Man this forum really goes all in. My god.
Thanks for the thoughtful response—all fair points to consider. They don’t necessarily cut against filing a complaint about a company’s business practices with the relevant regulatory authority. But the reasonableness framework you set forth is interesting.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I don’t necessarily disagree with anything you said, assuming there is reasonable access to the game.
I have seen people win lawsuits with far dumber claims. Steam fineprints do not mean shit. Literally.
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Thanks to everyone who submitted responses that pushed the discussion forward. Also, it’s important to recognize other contributors for their positivity. Appreciate you.
Like? Where is the barrier to entry they created to stop bots? Where is the action taken against cheaters? You can’t make your TOS, ignore your own TOS to maintain profits, and then use your TOS as a shield when a legitimate complaint is filed.
If they do refund players the things that they missed out on, that’d be fine. But if they don’t solve the problem and this guy threw $20 or $2,000 at the game that he’s not able to put to use, then AGS should write him a check if they can’t do a refund through Steam.
And it really comes down to state laws. If the state says that companies must refund when a product is defective, then they have to refund or they’re breaking the law. Doesn’t matter if the item says it’s nonrefundable on the shop if it’s against the law. But who knows what states say what.
Unreasonable rules within a TOS don’t hold up in court. They can’t put “you must sacrifice your firstborn” and expect it to hold up. They can’t put “we will keep your money and give you nothing” and have it hold up. Even if you agree to it. Doesn’t matter.
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They didn’t change their documentation; they implemented refunds. Because their policies and tos violated Australian consumer laws.
US consumer laws are hot dog water. You’re (op) extremely unlikely to prevail in any way based on US law. Your consumer laws are shit.
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No you don’t. You don’t own them. You own a license to use them.
Not a US law expert. But where I’m from you don’t contract out of laws protecting consumers.
Terms might say one thing, but if it’s against the law it’s against the law.
Like a shop might say no refunds, but if they’ve mislead you or product faulty, you can get refund regardless.
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@Iamawall, if you are unsure of the answers to your questions then I suggest you do a little more research.
If you feel so strongly about an issue then by all means take any steps you feel are justified.
There is even a user in this thread that has offered their professional assistance with this issue and if you happen to have a lazy $25,000 plus an hourly rate then by all means.
Yep, state law rules all in the US (well, almost all). My state says that gift card never expire. Good luck selling one that you don’t want to honor 20 years from now. You’ll be in hot water.
It’s not my problem, it’s the OP’s problem, and simply reporting an illegal practice (depending on your state) is free.
Yea that gift card thing is just weird. All the businesses do that here too, put expiry on it. But soon as you point to relevant legislation they all cave in first 10 seconds.
It’s like they do it just to see how many they can catch unaware.
Haven’t read anything so it could be mentioned; one of the big points is that you could just switch the server and don’t have queue times. And yes, I know of anything that is related to your progress and so on. But trying to sue someone for a long queue time because you can’t access the game as you think you can is just worth a big laugh 
Change server and the problem is solved. Because it is a fact that not all servers (not even close) have queue times. Only those servers/regions where enough RMT buyers are have queue times cause only there are more bots than on other servers/regions.
You could argue why allow so many accounts on a server to the point people can not log in for hours.
Another is that there isn’t a capacity limit for servers, Amazon just doesn’t let anymore people beyond a certain point to log in. In theory it is a denial of service.
I wouldn’t care enough to take legal action, would just go find something better to play, but some people are nutty.
You could but players where complaining that they could not create characters on the server their friends are so they did it after a while. This would then lead to way more people complaining cause they can’t do that then now that there are queue times.
Wrong because Amazon has nothing to do with it. The servers Amazon is using are more than capable of doing it BUT the game/login mechanics and so on are not programmed to keep up to such a demand. This is something Smilegate needs to do, and I think are doing, but can’t be realized in such a short period of time.
And as long as it is only a “could” “should” or “would” it is pure speculation and no facts. Amazon AND Smilegate are not responsible for players/bots that keep trying to log in so that queue times occur.
They are responsible for the bots which is something they are fighting against since Day1 of them existing.
I don’t want to defend someone or something in that regard. But to sue someone because of the reasons written here is just ridiculous.
I don’t think you are correct, we went from having zero queues to 10k+ queues with the same active player numbers and it went back and forth and Amazon said they were limiting how many people could log on at the same time.
It had nothing to do with capacity or Smilegate limitations, they artificially limited the number of users and it hit all servers. There was probably a good reason for it, but it is a denial of service. We had way more accounts and active number of users and they restricted access to the service later on.
But we have had numerous people leave the game, numerous bots banned, yet we still have way more active users than they allow on the servers, and it isn’t a capacity, issue, it is a choice. They could just put a hard lock on new accounts and let people move their characters from a congested server to a less congested one.
None of this is the customer’s fault. In FFXIV if your cluster is congested you can move to a different one that is less congested, it is not like they have your character nailed to a server, they could easily allow people to move servers if they want to spread out the load.
I think consumers have legitimate gripes. But why bother, why keep giving them your time and money if you are that bent. LA is a good game, not worth it if you are raging and want to sue.
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This doesn’t change the fact of login Servers not capable of handling the simultaneous login attempt’s that occur since bots changed from infinity chaos runs to a massive amount of bots to counter the “loss” of materials.
Yes Amazon “can change” the amount of logins possible. But this isn’t disabling or making it irrelevant that the login Servers (due to the structure of the game made by SG which th y explained and stat d) can’t handle to many login’s. This is and will be a problem caused by the way the game was/is made.
And until this is not changed/or let’s say fixed if you like that more, nothing can change.
And as I said, blaming Amazon for something th y can’t change is
1 - just ridiculous
2 - just something that was thought of because misinformation
And 3 - like saying “Hey, I want my money back because to many people are playing the same F2P MMO I want to play” which should be self explanatory 
And the bot war is going on so also nothing you could sue them.
And in addition the simple fact that it is spoken about a law suit. And this is under the circumstances that are present just something to laugh about if you (which should be clear) consider the ToS etc.
They can’t because Lost Ark is not constructed like that
And only cause it works in FF do s not mean it could work everywhere. If the server and game architecture is not allowing it than you can’t “just do it”
It is either Amazon “fault” that the game is not made like that nor that “to many people” try to login. Nothing is even remotely near a law suit or anything in that regard.
The only thing you could argue (but still FAR away from something a legal action would be useful) are the bots and that is something they are fighting against and this is something they have and could prove.