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Square Enix Sued for MMO Deception

VegaShinra

Junior Member
A federal class action suit is in progress against Square Enix. Allegedly deceiving 100,000 customers by not being upfront about fees and penalties, Square Enix will now enter court.

Plaintiff Esther Leong of San Francisco stated that Square Enix lied about monthly fees for Final Fantasy XI. The case claims that Square Enix concealed its montly fees, penalties for late fees, interest, and restrictions, and several other payment fees that weren’t detailed during the signing up phase.

The class action suit is seeking damages of more than $5 million, ranging from unfair business practices to false advertising.

You can read the court filing here.

Source- Examiner

I wonder if I got charged anything after I canceled my 360 account last yr. I was inactive for months before canceling it, so I don't really care now anyways.

The Judges await Square Enix:
ff12-judges.jpg
 

Gattsu25

Banned
I'm pretty sure the monthly fee is on the box, the website, and the playonline service (and for those who haven't played FFXI, there's no fucking way you can miss it on the playonline service) and the other fees are covered in the EULA

OP: I got a charge a year after I canceled my Live account (a few months after the servie had just started) and had to be on the phone with MS support for 3 hours to get them to not charge me again
 

Tabris

Member
Hmmm. I wonder if the problem is if your cc payment doesn't go through, what the interest/late fees are?
 

CTLance

Member
For a second I thought some nut had dragged them to court for the whole FF14 thing at the Sony conference. :lol
 

Red

Member
Gattsu25 said:
I'm pretty sure the monthly fee is on the box, the website, and the playonline service (and for those who haven't played FFXI, there's no fucking way you can miss it on the playonline service) and the other fees are covered in the EULA
.
 
I thought this was going to be about the FFXIV annnouncement.

Edit: beaten. But really, how could anyone not figure it out by mid-trailer given the art style and the caption "Take up your blade once again"?
 

Catalix

And on the sixth day the LORD David Bowie created man and woman in His image. And he saw that it was good. On the seventh day the LORD created videogames so that He might take the bloody day off for once.
CTLance said:
For a second I thought some nut had dragged them to court for the whole FF14 thing at the Sony conference. :lol
.

Perfect title.
 

Coxswain

Member
Well, they should have to answer to a war crimes tribunal for inflicting Final Fantasy XI on the world, but I don't know how you can argue that they hid the monthly fee.


Edit: Although it is pretty bullshitty that if a monthly payment doesn't go through, they actually delete your account and require you to buy a new copy of the game instead of just unsubscribing you.
 

Atrus

Gold Member
With all of the fucking menus you have to go through to sign up, register to POL, purchase content ID's and other stuff, I don't see how exactly you would fail to comprehend that you're being charged for the game.

After a quick check, it's also posted on all of the manuals and box covers.
 

VegaShinra

Junior Member
nyong said:
All I can remember was that the process for canceling a subscription was a royal pain in the ass.
That it was. Took me forever to finally get it over. I think it took longer than the amount of time I played the game.
 

lobdale

3 ft, coiled to the sky
sprocket said:
is this for 360 only? because on ps3 and pc its one click to stop and one to resubscribe.

Is it really? I sort of want to stop my FFXI for a little while since I'll be moving but the way it's all set up it's like they put the fear of god into you if you cancel or whatever about your dude getting deleted and content IDs and all this shit.
 

sprocket

Banned
NSBrandon said:
Is it really? I sort of want to stop my FFXI for a little while since I'll be moving but the way it's all set up it's like they put the fear of god into you if you cancel or whatever about your dude getting deleted and content IDs and all this shit.


I quit playing ofr 3 years and came back and my character was still there.
 

hteng

Banned
its probably some complications with the 360 ver. I'm playing the PC version, what i did was just de-activate the content IDs (characters) in POL (go to the membership page). Just to be safe, i used a credit card that was gonna expire in a month so they can't charge it in secret (if thats really the case)
 

angelfly

Member
I came for the potential FFXIV rage but stayed for FFXI news.

hteng said:
its probably some complications with the 360 ver. I'm playing the PC version, what i did was just de-activate the content IDs (characters) in POL (go to the membership page). Just to be safe, i used a credit card that was gonna expire in a month so they can't charge it in secret (if thats really the case)

It's nothing specific to the 360 version:

  1. licensing of the online game software disquised as a sale
  2. monthly fees to play the game
  3. penalties for late paymment of fees
  4. interest charges for late payment of fees
  5. charges while the online game account is suspended
  6. termination of the right to use online games for late payment of fees
  7. user restrictions and conditions related to the online games
  8. termination of game data for late payment of the fees
 

B!TCH

how are you, B!TCH? How is your day going, B!ITCH?
Wow, SquareEnix is going to lose this case. They should settle out of court and review their disclosure policies for online games.
 
After reading the court filing, here's my guess as to what the person is complaining about:

She bought the game from a store not knowing it had a monthly fee
Installed and played it, not knowing at the end of the 30-day trial it would start charging (what did she think a credit card was needed for?)
She didn't cancel after 30 days, so it kept charging her
Eventually her account was locked out for nonpayment, and she figured she didn't need to pay anymore
After a while, she wanted to play again, so went in PlayOnline to pay..and couldn't get into her account
And then she found out her character was deleted and couldn't ever be brought back
And found out she owed more money than she thought, due to fees, interest, and time she was charged but not playing

Admittedly, some of that is a rough guess, but those are the kind of things being sued over
 

dfyb

Banned
CTLance said:
For a second I thought some nut had dragged them to court for the whole FF14 thing at the Sony conference. :lol
this is what i was wondering when i clicked the thread :lol
 
CTLance said:
For a second I thought some nut had dragged them to court for the whole FF14 thing at the Sony conference. :lol
Same :lol :lol. It's kind of funny, people sue for so many absurd things and it makes a FFXIV lawsuit not seem as far-fetched as it should be.
 
Since when does any MMO have interest and late fees? I've played a bunch of MMO's (including FFXI) and I've never seen such a thing. My credit card expired while I played FFXI and they simply just disabled my account until I paid for a new month, and my character was there.

Can anyone confirm late fees and interest?
 

Spire

Subconscious Brolonging
Hmm, this actually sounds like something I encountered with them. I quit FFXI back in 2004 and when I tried to start it back up recently I had nearly $30 in fees of some sort on my account I had to pay before I could reactivate my ID. It's not possible to play for a month you didn't pay for (since you pay at the beginning of each billing period) so I really have no idea what those fees were for. I'm a sucker and I had the money so I just paid it but I've never seen anything like that for any other MMO, and I've played quite a few.
 

USD

Member
CTLance said:
For a second I thought some nut had dragged them to court for the whole FF14 thing at the Sony conference. :lol
:lol :lol :lol

I wish this is what the thread was about.
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I hope she realizes she'll have to pay her lawyer when she loses the case.
 

neoism

Member
Well, that right there doesn't really get me excited for FF14!
They better have a non shitty way for paying!
Ex:
No fucking PlayOnline bullshit, I think I heard they're dropping this, great move SE!
Second, There's no need for cancellation at all, just do it like this!
Goes to Sqaure's site, chose system put in CC number and other info,chose between these options

1. 1 month sub $14.99
2. 3 month sub $45.99
3. 6 month sub $89.99 with some kind of item pack with a few hard to find healing items or something. Mark sure they're non salable or tradable.



If it runs out, just put your info in again and start playing, I'm not sure if this is the way FF11 is, I've never played it, but I'm definitely getting 14 this time, on PS3 so I hope this is it, hell you could do this from the PS3 to!

Not sure what to think about these fees, pretty fucking shitty on SE's part!
 

xbhaskarx

Member
Dice said:
I hope she realizes she'll have to pay her lawyer when she loses the case.

How much do you know about class action suits?

CTLance said:
For a second I thought some nut had dragged them to court for the whole FF14 thing at the Sony conference. :lol

The plaintiffs could enter the GAF Sony E3 Conference hype graph as evidence.
 

linsivvi

Member
angelfly said:
  1. licensing of the online game software disquised as a sale
  2. monthly fees to play the game
  3. penalties for late paymment of fees
  4. interest charges for late payment of fees
  5. charges while the online game account is suspended
  6. termination of the right to use online games for late payment of fees
  7. user restrictions and conditions related to the online games
  8. termination of game data for late payment of the fees

If this is indeed the case then that's total bullshit.

Let's see if I get this right, if you forget to cancel your account and your credit card expires, you'll be:

1. Charged a penality fee
2. Charged an interest rate
3. Continue to be charged even when your account is suspended
4 Eventually lose your character
5. Need to buy a new copy of the game if you want to ever play it again
 
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