EA sued over Battlefield 4

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**Ouze**

source

Lawsuit Accuses EA Of Lying About Battlefield 4

Battlefield 4's PC version has had some problems since launch. For some, this is an annoyance and an inconvenience. For others, it's grounds for a lawsuit.

We've already seen one firm consider taking the giant publisher to court, but there's now a second, filed in a U.S. District Court and which is the first step towards a class-action lawsuit.

As reported by Gamasutra, securities law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP have filed on behalf of a Mr. Ryan Kelly "and anyone else who purchased EA stock between July 24 and December 4 of this year."

The suit will claim the same as the first: that EA essentially lied during Battlefield 4's development, repeatedly boasting of the "quality" of a game that they knew would be marred by technical woes after launch in order to boost sales.

I see two things wrong with this. The first is that I think they're using different definitions of the word "quality". EA seem to be referring to the quality of the content, while the suit is referring to quality in terms of functionality.

Example: "Hey, this story is great!", vs, "Hey, this book's pages are falling out!".

The second is that it also seems bananas. It sucks when a game doesn't work, but taking a company to court over it - when that company has had to deal with the complexity of PC compatibility and has worked continually to fix those issues since launch - seems a tad extreme, at least so soon after release, and sets a very dangerous precedent.

Please note I'm pasting this as informational value and I know we can have a good discussion about it, but I don't endorse the tone the article struck, especially at the end.

**DA's Forever**

Seems pretty early for that. I mean, I'd assume they aren't just sitting on their hands. I know the Xbox version has had some good Fix updates. Still problems mind you but I'm not going to try and sue them over it. However if they are just saying Fug it to the computer release that'd be a different story.

**Ouze**

DA's Forever wrote:
Seems pretty early for that. I mean, I'd assume they aren't just sitting on their hands. I know the Xbox version has had some good Fix updates.

See, this is where I disagree. I don't think after you pay for a product which doesn't work as advertised, there is some grace period where they have time to bring the product they sold you up to the claims that made you purchase it. I don't think if a grocery store sells you a gallon of milk and you get home and realize it's only half full, that an acceptable answer is "Well, we're having some problems with the milk supplier but we'll try to get you the rest in a few months".

There is a time to ensure a product works well. That time is before it is released and sold to the public. Otherwise you better advertise it as paid entry into a beta test. I don't think there is some magical exemption to truth in advertising law that software has, which t allows them to ship broken, unfinished product that doesn't apply to automakers or rug vendors or any other medium; especially when the extent of the issues means they knew or should have known the product was not ready for release.

**DA's Forever**

That IS a very good point. I know for sure that a lot of the problems the xbox had in beta went straight through to the release. They fixed a lot but there were some big problems. The freezing especially was very annoying. They do have a fairly decent claim when I look at it in that light. There are some things they HAD to know were happening (the freezing) that shouldn't be and they pushed on through

**Soladrin**

Good, publishers need to stop pushing unfinished games out of the door.

**djones520**

PS4 version was horrible on release as well. You could not play single player, and Multi-player could only play Deathmatch, nothing else. There has been significant improvements, but I still get blue screened out way to frequently for my tastes, and the "early access" to the China Rising expanion lasted about 2 days before I could no longer even find any of the servers.

I can understand issues like GTA V where you have a company that never did something quite to that scale before, hiccuping. But EA has no excuse for this. This is nothing new for them.

**Melissia**

Soladrin wrote:
Good, publishers need to stop pushing unfinished games out of the door.

Yeah, I really have no pity for the company at this point. Though I might have some pity for the devs, the company itself shouldn't have pushed the release date to be so soon.

**Corpsesarefun**

I think it's unlikely that anything good will come of this. Even if EA somehow lose the case, it's far more likely that they're just punish a few low rank developers and call it a day.

**Frankenberry**

As much as I'd like to root for the little man here, I can't help but think that this doesn't matter. We're talking about EA here, they've got more money than God and have had no problem forcing dev's to release unfinished titles for YEARS now.

Even if the suit does end up ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, EA will just double the price of the next DLC packs and make all that money back. What ends up being the problem is that there is nothing set in stone about what a game shouldn't have on launch day; bugs, unfinished content, formerly promised content that's released via day one dlcs...etc. Until that bar is set (in something other than the consumer's expectations) companies like EA will keep doing stuff like this.

**Kanluwen**

The funny thing is there was a 6 week stretch after the initial launch where the game was working pretty well, barring an issue with one specific map(Operation: Dawnbreaker).

It was not until after the patch putting the assets for the DLC pack China Rising into the game when issues started cropping up again--and those are supposed to have been pretty much fixed with a patch recently.

**Dreadclaw69**

Ouze wrote:
See, this is where I disagree. I don't think after you pay for a product which doesn't work as advertised, there is some grace period where they have time to bring the product they sold you up to the claims that made you purchase it. I don't think if a grocery store sells you a gallon of milk and you get home and realize it's only half full, that an acceptable answer is "Well, we're having some problems with the milk supplier but we'll try to get you the rest in a few months".

There is a time to ensure a product works well. That time is before it is released and sold to the public. Otherwise you better advertise it as paid entry into a beta test. I don't think there is some magical exemption to truth in advertising law that software has, which t allows them to ship broken, unfinished product that doesn't apply to automakers or rug vendors or any other medium; especially when the extent of the issues means they knew or should have known the product was not ready for release.

I absolutely agree. The product/service must be for for purpose from the time of purchase. If I buy a game that states it has single player, multiplayer, and certain features then I expect that all those will be available out of the box immediately. If not then it is beholden on the seller to inform the purchaser of that fact, or push back the release date.

This isn't the first EA title that has had problems from launch so this is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of the 'sell now, patch later' attitude that is developing in the gaming industry

**KingKodo**

What problems did the game supposedly have? I did not find anything aside from some minor hiccups here and there. This is not the first game that has had issues, many games have had far more severe bugs than what I have seen in BF4 and they never got sued over them. I think this is just someone trying to get money out of a huge company.

Also - While companies go through rigorous game testing months before releasing a title, none of that testing will prepare the game for actual release. There will always be factors that cannot be accounted for in testing, its just a fact of a game. I have never had a title that did not have glitches and its not like EA is doing nothing to fix whatever glitches there may be. I download at least one large patch every week so I am not exactly sure what this lawsuit is supposed to change. Are they supposed to...continue working on fixing the game? Continue releasing patches and updates on the game? What more can they do?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Ouze wrote:
See, this is where I disagree. I don't think after you pay for a product which doesn't work as advertised, there is some grace period where they have time to bring the product they sold you up to the claims that made you purchase it. I don't think if a grocery store sells you a gallon of milk and you get home and realize it's only half full, that an acceptable answer is "Well, we're having some problems with the milk supplier but we'll try to get you the rest in a few months".

There is a time to ensure a product works well. That time is before it is released and sold to the public. Otherwise you better advertise it as paid entry into a beta test. I don't think there is some magical exemption to truth in advertising law that software has, which t allows them to ship broken, unfinished product that doesn't apply to automakers or rug vendors or any other medium; especially when the extent of the issues means they knew or should have known the product was not ready for release.

I absolutely agree. The product/service must be for for purpose from the time of purchase. If I buy a game that states it has single player, multiplayer, and certain features then I expect that all those will be available out of the box immediately. If not then it is beholden on the seller to inform the purchaser of that fact, or push back the release date.

This isn't the first EA title that has had problems from launch so this is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of the 'sell now, patch later' attitude that is developing in the gaming industry

This may be a case of that attitude, but games always have issues when released to retail, that will never change. Many hundreds if not thousands of games have had worse issues than BF4 and their developers never got sued. If this suit passes, then we are going to see a massive issue with game development becoming even more stifled than it is now. We will see developers getting sued every time they make a game.

**LordofHats**

Corpsesarefun wrote:I think it's unlikely that anything good will come of this. Even if EA somehow lose the case, it's far more likely that they're just punish a few low rank developers and call it a day.

Agreed. Nothing gonna happen. Aliens Colonial Marines was the best chance to curb this trend and that got squandered rather quickly.

Soladrin wrote:Good, publishers need to stop pushing unfinished games out of the door.

Agreed as well. EA rushed the game out to beat CoD to the box office, baffling because Battlefield and CoD really shouldn't be marketed against each other as they're different breeds of shooters, but EA seems content to do just that. That EA does this three or four times a year with every major release should be quite telling.

KingKodo wrote:What problems did the game supposedly have? I did not find anything aside from some minor hiccups here and there. This is not the first game that has had issues, many games have had far more severe bugs than what I have seen in BF4 and they never got sued over them. I think this is just someone trying to get money out of a huge company.

This may be a case of that attitude, but games always have issues when released to retail, that will never change. Many hundreds if not thousands of games have had worse issues than BF4 and their developers never got sued. If this suit passes, then we are going to see a massive issue with game development becoming even more stifled than it is now. We will see developers getting sued every time they make a game.

Part of it is probably lingering bias from ME3 and possible Aliens Colonial Marines. Publishers pull these shenangians all the time, especially EA (who as I said before does this three or four times a year). The ME3 and BF4 cases to me aren't that grand. Nothing on par with A:CM, but a vocal minority of consumers are rightfully getting to be fed up with the practice and is growing louder and more numerous each passing year for several years now. I'd argue it really started with CoD:MW2, with noteable show stars being AC2, Splinter Cell Conviction, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 2 & 3, and Diablo 3. All games released in states people didn't expect and that drew considerable ire from fans.

EDIT: What's interesting though about this suit is that its coming from stock holders, not players per se (though lets be honest there's probably overlap there).

**wowsmash**

Its EA, its always freakin EA. Its about time these publishers learn to finish a product before release not after. The ability to download and patch products after sell has made most publishers lasy in the extreme. I'm tired of paying full price to beta test your crap. Fix it.

**KingKodo**

wowsmash wrote:
Its EA, its always freakin EA. Its about time these publishers learn to finish a product before release not after. The ability to download and patch products after sell has made most publishers lasy in the extreme. I'm tired of paying full price to beta test your crap. Fix it.

Its not EA, every game has problems on release. Look at a game like APB, that game was so bad that the developer tanked but they never got sucked into a pointless lawsuit by crybabies who want everything to be perfect for them. And what wasnt finished? Its not like they never beta tested the game... Nothing is broken with the game as of right now.

**Ouze**

KingKodo wrote:
Nothing is broken with the game as of right now.

Sure, except half the stuff on this list.

Your first post in this thread, you expressed amazement that anyone had ever seen a BF4 bug and the whole idea of the game being wildly unstable was a novel idea to you. You had a great experience, terrific. But pretending you're wholly aware that this was not the experience many other people had is intentional obtuseness to the level of trolling.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/dice-acknowledges-that-battlefield-4-pc-crashes-affecting-a-large-number-of-players/1100-6415937/

You want to say that it's going to cast a chilling effect over future game development, good argument. You want to say that you think if it was a smaller publisher they likely wouldn't have gotten sued, fair point. You want to say you didn't think the game was so unstable as to merit a lawsuit, have at it. But this doe-eyed innocent shrugging is incredibly weak sauce.

EA Patch Notes wrote:Every time that a player exited a vehicle, there was a small chance that the server would crash. This has been fixed.

Yeah, you tell me they couldn't have known about that during the extended beta.

**Soladrin**

KingKodo wrote:
wowsmash wrote:
Its EA, its always freakin EA. Its about time these publishers learn to finish a product before release not after. The ability to download and patch products after sell has made most publishers lasy in the extreme. I'm tired of paying full price to beta test your crap. Fix it.

Its not EA, every game has problems on release. Look at a game like APB, that game was so bad that the developer tanked but they never got sucked into a pointless lawsuit by crybabies who want everything to be perfect for them. And what wasnt finished? Its not like they never beta tested the game... Nothing is broken with the game as of right now.

Every game has problems on release....

First off, no they don't and certainly not to this degree.

Secondly, you're just excusing it with a "just how it is" and are apparently content with that?

And beta tested? Don't make me laugh, Triple A beta tests are nothing more then marketing, often times you even have to pay for it or buy something else to get into the beta, they essentialy managed to make us pay for demo's. Well done.

**Morathi's Darkest Sin**

Aye there is a reason WOW has three pages of EULA you have to sign after each major update.

I get the frustration, but sadly I think no good can come from this, they'll all hide behind quasi legal mumbo jumbo they'll want us all to agree to just to play.

**Dreadclaw69**

KingKodo wrote:
This may be a case of that attitude, but games always have issues when released to retail, that will never change. Many hundreds if not thousands of games have had worse issues than BF4 and their developers never got sued. If this suit passes, then we are going to see a massive issue with game development becoming even more stifled than it is now. We will see developers getting sued every time they make a game.

We aren't talking about the developers being sued for making a game. We're talking about developers being held accountable for content that is missing from the games that was advertised as being part of it, advertised features working, etc.

Maybe it'll prompt developers to actually beta test their games and do some quality instead of relying on their customers to test them, and then patching it when they can get around to it.

**Palindrome**

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:
Aye there is a reason WOW has three pages of EULA you have to sign after each major update.

I get the frustration, but sadly I think no good can come from this, they'll all hide behind quasi legal mumbo jumbo they'll want us all to agree to just to play.

EULAs aren't worth the paper that they aren't even printed on.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frankenberry wrote:
As much as I'd like to root for the little man here

There is no 'little man' here. This action is being brought by a law film representing investors, not exactly the gaming public.

**Ouze**

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:
they'll all hide behind quasi legal mumbo jumbo they'll want us all to agree to just to play.

Are there any good cases of regarding the enforceability of a EULA? Honest question, I've no idea.

**Morathi's Darkest Sin**

Not sure, it'd be a great thing to test mind.

**LordofHats**

And beta tested? Don't make me laugh, Triple A beta tests are nothing more then marketing, often times you even have to pay for it or buy something else to get into the beta, they essentialy managed to make us pay for demo's. Well done.

I'll also point out that EA has betas that often play better than the released product (Medal of Honor not included).

**Dreadclaw69**

Ouze wrote:
Are there any good cases of regarding the enforceability of a EULA? Honest question, I've no idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#Enforceability_of_EULAs_in_the_United_States

The enforceability of an EULA depends on several factors, one of them being the court in which the case is heard. Some courts that have addressed the validity of the shrinkwrap license agreements have found some EULAs to be invalid, characterizing them as contracts of adhesion, unconscionable, and/or unacceptable pursuant to the U.C.C.—see, for instance, Step-Saver Data Systems, Inc. v. Wyse Technology,[4] Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd..[5] Other courts have determined that the shrinkwrap license agreement is valid and enforceable: see ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg,[6] Microsoft v. Harmony Computers,[7] Novell v. Network Trade Center,[8] and Ariz. Cartridge Remanufacturers Ass'n v. Lexmark Int'l, Inc.[9] may have some bearing as well. No court has ruled on the validity of EULAs generally; decisions are limited to particular provisions and terms.

The 7th Circuit and 8th Circuit subscribe to the "licensed and not sold" argument, while most other circuits do not[citation needed]. In addition, the contracts' enforceability depends on whether the state has passed the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) or Anti-UCITA (UCITA Bomb Shelter) laws. In Anti-UCITA states, the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) has been amended to either specifically define software as a good (thus making it fall under the UCC), or to disallow contracts which specify that the terms of contract are subject to the laws of a state that has passed UCITA.

Recently, publishers have begun to encrypt their software packages to make it impossible for a user to install the software without either agreeing to the license agreement or violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and foreign counterparts.

The DMCA specifically provides for reverse engineering of software for interoperability purposes, so there was some controversy as to whether software license agreement clauses which restrict this are enforceable. The 8th Circuit case of Davidson & Associates v. Jung[10] determined that such clauses are enforceable, following the Federal Circuit decision of Baystate v. Bowers.[11]

**Seaward**

Stuff like this has been tried before; have any of these suits ever actually won?

**carlos13th**

Frankenberry wrote:
As much as I'd like to root for the little man here, I can't help but think that this doesn't matter. We're talking about EA here, they've got more money than God and have had no problem forcing dev's to release unfinished titles for YEARS now.
.

There is no little man in this case. Its EA against stock holders not EA against people who bought the game.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ouze wrote:
Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:
they'll all hide behind quasi legal mumbo jumbo they'll want us all to agree to just to play.

Are there any good cases of regarding the enforceability of a EULA? Honest question, I've no idea.

Very much depends on where you are I believe. I dont know of any cases but I am pretty certain that most of the stuff you find in many EULA's cant be legally enforced in europe.

On an interesting note I think someone looked into all the EULA's your average person has to read and sign in modern day life and the amount of time it would take to read them all was way beyond the amount of time you would actually have. Think how much software is on all the devices in your home and how long some of the agreements are.

**LordofHats**

EULA's are dubious in the US as well. When they have gone to court, most courts have found them legally unenforceable under US laws but some courts have enforced them.

Stuff like this has been tried before; have any of these suits ever actually won?

On the consumer end, no. I don't know if a game publisher has ever been sued by a stock holder before. I doubt much will come of it.

**wowsmash**

I dislike the idea of elua. You've already spent the money and in order to use it you have to agree. Then you get companies like Microsoft tac in the " o buy the way you can't sue us in a group if we screw you over" claus's just for the fun of it.

**carlos13th**

Luckily that clause cannot be upheld in the EU.

Its ridiculous to promise to have no problem with the product before testing the product.

**Soladrin**

Yeah, theres a reason I don't bother reading EULA's. They are completely inert in Europe.