Sony Revokes Fallout 4 Season Passes Obtained Through EU Pricing Error

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Sony Revokes Fallout 4 Season Passes Obtained Through EU Pricing Error

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1301/1301050.jpgIf you grabbed the Fallout 4 Season Pass when it was free on the EU PlayStation Store, you should check your game library, as it's been removed.

Last Friday, the Fallout 4 Season Pass appeared on the EU PlayStation Store with everyone's favorite price tag: Free. After a brief period in which gamers presumably snapped up the DLC in droves, Sony corrected the error. However, there was no word on whether they would honor the deal for those that had grabbed it before it was corrected.

Last night, we found out the answer.

In a statement to Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-18-fallout-4-season-pass-currently-free-on-uk-playstation-store], a SCEE representative said of the error,

"The Fallout 4 Season Pass was briefly made available erroneously free of charge on PlayStation Store in the SCEE region on Friday 18th March. This was an error and has now been removed.

For consumers who may have tried to purchase the Fallout 4 Season Pass during this time, regretfully, these orders will not be fulfilled."

It's not a huge surprise that Sony revoked those orders. While these sorts of mistakes are sometimes honored, if you were hoping that you'd get today's Automatron DLC gratis, you're out of luck. Still, there is a silver lining. If you already downloaded the included Fallout 4 theme, you get to keep that.



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[Deathfish15]

Let the entitlement whining parade commence!

"But it was their error, they should honor it!"

"They can't take away something that I'd purchased. Free or not, I purchased it!"

"The DLC is only worth 'free' anyways and shouldn't be charged for!"

"Boo! They've lost my business and I'll never buy a game from them again."

 

[Parasondox]

Let the entitlement whining parade commence!

"But it was their error, they should honor it!"

"They can't take away something that I'd purchased. Free or not, I purchased it!"

"The DLC is only worth 'free' anyways and shouldn't be charged for!"

"Boo! They've lost my business and I'll never buy a game from them again."

Hey hey hey gamers want free things for no reason because "OMG! Games are so expensive" but spend thousands on a PC...

Okay okay minus the whatever my outrage was, it's fair. They made an error, fixed it, it's been taken away. Done deal.

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

If it had cost any amount of money, I could see how people could have a valid basis for complaining. But seeing as it was free, I dont see much cause for an uproar. The best argument I could see is someone claiming they only purchased the game for the free DLC. It could be argued they were influenced to buy the game under false pretenses.

But even though I think people might be unreasonable in complaining about this, I must admit that they would have a decent case if they turned this into a legal matter.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Fair, and correct. It wasn't intended to be free nor should anyone have expected it to be so. I somehow ended up with a free copy of Advanced Warfare and AC: Unity on my XB1 account, which I got to play for a few days before XBL fixed it. I didn't complain about it, there was no reason to.

 

[thewatergamer]

Hmmmm...I don't know how to feel about this, first of all anyone using the phrase "entitled gamers" or claiming its "Justice, because screw whining crybaby consumers" can fuck right off, entitled is a worthless word when it comes to companies, consumers are entitled to a great deal if you ask me especially when it comes to the game industry, now as for whether or not gamers have a right to be upset about the DLC being revoked...well I don't know I do think that it would have been better to just let the consumers keep it, I mean really how much money would it possibly cost the company? So a few customers got some DLC for a game for free.. the game industry is in desperate need of some proper consumer goodwill and getting some free DLC would certainly help...if Fallout 4 was free I would understand revoking it more, but the players already owned a legit copy of Fallout 4 I don't see why some DLC should be revoked, I think a better solution would have been revoke the season pass but let them keep whatever DLC was already downloaded. But no heaven forbid that a game actually give something to its consumers for once, nonono you must only get the exact value out of your games the company deems appropriate

 

[Erttheking]

Let the entitlement whining parade commence!

"But it was their error, they should honor it!"

"They can't take away something that I'd purchased. Free or not, I purchased it!"

"The DLC is only worth 'free' anyways and shouldn't be charged for!"

"Boo! They've lost my business and I'll never buy a game from them again."

Yeah yeah, throw out the words "Entitled" and "whiny" as much as you want, it doesn't change the fact that Sony looks like assholes as a result of this.

 

[DemomanHusband]

Let the entitlement whining parade commence!

"But it was their error, they should honor it!"

"They can't take away something that I'd purchased. Free or not, I purchased it!"

"The DLC is only worth 'free' anyways and shouldn't be charged for!"

"Boo! They've lost my business and I'll never buy a game from them again."

Yeah yeah, throw out the words "Entitled" and "whiny" as much as you want, it doesn't change the fact that Sony looks like assholes as a result of this.

They look like assholes to those with no business sense, maybe. If they let those who snatched up the erroneously free Season Pass actually keep what they got, then it'd be a big slap in the face to all paying customers. Bethesda already did their one time 'okay, you can have this.' with their acceptance of pre-order payment through actual bottle caps, anyway. You seriously don't think the decision is down to Sony alone, do you?

 

[Erttheking]

Let the entitlement whining parade commence!

"But it was their error, they should honor it!"

"They can't take away something that I'd purchased. Free or not, I purchased it!"

"The DLC is only worth 'free' anyways and shouldn't be charged for!"

"Boo! They've lost my business and I'll never buy a game from them again."

Yeah yeah, throw out the words "Entitled" and "whiny" as much as you want, it doesn't change the fact that Sony looks like assholes as a result of this.

They look like assholes to those with no business sense, maybe. If they let those who snatched up the erroneously free Season Pass actually keep what they got, then it'd be a big slap in the face to all paying customers. Bethesda already did their one time 'okay, you can have this.' with their acceptance of pre-order payment through actual bottle caps, anyway. You seriously don't think the decision is down to Sony alone, do you?

No they still look like assholes. Even when you're in the right you can still be an asshole. If you accidentally give someone something, there's a better way to go about handling it than just unceremoniously ripping it out of their hands. And ever other time this happened people didn't seem that upset that people had gotten something free. Well there was one guy I saw, but I have a low opinion of him.

Oh I don't doubt it, but Sony hasn't exactly endeared itself with its PR, they only JUST RECENTLY got around to compensating people for the PSN crash. The point is, this was handled with the subtly and grace of a rampaging bull.

 

[ecoho]

Let the entitlement whining parade commence!

"But it was their error, they should honor it!"

"They can't take away something that I'd purchased. Free or not, I purchased it!"

"The DLC is only worth 'free' anyways and shouldn't be charged for!"

"Boo! They've lost my business and I'll never buy a game from them again."

Yeah yeah, throw out the words "Entitled" and "whiny" as much as you want, it doesn't change the fact that Sony looks like assholes as a result of this.

They look like assholes to those with no business sense, maybe. If they let those who snatched up the erroneously free Season Pass actually keep what they got, then it'd be a big slap in the face to all paying customers. Bethesda already did their one time 'okay, you can have this.' with their acceptance of pre-order payment through actual bottle caps, anyway. You seriously don't think the decision is down to Sony alone, do you?

yes they look like assholes to those with no business sense and look like morons to those of us who do, and have PR experience. this was colossally stupid on their part as sony has fucked up royally the past few years, and make no mistake I blame this fully on sony who made the mistake. Bethesda has no reason to give these people the DLC for free but sony does and should by just biting the bullet paying Bethesda for the error and giving whats most likely at most a couple hundred people the DLC for free. Why should they do this? Because it GOOOD FUCKING PR and will make people more likely to use your service again. But hey what do I know, I just work in public relations.

 

[DemomanHusband]

Let the entitlement whining parade commence!

"But it was their error, they should honor it!"

"They can't take away something that I'd purchased. Free or not, I purchased it!"

"The DLC is only worth 'free' anyways and shouldn't be charged for!"

"Boo! They've lost my business and I'll never buy a game from them again."

Yeah yeah, throw out the words "Entitled" and "whiny" as much as you want, it doesn't change the fact that Sony looks like assholes as a result of this.

They look like assholes to those with no business sense, maybe. If they let those who snatched up the erroneously free Season Pass actually keep what they got, then it'd be a big slap in the face to all paying customers. Bethesda already did their one time 'okay, you can have this.' with their acceptance of pre-order payment through actual bottle caps, anyway. You seriously don't think the decision is down to Sony alone, do you?

No they still look like assholes. Even when you're in the right you can still be an asshole. If you accidentally give someone something, there's a better way to go about handling it than just unceremoniously ripping it out of their hands. And ever other time this happened people didn't seem that upset that people had gotten something free. Well there was one guy I saw, but I have a low opinion of him.

Oh I don't doubt it, but Sony hasn't exactly endeared itself with its PR, they only JUST RECENTLY got around to compensating people for the PSN crash. The point is, this was handled with the subtly and grace of a rampaging bull.

You say 'ripping it out of their hands' as if it was rightfully theirs. Again, they did not pay, and they took advantage of a temporary error to get a now $50 bundle of content to be released. My memory's rather poor, but every other time I've gotten something for free on PSN as a result of an error, it was usually a 5+ year old game that nobody even played.

Your whole argument is that Sony took a long time to get around to reimbursing people, then had the gall to revoke a pass obtained for free that is normally $50, so they're obviously the worst company forever ever. I'm certainly not a fan of the way they do some things, but I'm above sneering at common sense.

Also, how would you have handled it? Just about the only way to do it is to... do what Sony did. Any other way would, again, be poor business sense as it would most likely have to go through Bethesda's approval, and they don't tend to be big on unapproved discounts.

 

[DemomanHusband]

Let the entitlement whining parade commence!

"But it was their error, they should honor it!"

"They can't take away something that I'd purchased. Free or not, I purchased it!"

"The DLC is only worth 'free' anyways and shouldn't be charged for!"

"Boo! They've lost my business and I'll never buy a game from them again."

Yeah yeah, throw out the words "Entitled" and "whiny" as much as you want, it doesn't change the fact that Sony looks like assholes as a result of this.

They look like assholes to those with no business sense, maybe. If they let those who snatched up the erroneously free Season Pass actually keep what they got, then it'd be a big slap in the face to all paying customers. Bethesda already did their one time 'okay, you can have this.' with their acceptance of pre-order payment through actual bottle caps, anyway. You seriously don't think the decision is down to Sony alone, do you?

yes they look like assholes to those with no business sense and look like morons to those of us who do, and have PR experience. this was colossally stupid on their part as sony has fucked up royally the past few years, and make no mistake I blame this fully on sony who made the mistake. Bethesda has no reason to give these people the DLC for free but sony does and should by just biting the bullet paying Bethesda for the error and giving whats most likely at most a couple hundred people the DLC for free. Why should they do this? Because it GOOOD FUCKING PR and will make people more likely to use your service again. But hey what do I know, I just work in public relations.

Please try again with proper spelling, grammar, and general care for the presentation for your post. Really, you were a few missing punctuation marks away from a complete run on sentence. And no, no matter how good it would've been for PR, Sony would not have benefited from paying for the error outright. It would cost them money, and companies rather enjoy saving it.

So far the arguments I've seen in favor of the free season pass grabbers seem rather emotionally charged. It's almost as if people think it's a personal attack to have something they shouldn't have kept from them until they actually own it.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

They thought it was. If someone picks up something that they think is theirs, do you run up to them and rip it out of their hands, or do you calmly explain the mix up? It's call tact. I understand it's dead on the internet, but some of us still expect it. It goes beyond PSN. Halo map packs were released for Halo 4 when it was at the height of popularity, and apart from one guy whose opinion I don't respect, no one had a problem with it.

My argument is that Sony has fuckheaded PR and this isn't doing them any favors. I'm not saying they're the worst company ever, but their mess up got people's hopes up and then they just tore it down without any grace. That's what an asshole does.

Probably would've made a public announcement calmly explaining the situation and deeply apologizing to those who thought they had free stuff. I don't see what would've been so hard about that.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

In my country, when a market puts a price tag at an item, it is forced, by law, to sell that item with that price if you picked it up before the correction.
So if they placed it for free and people picked it up before they fixed the price, they would be forced to sell it for free to those people. Same goes the other way around. If the price was accidentally made higher than it is and someone bought it, the market doesn't have any obligation to give you back the difference.

tl.dr. Sony's fault for making a mistake.

 

[DemomanHusband]

Snip

They thought it was. If someone picks up something that they think is theirs, do you run up to them and rip it out of their hands, or do you calmly explain the mix up? It's call tact. I understand it's dead on the internet, but some of us still expect it. It goes beyond PSN. Halo map packs were released for Halo 4 when it was at the height of popularity, and apart from one guy whose opinion I don't respect, no one had a problem with it.

My argument is that Sony has fuckheaded PR and this isn't doing them any favors. I'm not saying they're the worst company ever, but their mess up got people's hopes up and then they just tore it down without any grace. That's what an asshole does.

Probably would've made a public announcement calmly explaining the situation and deeply apologizing to those who thought they had free stuff. I don't see what would've been so hard about that.

Okay, errtheking, here's the thing. They did calmly explain the mix up. They then calmly explained that the users who obtained the unintentionally free season pass would not have their obviously unintentionally free order honored.

Again, you're blowing their reaction out of proportion. They didn't 'rip it from their hands,' they explained that there was an error, a few people took advantage, and it has now been corrected with those who took advantage not receiving the product.

And yes, in my experience, if someone picks up something from a store and tries to rip it out of their hands, you don't give them a chance to explain, you report it to the manager right away and then THEY rip it out of their hands.

Should all stores have to honor every 'purchase' if the 'transaction' involves somebody seeing a scratched off pricetag on a product, thus assuming it's free?

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

This is one of the problems with the digital age and the "ownership" of games. If a product is mislabeled, a store doesn't have to honor that price. But once the sale is made and ownership of the item transfers to the customer, taking it away from them amounts to theft. The issue here is the modern day assertion by game developers that we do not own our games anymore. We are only renting them, and they can be taken away at any time.

I cant think of any other instance where this is the case. Typically, when you buy something, it belongs to you. It's crazy to think that we are all gamers here but none of us own a single game.

 

[ecoho]

Let the entitlement whining parade commence!

"But it was their error, they should honor it!"

"They can't take away something that I'd purchased. Free or not, I purchased it!"

"The DLC is only worth 'free' anyways and shouldn't be charged for!"

"Boo! They've lost my business and I'll never buy a game from them again."

Yeah yeah, throw out the words "Entitled" and "whiny" as much as you want, it doesn't change the fact that Sony looks like assholes as a result of this.

They look like assholes to those with no business sense, maybe. If they let those who snatched up the erroneously free Season Pass actually keep what they got, then it'd be a big slap in the face to all paying customers. Bethesda already did their one time 'okay, you can have this.' with their acceptance of pre-order payment through actual bottle caps, anyway. You seriously don't think the decision is down to Sony alone, do you?

yes they look like assholes to those with no business sense and look like morons to those of us who do, and have PR experience. this was colossally stupid on their part as sony has fucked up royally the past few years, and make no mistake I blame this fully on sony who made the mistake. Bethesda has no reason to give these people the DLC for free but sony does and should by just biting the bullet paying Bethesda for the error and giving whats most likely at most a couple hundred people the DLC for free. Why should they do this? Because it GOOOD FUCKING PR and will make people more likely to use your service again. But hey what do I know, I just work in public relations.

Please try again with proper spelling, grammar, and general care for the presentation for your post. Really, you were a few missing punctuation marks away from a complete run on sentence. And no, no matter how good it would've been for PR, Sony would not have benefited from paying for the error outright. It would cost them money, and companies rather enjoy saving it.

So far the arguments I've seen in favor of the free season pass grabbers seem rather emotionally charged. It's almost as if people think it's a personal attack to have something they shouldn't have kept from them until they actually own it.

sorry for the grammar never has been my area of expertise.

good will comes in handy when your a company that continually fucks up epically and then takes forever getting compensation out to their customers. so yeah this was a PR disaster on top of another PR disaster. Your profile says you work in retail so ill ask if one of you cashiers screws up who is it who ends up paying for it, the company or the customer?

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

This is one of the problems with the digital age and the "ownership" of games. If a product is mislabeled, a store doesn't have to honor that price. But once the sale is made and ownership of the item transfers to the customer, taking it away from them amounts to theft. The issue here is the modern day assertion by game developers that we do not own our games anymore. We are only renting them, and they can be taken away at any time.

I cant think of any other instance where this is the case. Typically, when you buy something, it belongs to you. It's crazy to think that we are all gamers here but none of us own a single game.

Thank you!

This was the first thing that came to my mind when I read the OP and something I think sorely needs talking about.
I don't accept any form of obstructive DRM and least of all any form of online verification (I've never used steam).
So my games are all my own and I can install and play them when I want.
I'm even afraid of buying games in brick&mortar-stores nowadays as they mostly only contain a download link.
Thank god for GOG and other places existing!

Today's games must be one of the only media in which the creators/publishers intentionally sabotage the product for future audiences sadly.

 

[Xeorm]

I can understand why they did what they did, because that's a large potential loss of income they'd get from their screwup. At the same time, I'd be really worried that they can just revoke a deal like that. Shows you how one-sided things are, doesn't it? I wouldn't mind seeing them go to court over it, just to establish precedent.

I'd be ridiculously upset if anyone else made a deal and revoked it unilaterally. If that means them losing money because of a mistake, well, that's why it's called a mistake. Take proper care of all things digitally, same as you should have been doing with user's information security.

 

[DemomanHusband]

Let the entitlement whining parade commence!

"But it was their error, they should honor it!"

"They can't take away something that I'd purchased. Free or not, I purchased it!"

"The DLC is only worth 'free' anyways and shouldn't be charged for!"

"Boo! They've lost my business and I'll never buy a game from them again."

Yeah yeah, throw out the words "Entitled" and "whiny" as much as you want, it doesn't change the fact that Sony looks like assholes as a result of this.

They look like assholes to those with no business sense, maybe. If they let those who snatched up the erroneously free Season Pass actually keep what they got, then it'd be a big slap in the face to all paying customers. Bethesda already did their one time 'okay, you can have this.' with their acceptance of pre-order payment through actual bottle caps, anyway. You seriously don't think the decision is down to Sony alone, do you?

yes they look like assholes to those with no business sense and look like morons to those of us who do, and have PR experience. this was colossally stupid on their part as sony has fucked up royally the past few years, and make no mistake I blame this fully on sony who made the mistake. Bethesda has no reason to give these people the DLC for free but sony does and should by just biting the bullet paying Bethesda for the error and giving whats most likely at most a couple hundred people the DLC for free. Why should they do this? Because it GOOOD FUCKING PR and will make people more likely to use your service again. But hey what do I know, I just work in public relations.

Please try again with proper spelling, grammar, and general care for the presentation for your post. Really, you were a few missing punctuation marks away from a complete run on sentence. And no, no matter how good it would've been for PR, Sony would not have benefited from paying for the error outright. It would cost them money, and companies rather enjoy saving it.

So far the arguments I've seen in favor of the free season pass grabbers seem rather emotionally charged. It's almost as if people think it's a personal attack to have something they shouldn't have kept from them until they actually own it.

sorry for the grammar never has been my area of expertise.

good will comes in handy when your a company that continually fucks up epically and then takes forever getting compensation out to their customers. so yeah this was a PR disaster on top of another PR disaster. Your profile says you work in retail so ill ask if one of you cashiers screws up who is it who ends up paying for it, the company or the customer?

Depends on the screw-up, really. Did a customer walk out with a product that they were aware that they did not pay for? If I failed to catch them, usually a police report was filed and we made sure that the customer that did so never enters the store again. We eat the cost, of course, but the customer in the end is both at fault and should pay for it.

But that's different than what's happening here. See, a product was temporarily marked as free on accident and again, people took advantage. However, it's much easier to deal with given that the Season Pass is a digital purchase. No money was exchanged, which makes dealing with the problem easier.

All that you're really saying is that a policy 'fuck you, got mine' should be taken here, completely devaluing the worth a paying customer has in comparison to a non-paying customer who takes advantage of errors in digital shopping services.

Also, that reminds me, I gotta update my profile. I actually stopped working in retail a while back!