Can I ask that you keep us posted here on the forums? I mean it. This is a win-win situation: either your legal challenge will force Funcom to make their monetized content available offline (a win for the players), or we get some free entertainment out of seeing you fail to deliver on what you seem to be promising.
My own cynical prediction is that you’ll either keep blustering on the forums without actually doing anything, or you’ll go to an equivalent of small claims court and get your money back.
If, however, you do manage to follow through with your threat of making them change their tech, I’ll be the first to applaud and cheer
I already did it once for an issue regarding Secret worlds and Legends. But i am not here to entertain you. I am waiting a few days here for an answer. I already know they will not answer or they’ll have some random PR bs. I will not spend more time in here after that.
If you play on PC, you’ll be fine. There are 3 possible scenarios.
One is that the official servers still exist, which means that the official support for the game still exists, and you’ll still have access to your BP/BLB inventory.
Another is that FLS still exists, but the support for Conan Exiles has ended and FLS doesn’t have your BP/BLB inventory anymore.
The third is that not even FLS exists anymore.
These last two boil down to the same thing, but that’s not really a problem. You see, none of the stuff they do to ensure you actually own your digital content is 100% tamper-proof. There are always ways around it.
Obviously, I’m not going to even hint at how you could circumvent their protections, but it’s doable and you can bet your ass that if the support for the game is unceremoniously dropped, some clever person will sit down and implement the solution for that problem
This one personally finds the need to be online more than a little odious.
Especially as this one need not be online to use the older DLCs.
Mind you, that’s because of how Sony accounts work.
Funcom deliberately decided it would be too much hassle to have a Funcom account that your purchases could be tied to, and instead opted for the FLS verification system.
They said as much before the Bazaar, ect launched.
Was that decision informed by their masters, Tencent?
Who knows, not relevant.
It does, however, not only lock one into the FLS, but also locks on onto the platform they acquired their goods on.
Funny way to enforce brand loyalty.
well here is why i think it has. When you purchase an item from the cash shop or acquire an item from the battlepass, you don’t actually acquire the item but a right to use it under conditions. Contrary to dlc items that you actually possess and can use offline. The problem here is that there is no mention prior to the purchase about this specificity and there is actually no resonable reason for the consumer to assume that it is that way. Why ? 1. most other games that have a cash shop make the item available to you offline. 2. As a player who bought a few dlcs me and others have naturally assumed that those items would work just like the dlcs. Therefore, it should be clearly stated when making the purchase is done. When you purchase something you have a pop up that says " are you sure". It would literally take them one minute to edit that pop up with a brief sentence warning us that the items will require an internet connection to validate them any time we want to use them. One can only suspect that, due to Funcom being aware of the problem and not doing anything about it, there may be some shady intentions of misleading the consumer.
I bet you will do nothing of the sort. This involves talking to someone on the phone at the very least or someone in person, something I will wager one is way too shy, anxious, and cowardly to do.
You could stand to make millions and I bet you still wouldn’t have the gall to pick up the phone.
Just to note, if one is extremely upset about a thing, to the point that they would involve the government gang, satisfaction is usually just a few emails away.
But then you’ve gotten the government gang involved… gross… and they may just do something very out of proportion.
As much as this one thinks Funcom lacks temperance when using the nerf bat, ect…
They tend to run a fair bit more restrained than this one’s electorate.
Your mileage may vary with jurisdiction.
While Funcom is a wholely owned subsidiary of Tencent, most of their offices seem to be in EU and/or Nordic League nations. In corporate law, there is a general ambivalence towards illegal business practices until the penalty for doing so outweighs the profit to be had and many corporate lawyers are adept at scaring the government lawyers away, not with threats, but just with the promise that the case will be long and spun to be a waste of public time and money.
Again, mileage will vary with jurisdiction.
This one would much prefer if Funcom make some form of voluntary course correction on the matter, however unlikely, than invoke hegemonal mandate.
Hence the persistent statement on the topic.
And, unlike many topics that are just vent frustration… this one tries (no promise of success) to keep it civil and vaguely in the bounds of reason.
I once looked into these in-game purchases on a legal level. The first thing to say is that each country sets its own rules. I have dealt with those in Germany and the EU. I am far from being an expert or a lawyer or a judge but my findings were as follows. You never buy an item in the shop. You only buy the crom coins. That’s a big difference. The crom coins are linked to your account. You therefore have no right to demand a specific item. They can take it away or change it at any time. It doesn’t matter what it is, no matter how the item is advertised. You paid for it with play money that you received. I really hope the laws for such methods change in the future. I’m not a fan of it but I still invested a few euros in cc. However, not since the beginning of the year, although I would like to treat myself to a few things from the bazaar. Unfortunately the game is buggy and I don’t like the way it’s handled. I also support your request that the items should be available when playing offline. I think every player here in the forum does that. But before you take legal action against it… Did you ever read the terms and conditions when you bought the cc? Another regulation in Germany. Anything I buy as a digital version is only a license to use and never ownership. What would be the case if I bought it on hardware, i.e. a DVD. As a PlayStation player, I have almost everything digitally. I have Conan digitally and on disc. But theoretically, Sony could simply stop their services without giving a reason and I wouldn’t be able to play my games anymore. At least the ones I don’t have on disc. Of course, that doesn’t make a company work. This would drive players away. But it’s possible. If you really want to take legal action and invest the money and time to do so, you should go for general rights and not just for this one game. But I really hope that happens through consumer protection or something similar!
Yes! This here is the key point to understanding the in-game purchases. Crom Coins are, to all intents and purposes, in-game assets. The transactions in the Bazaar are similar to buying glass flasks with silver coins from a Sepermeru merchant.
Did you get the Crom Coins when you paid real dollars/Euros/whatever for them? If yes, then the transaction between you and Funcom was completed. Whatever goes on in the game are governed by the EULA, which gives Funcom the right to do pretty much whatever they want with the in-game content and services.
There are some legal precedents where courts have acually considered in-game assets of an online player the player’s property (I remember there was a case in the Netherlands some years ago where a kid’s real-life acquaintances bullied him into giving his in-game gold and stuff to them, and they were convicted of a theft). But that’s why most gaming companies define in their EULAs that no change of ownership of assets occurs, and the player only pays for a limited licence to use the assets until revoked.
It is worth noting that the EULA does not specify that the user needs to be connected to the Internet to benefit from the assets, but the game’s System requirements do list “Broadband internet connection” as part of the minimum requirements on Steam.
Conan Exiles’ EULA also has a clause limiting the user’s right to bring any disputes to a court, but whether that actually binds you depends on your national legislation.
This is one of the reasons why game studios do the whole in-game currency thing like Crom Coins. That’s one of the things I learned during my 2-year stint in the game dev industry.
I’m not for funcom, I’m against ignorance.
If you think I am arguing for funcom you might aught a step back and reevaluate, cause I’m probably arguing against something else.
