Response from NCsoft Support (About Refunds)

Hey, I sympathize with your point of view; I really do.

But it's NCSoft's intellectual property. That's why they make us agree to that clause about our characters' likenesses, backstories, etc when we log into the game. And NCSoft isn't (necessarily) destroying the information in question (knowledge, as you call it). They're simply taking it offline.

You are both entitled to record and capable of recording your characters' data (via TonyV's excellent tool or by hand if you wish) and then deleting every hint of your characters before the servers shut off, to avoid the prickly IP issue. But to imply that NCSoft has some sort of moral obligation to keep the game open for the sake of knowledge? That's a stretch. Your passion is admirable, but that argument isn't going to get anyone anywhere.

EDIT to add the original comment, to clarify the point to which I'm responding:

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Oh, sure. It was just the start.
A very nice, introductory, "HELLO", if I may say so myself.

Seriously though, we're all just showing that we care about Paragon Studios, this game and this community. I mean, unless things get worked out and reversed super quickly, we'll have no choice but to continue doing what we obviously must do.

I doubt most any of the people involved in trying to make a stand and fight for this game/community are doing it for any other reason than... It's what we feel we must do.

I'm babbling... This is a very silly thread to be having any such discussions...

EDIT:
Oh, just going to add that I think a great focus (and what most of my comments around the internet and to whatever media will listen have been focused on) is the small business that has a history and future of profit and satisfied customers.
That is something that has been going the way of the do-do and is something that a lot of people are concerned about.
Not that I disagree with other aspects of why this game deserves to be preserved.
It just seems to be a rather compelling and relevant aspect. Think about how hard the Paragon Studios staff has worked on this game. Think about how excited people have been for the future content they have in the pipelines. Think about how this business venture was not losing money (and think about how much money is involved in this, in the grand scheme of things, it may not be billions, but it is far from small potatoes).
This is all just a matter of a billion dollar corporation not having interest in a large amount of people (employees and customers), because it isn't a big enough profit for them. That is fine and completely their right to pick and choose their own business endeavors.
We just want the team and the product to have a fair chance at continuing via being sold to new backers or whatever avenues can be explored/achieved.
No reason to burn these books if someone else is willing to build and maintain a new set of shelves for them.

*end of additional babbling*

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

In CE's defense, I find the IP and copyright laws inherently unjust and unsuitable to deal with the virtual communities of the world.

/firstworldproblems

Anyway, I at least agree this isn't the issue to ride that particular ticket on. HOWEVER, I do think we can hang some of our support lines on the idea that this is a community, it is a sort of landmark. We have at least the same kind of vestment in this that a neighborhood has in a park it's losing to make way for a new car lot.

We arent looking for sympathy, I have had an active VIP account since Freedom launched. Due to life events such as buying a home and travel I had not played much over several months therefore my VIP status accrued several thousand points. My subscription fell to premium status a week before the announcement and now I have an account I cant upgrade with thousands of points. I cannot access any incarnate content or all of my characters.


NCsoft sold us a new system that the players invested in with reasonable expectations of access to content we paid for. Within a year of this change they pulled the plug with no warning. If you think that this is an acceptable business practice I don't know what to tell you.

Yes, FWIW, I think the best approach is to emphasize that we care, a lot. If we come off as sympathetic, then we might win some PR points and move NCSoft (or someone else, who can prod NC) to do something for us.

Trying to argue that somehow we're entitled to NC's charity because we care is significantly different, and I think far less sympathetic.

And yeah, the IP issue is a sticky one. I've personally never subscribed to the notion that NC could, say, prevent you from later publishing a comic book featuring a character you used in City of Heroes. Some people on the forums are fond of arguing that position; I don't take EULAs so literally. They're only as binding as the applicable court says they are in any given case.

But there is a very sensible reason for that IP clause in NC's documentation; the clause is there, in part, to address (and from NC's point of view, hopefully to invalidate) arguments like the one Electric made earlier. The player doesn't have a legal stake in the game's operation simply because his intellectual property (or the community's IP as a whole) happens to dwell on NCSoft's servers. NC doesn't have any designs on our characters, per se; they just don't want to have their operations interfered with on the spurious basis that we've invested our intellects into their product. And I can sympathize with that desire on their part, at least in principle.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

It's not, but there's no obligation to make good on that acquired amount of points. It's left to the good will and intentions of the one you gave money to. I suppose I just can't afford to be put in the situation where things are left up to how nice someone wants to be. If NCsoft is nice, they'll hand you your money back and offer you discounted services with any of their other games if you keep buying from them...or NCsoft can be a **** and and point to the agreement you make every time you log in.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

While maybe not morally acceptable...legally it is.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

legally it seems like a grey area to me, especially since NCsoft operates in several countries all with different laws.

This is the ONLY thing in your (admittedly sensible) reply that I take issue with, because it is contrary to everything I wrote in my post here and in my open letter to NCSoft. Electric-Knight's analogy of another shelf to rest on is what I'm getting at: when it comes time to clean house, a book worth reading is a book worth passing on to a willing steward. I think the individual consumer can get away with tossing a few books in the trash over the course of their life, but when a big corporation dumps an abandoned warehouse full of crates--crates full of books worth reading--it takes laziness and unethical irresponsibility to a whole new level (sorry, couldn't help it). A society that doesn't take big businesses to task for this is a society that accepts its own collective culture as disposable. The diversity of media does not change our responsibility to preservation, where preservation is possible. In this case it was, and is, wholly, entirely possible. But NCSoft never reached out for a new steward.

Might seem like a lame opportunity to bring this larger issue up, but then again, this IS one of my largest issues with this mess. Surely, it would be worse if no one ever said anything.

You must have never went to college then? Because there's none I'm aware of that let you get your degree (or even start a class) without getting paid.

You must not have ever went to a major market team sports event or concert. Last I checked, you paid, sometimes months in advance for a ticket.

I could keep going, but your comment is absurd.

Yep. When I see an LTS being offered at the start of a game I do the math and then ask myself if I honestly believe the game will last "x" number of months the LTS is equal to in monthly sub fees. I haven't been disappointed yet.

Certainly not an expert on the subject, but I think perhaps the question isn't so clear-cut. The EULA is displayed every time we log into the game, and I'm sure it's displayed when we first sign up for an account. It may even be displayed every time we buy points for the Paragon Market (honestly not sure about that one offhand).

But whether the display of a lengthy and frankly abstruse EULA qualifies as a conspicuous and easily understood written notification of the refund policy, prior to sale, is another question. That, by the way, is the standard in California for store refund policies. I'm not even sure our situation with NCSoft is comparable or analogous, legally, but you could make a hell of an argument that NC's committed a fraud in the inducement if NC tries to foist a non-superhero game on us in return for subscription fees intended to pay for a superhero game. Likewise, and perhaps even more compelling, NC's taking virtual currency purchased with the express and unambiguous intent to buy items available in, and thematically appropriate to, COH -- and then replacing it with a different virtual currency, for a different set of intrinsically worthless virtual items that have an entirely different theme, context, and perhaps even price scheme?

Let's just say that that's a pretty extreme switcharoo. If I have a gift card from a hardware store, for power tools, and the hardware store suddenly goes out of business, then at least I have an opportunity to use the gift card in the store's waning days (and hey, if I go at the right time I might even benefit from a clearance sale!). The hardware store doesn't hand me a gift card for a women's shoe store instead and tell me to GTFO. The very notion is absurd.

What's worse this case is that NCSoft isn't going out of business. Yeah, they had a rough fiscal quarter, but they're not filing for bankruptcy. They're not pleading poverty with our sub fees or paragon points; they're certainly capable of refunding our money. They're simply forcing us to spend money we agreed to spend on one product on a different one instead, because hey, they like money. And unlike a real store, NCSoft is both low on selection (selling, as far as I know, only video games) and unable to offer any lasting value (tangible items) in return for our buck. What's even worse is that NCSoft is only one game publisher with a fairly limited selection of games, and games' value is almost entirely subjective. They're art, if you will, and NCSoft doesn't have any other art in the style that we agreed to buy (superhero-themed games).

So to torture another analogy, NCSoft sold us a Picasso and gave us a Velasquez. Except that our Velasquez has no monetary value, and by NCSoft's own policy, we're not allowed to sell it or give it away (sell our game accounts). Its value, as far as we're concerned, is purely a matter of preference, and because it's a product we never agreed to buy, our preference for or against that product cannot be presumed. Almost by definition, we're being cheated.

All of this stuff, frankly, is so new that I don't think any of us armchair consumer lawyers should assume that anything NCSoft decides to do with money we spent on CoH's post-closure period is legal simply because NCSoft stated an intent to do it.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Mr. Electric, I'm hungry.

Make me a sammich please?


Anyways -
Husband and I are watching ev1l f00zeball teh devil!
Go Broncos!

I wouldn't call college a service though, but paying for a concert, sporting event or access to some means of entertainment in advance does come with risks of service. Even still, those examples have their exceptions where one *must* pay fully in advance to access at all at some point...

But this is ONLINE entertainment we're talking about. What stipulation are you encountering that makes it more attractive to pay for online access in advance? Afraid there won't be enough room (which makes no sense)? That time will dry up?

Uhm I just want to point out that deleting characters off of your computer doesn't delete them from the game. I've watched people get characters back several months after they "deleted" them. All they had to do was provide the character name and a rough estimate of when it was "deleted" and they got the character restored with everything it had on it.

That's sensible, but the lifetime subscriptions offered in other games are a different animal, because they're an explicit and obvious gamble: you agree to pay a high up-front fee, one that is usually described in large lettering as non-refundable, on the basis that, if the game should survive beyond a certain point (say, 1.5-2 years), you'll have free gameplay forever thereafter (for sufficiently limited values of "forever").

Buying a 12 month subscription to COH only to find that CoH is closing in 3? Well that's no problem if the company closing down your game agrees to refund monies spent on a service they can no longer provide, but otherwise? Sketchy business. You're agreeing to pay for a given period of server access, and they're agreeing to provide that server access for that period. When they can no longer provide, you should no longer have to pay.

As for the EULA caveats, are they as prominent as the giant bold red numbers showing the spectacular potential SAVINGS for long-term subscriptions on the account management page? I doubt it. Like Jack said, there are disclaimers and contracts, and there are agreements made in good faith. The law at least theoretically tends to take a dim view of any agreement (or more appropriately, advertisement scheme) that isn't made in good faith.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

If you made a good-faith effort to delete it, then NCSoft should lose any tenuous right they might have claimed to your intellectual property, even if they can technically scour their servers to pull your character out of the virtual dust bin.

In any case, NCSoft doesn't want your characters, so in practice it's a non-issue.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

It's a noble objection to raise, and I think you may on to something generally; more and more of our collective knowledge and experiences will be stored virtually, and at some point the careless disposition of that knowledge may become a serious problem.

I just don't think this is a situation that fits particularly well with that narrative. Different strokes I guess.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

If you read the EULA you agreed before playing that the characters you create belong to them. They don't lose any right to that ownership just because you chose to remove your ability to play the character in their game.

The only time they give up their IP rights to the property is when

1. They don't use it after however many years required by law. and

2. They don't defend their ownership of said IP when they learn someone is violating their copyright/trademark to the IP.