moral validity, but because it's just the easiest course of action, and D3/Demuirge would never take legal action (outside of maybe reporting it to you credit, but I doubt even that) because it would never be worth their time or money.

There's two camps. Camp One says that their purchase is indicative to the end reason - in this case, character cover(s). Camp Two says their purchase is for what they get up front - in this case, Hero Points.

We can all agree to disagree, since there is no real legal footing one way or another, because, as mentioned above, there's little gain for this type of suit for any parties involved, however, the idea of "chargeback fraud" has existed for a good two decades in the video game industry (and even longer outside of it).

The bottom line, in my opinion, is you bought some Hero Points, you spend your Herr Points on something, and that something has changed and you're upset. That's cool. However, by going through your credit card company, Google, Apple, or Steam to request a refund you are effective getting your Hero Points/Character Covers/etc and getting your money back. That's what a charger back is, and ladies and gentleman, chargebacks are fraud.

It would be fraud if there was another recourse like oh I don't know the ability to get all your hp back for selling the character. If I buy something from eBay and the seller sends me something completely different and I object to paying, the fact that they refuse to take possession of their junk does not result in me committing fraud since I still have possession of that item.

If another avenue existed you could argue fraud, even then I think you are underestimating the very high bar you have to cross to prove fraud but nonetheless that avenue does not exist and until said time does exist individuals who are looking into other methods of resolution does not denote fraud.

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

This is assuming, of course, they do indeed get banned, yeah, that in a manner of speaking is "even", but you're even because they banned you for fraud.

Do you still not understand the concept of fraud?

Implicit in fraud is DECEPTION. People have to lie or misrepresent.

It does NOT matter if you are breaking a contract or EULA.
It does NOT matter if you are morally or ethically in the right (although TBH that's a subjective measure).
It does NOT matter if it harms a third party (since apparently asking for a refund is harming D3, not being entirely normal as a consumer).
It does NOT matter if other ppl think your reason for seeking a refund is silly/unreasonable.
It does NOT matter if D3 then go on to sandbox you...

NONE OF THAT STUFF MATTERS if you are not lying. If you go to Apple and request a refund whilst simply stating the truth as you understand it but it's for a totally stupid reason, that contravenes D3's EULA several times then it IS STILL NOT FRAUD. STOP using that word incorrectly. Every post where someone says ppl are committing fraud is JUST AS BAD as the posts saying that D3 were committing robbery/stealing which you PERSONALLY were complaining about vociferously and down voting.

By this point a mod should be warning ppl for this ****, not doing it themself. Although, to be fair, it's not in green so you're not being a mod.

Heartburn

TxMoose wrote:

if space mountain was down all day (or a better analogy, worked for 2 hrs, then was down all day), does Disney have an obligation to refund the purchased ticket? answer should be obvious, but it is NO. disappointments and learning from them are life, get used to it. I have taken a risk and poured everything into Lthor and Loki to start my transition. if their nerf comes soon I will be pretty upset and cry foul but I won't be demanding a refund of $ because I got what I bought - the hp.

that kinda sounds like vaulting more then nerfing. if they replaced space mountain for a kiddy ride so everyone can ride it then that maybe a closer analogy.

dkffiv

TxMoose wrote:

if space mountain was down all day (or a better analogy, worked for 2 hrs, then was down all day), does Disney have an obligation to refund the purchased ticket? answer should be obvious, but it is NO. disappointments and learning from them are life, get used to it.

If there was a power failure and the entire Magic Kingdom was offline but Epcot was fine you can be damn sure people would be demanding refunds. Customers purchased the ticket expecting a certain experience and were given another one. The ticket you purchased could be used for a variety of parks but if your intention was to visit the most popular one and it was not available, that seems to fall under bait and switch. It seems a little grey but I think the customer could easily argue deception by claiming the park knowingly sold them tickets with the Magic Kingdom being pegged a feature (although not out rightly stating it) and not informing them ahead of time that it would be unavailable and you'd be forced to settle for their other parks.

Regarding most parks, they do usually state at the ticket booth that certain rides are under repair and will be unavailable (i.e. do a good job of warning customers). D3 is guilty of selling tickets and not telling you the ride is down until you get in line which is where all the anger is coming from.

Unknown

Ahh analogy wars...

The whole ticket for a themepark analogy makes no sense. In gaming terms your analogy is more like someone buying a game (the ticket) then a unit was removed/nerfed from the game's online play for being imbalanced (the missing ride) and them asking for a refund.

If you want more of a Disneyworld analogy....

Lets say you win tickets to go there for a week (well the game is F2P after all ) then you find out you have to pay for your food in advance as a package (for some reason). You (for some other reason) have to pick a single meal to have every day. You can have a burger meal, chicken meal, salad etc etc. You look at all the literature and the burger meal is way better..... you get a nice juicy burger but ALSO get a bunch of sides and a larger drink which are not in the other meals. The burger is clearly OP (some ppl might buy the others to taste but they are clearly inferior value wise).

You pay for the burger package (how could you not) and between the rides and the food you are having a great time.... then a rep comes to see you 4 days in. They say they have determined the burger meal deal is too good so the free sides and drink are being removed from the deal to make it more similar to the other deals. They also tell you this will affect your 3 remaining meals which you already paid for because of the deal they offered at the time you paid for it.

You complain but they tell you "it was OBVIOUS that deal was too good and would need to be changed" and that you should stop complaining because "you got the benefit of that obviously OP meal deal to this point". They will however offer you a refund.... of 10% of what you paid.... as in park credit not cash. You can put that towards a different meal deal that you might actually want!!!! It won't cover the cost of the new deal though.... it's only 10% of a deal after all.....

Still not a great analogy but a lot better than the busted ride one.

Unknown

The simple fact that D3 has no refound policy and no in-game purchase historic to roll back just shows that they never had the intention to do any of those. The closest they have being an in-game currency sale which is not even 1/4 of the price (XF 270 sold for 6k HP while 13 covers would cost 32500, or 'just' 25000 if you dont take in account the first three covers needed to buy the rest) is just outrageous to the consumer's rights.