>In a way, the digital giveaway could even be seen as an effective promotion, luring players back to the games and creating the potential for them to spend more on additional microtransactions down the road.
That. That's the part I need explained to me. Get punished, but use the punishment to hook players even more. How is this allowed?
But, this isn't even a punishment. In game currency isn't real. It doesn't cost the company anything. So, this is 'be found guilty and be forced to go back to your junkies and give them their next hit of crack for free.'
I can imagine the ad banners: "Thousands of players will win new loot, will you be one? Play to find out".
However it is true that it only costs Epic the lost revenue from selling those v-bucks. If a freely-tradable currency was emitted to cover debt, you'd have the penalty of devaluation, but that is not the case here. Of course that makes no difference for the players, that's only about punishment.
It is real in the sense that you can chose where you spend it. While this is like coupons. It may have value but that is very limited and therefore does not qualify as currency.
I promise that when I joined a class action lawsuit over Nissan screwing me over, my goal wasn't to buy more Nissans. I would hazard a guess that many players who felt cheated enough by Epic to join a lawsuit against them likely feel similar.
It's worse, like you said, the in-game currency isn't even real, unlike a hit the dealer has to hand out for free...
You are pretty much assuming they are liable for the allegations in the complaint against them.
Settlements for low value are a sign that plaintiffs view their chances of success (including being awarded substantial damages) as being low.
So one way of looking at this is, Epic did nothing wrong, and they are giving away essentially nothing to make the plaintiff go away.
If plaintiffs thought they had a good case, they wouldn't take monopoly money.
> Additionally, the attorneys who brought the lawsuit (see FAQ 10) will ask the Court to award them attorney’s fees and expenses in an amount not to exceed $11,300,000.00, for the time, expense and effort expended in investigating the facts, litigation, and negotiating the Settlement. The Class Representatives will also ask the Court for a payment of up to $75,000 collectively for their time, effort, and service in this matter.
Not my cup of tea, but I run a mile from any game that requires I shovel cash into it to get ahead
https://www.zdnet.com/article/zappos-data-breach-settlement-...
Never used it, but I assume Dealer Keeps All Incentives applied.
(They had side-saddle gas tanks that increased the chances of a fire in an accident.)
If it was an individual suing Epic, and they agreed to go away in return for some shiny digital magic beans, you wouldn't see anything wrong with that. What's different if a million customers settle for it?
Customers can opt out of the class action, or start their own competing one. What would be a real problem is if other customers opted out, sued Epic individually, didn't settle, and the judge used the "payout" from the previous settlement to decide what a fair compensation would be. That hasn't happened here.
Settlements are decided by a single class representative, and other class members are often not given notice of their right to opt-out or counter-sue.
The conditions/clauses of the agreement must not be illegal.
I bet the lawyers representing the class aren't getting paid in VBucks. There are really three sides - Epic, the consumers, and the lawyers.
The fact that class actions are opt-out instead of opt-in is a big part of the problem.
The settlement is to pay off the lawyers and make the case go away.
I'm not that morally opposed to loot boxes and I don't believe any laws were broken. What kind of punishment are you looking for?
Using in game currency and not real money is absolutely not going to achieve this.
In theory, class action lawsuits are either or both 1) compensate victims 2) "force" company to stop activity society deems "bad"
Victims care about #1, the rest of us want #2 so we don't become victims in the future.
In this case, stop exploiting addiction and other human psychology for profit via loot boxes.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-26-fi-276-st...
With epic game currency, it's just a bunch of bits that could be created without any resource use by the company. They could create 10x more game currency at no more cost to the company.
Basically you can scare the government into thinking the state’s actions will reduce competition (because your company wont exist anymore if you pay). The government uses so much energy trying to create/continue private sector competition that they don’t want to be directly responsible for creating closer to a monopoly of the remaining companies in the sector.
So they’ll accept these consequence free settlements, or even get behind settlements that actually are advertisements.
The court here is granting approval of the settlement.
Online gambling regulators.