Has Cryptic Broken The Law?
Posted by Stropp on August 26, 2009Just read over at Biobreak that Cryptic has suddenly announced that the special deal they were offering, the lifetime sub and six months for $60, has been yanked and that everyone is up in arms. Cryptic gave the reason that the specials were a limited commodity. This was news to pretty much everyone interested in buying into those specials.
It occurs to me that the law in some countries — here in Australia at least, but I thought the US had the same sort of law — states that if a company puts an offer up for a certain time without any other limitations — Cryptic never stated a limitation in the number of copies available — then that company has to honor that. You see this with brick and mortal stores all the time. They advertise specials in a catalog, then don’t honor those specials, and end up either being forced to by the authorities, fined, or both.
I’m not sure if that’s a false advertising law or something else like contract law that applies here, but perhaps Cryptic should be reminded that in business you just can’t go around promising to do something and then not do it.
Update: (Via Massively) It appears that Cryptic did say that the special offer was an “until supplies last” offer in an announcement post on their official forums. So they probably haven’t broken any fair trading laws. Still, it probably would have been a good idea to make the limited supplies a crystal clear and repeated part of their message simply to have avoided the misunderstanding that has occurred.
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I once tried to buy a TV from Amazon that was advertised for something like $20. I had placed my order and everything, but I got an email a little later that said they weren’t going to honor it because buried deep in their terms & conditions, it stated that they reserved the right to cancel orders for their own reasons (massive paraphrasing here).
I don’t know if Cryptic has the same language, or something similar. I would suspect that since MMOs could blink out of existance at any time, they might have something that DOES state that any of the goods or services they offer could be terminated at their sole descretion.
While I realize that people ARE bummed about this, I have to say that the offer WAS out there for quite some time, and it always WAS said to be a limited time offer. The fact that they never said WHEN the offer would be closed down notwithstanding, it was a tactic Cryptic used to scare people into jumping. Unfortunately for those who didn’t pick up a sub, Cryptic made good on their promise, and pulled the deal.
Nevermind that. They said Sept 1st and pulled it early…I guess shame on them.
But I stand by the idea that those who were on the fence shouldn’t have waited until the last minute.
@Scopique – The thing to realise is that just because a company says something in its terms and conditions, doesn’t actually mean that the T&Cs are legally binding. Some consumer laws cannot be overridden by some bit of legalese by a seller. If you’d put it to the test, Amazon may have had to honor that advert. It depends on the laws in your state and country.
Cryptic on the other hand had no such terms and conditions in view when (as far as I’m aware) they made the offer. Perhaps there was a link on their website, but does that count in a press release like that? Maybe someone with more legal experience can weigh in?
On the fence has so many conotations. The question could be asked, why were they on the fence? Was it because they were to-ing and fro-ing on the offer, or perhaps they just wanted some more information from the open beta bloggers. There were some negative comments about the game, and for some the lifetime sub or $60 dollar offer is a lot of money to put down for something with limited and conflicting reports.
Besides, the offer was canned 5 days before the deadline. Hardly last minute.
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