Waaaay back in 2015, a group of ArcheAge players filed a lawsuit against Trion Worlds over the Patron perk mess. Veteran MMO players will recall that Trion’s original pitch for founder packs included a 10% discount for cash shop buyables. That discount never happened – specifically because in 2014 Trion “determined that the time to develop this perk would be significant.” After launch, the studio instead swapped the discount over to past and future credit packs.
That prompted players Aaron Van Fleet, Paul Ovberg and James Longfield to lodge a class action suit against Trion for, among other things, false advertising and violation of consumer laws. The original lawsuit also muddied the waters by wedging in a lockbox gambling issue and has since been tangled up in determinations over the game’s EULA and TOU, which Trion had sought to use to force arbitration out of court. Last year, the suit was turned over to First District Court of Appeals as Trion appealed the lower court’s ruling against arbitration.
And now the case progresses. As MMO Fallout chronicles, this past month, the court found that the abitration clause detailed in the TOU is superseded by the EULA rather than incorporates it, by Trion’s own language, and therefore the case stays in court rather than in arbitration, where Trion would apparently prefer it.
And you guys thought EULAs and TOUs were meaningless! Maybe in another three years, we’ll actually get back to the original issue about false advertising.
