Square-Enix Facing $5 Million Final Fantasy XI Lawsuit

[Keane Ng]

Square-Enix Facing $5 Million Final Fantasy XI Lawsuit

A San Francisco resident has filed a class-action lawsuit against Square-Enix accusing the company of deceiving customers with hidden fees and penalties in Final Fantasy XI.

Esther Leung of San Francisco has filed a class-action lawsuit against Square-Enix, alleging that the company partook in various shady business practices involved with its MMOG, Final Fantasy XI.

"[Square-Enix] engaged in various levels of deceptive advertising, unfair business practices, and fraudulent concealment with respect to the online games at the point of purchase," the suit claims.

Those various complaints mostly involve Square's allegedly deceptive terms when it came to monthly fees, penalties for late payment, interest charges on late payment, charges that took place after the suspension of an account, termination of game data for late payment, and more. According to Leung, Square "lied about or concealed" the specifics of these charges that "should have been fully disclosed" when she signed up for the game.

The suit estimates that the number of people who will take part in the class-action "will number greater than 100,000" and is seeking $5 million in damages. Have any of you Final Fantasy XI players ever had problems with late fee shenanigans, or is this person just upset her character got deleted?

Read the court filing here [http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/06/24/SquareEnix.pdf].

[Via Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5302333/square-enix-sued-for-5-million]]

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[ChromeAlchemist]

So basically, Square-Enix facing lawsuit because Final Fantasy XI was shit? Sounds about right.

But in seriousness, those are some hefty charges.

 

[Mackinator]

Well, I'm sure SE will win the suit as MMO's tend to have 12 pages of agreements made up to agree to before they play the game. Namely WoW.

1. A Suspended account is obviously going to result in bitterness towards the company and these faults are only being pressedbecause of this by many people.
2. It's their fault for playing a game with monthly fees.
3. It would definately be in the Rules about deletion of data somewhere.

I think there won't be easy to win against SE.

 

[scotth266]

Well, this is odd. You would think that such issues would have been brought up earlier. I don't really know much about XI, and never really thought about buying it, so I guess I don't really have to be concerned much about this.

 

[chstens]

I can't believe someone took the time to read through the entire contract.

 

[LordSphinx]

As an ex-FFXI player, I can say that there is almost nothing to support this lawsuit.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

Forget to make a payment, sue for $5 million... seems about right.

 

[Credge]

Stuff like this happens in a lot of MMO's. People continue to get billed after they cancel their account. I'm surprised this hasn't happened to Blizzard, Mythic, or Funcom as this exact thing happens frequently.

 

[findler]

Ya, when I played WoW I got overcharged... 7 times. Thankfully Blizz was good enough to fix it.

 

[Meado]

Stuff like this happens in a lot of MMO's. People continue to get billed after they cancel their account. I'm surprised this hasn't happened to Blizzard, Mythic, or Funcom as this exact thing happens frequently.

That's the most disturbing thing. This could set a precedent for others to sue other companies.

 

[Swaki]

xi, arent they about to launch xxvii or something?, any way 5 million, geez only in America can lawsuits like these not result in the lawyer offices trowing out the lady.

well any way, i hope she loses, stupidity should not be rewarded and allot of people enjoy the final fantasy games and opening the floodgates for stupid lawsuits will probably hurt the studio.

so yer, im rooting against team retard for once instead of team anime.

 

[m_jim]

Stuff like this happens in a lot of MMO's. People continue to get billed after they cancel their account. I'm surprised this hasn't happened to Blizzard, Mythic, or Funcom as this exact thing happens frequently.

That's the most disturbing thing. This could set a precedent for others to sue other companies.

But even if they were getting billed after canceling their account, they would be hard pressed to argue that it caused enough distress to warrant a significant lawsuit. More likely, a refund would be in order.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

Huh. I'd have thought having the service handled through credit card wouldn't mean any late fees.

But then again, I never played an MMO for more than a month.

Also suspension over the late payment (it still boggles me) is reasonable. Since one is paying to play the game, ceasing pay would logically cease play.

 

[Psypherus]

Good for him. I hope he wins. Everyone I know who played this game(including me) have gotten tons of hidden charges/false charges. They took over $70 in one month from me once(Last fucking month I played, that's for sure.) and the game itself and the two expansions at the time only cost me $75

 

[Flionk]

I've been playing FFXI for a good 5 years now, and I've never seen any issue with payments. "penalties for late payment" in particular sounds like a complete crock of shit, since the only payment method SE accepts is by credit card, automatically payed at the start of each month. If the card is invalid (which happened to me once after I renewed my card but forgot to update my payment info), they just don't let you access the game until you give them an active card that they can charge. They don't charge you extra for it, and while in the past they would delete data if an account was unsubscribed or unpayed for long periods of time (more than 3 months I believe), they changed that policy pretty early on, and now if you cancel you can come back years later and still pick up your old characters with no loss.

Also, the account was suspended. There are only a few things that get your account suspended - the biggest ones being cheating with 3rd-party software, and being involved with real-money trade for in-game items (which SE has always expressly forbidden). I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the guy got his account hijacked by someone trying to make a few bucks, then didn't quite understand how to tell them to cancel his account and just left it. Or if he was trying to make a few bucks himself, got caught, and is now trying to blow it up into making more than a few bucks.

 

[MasterSqueak]

A game that deserves a lawsuit is that Evony game. The ads all say "Free Forever" yet it charges you for every post in the ingame chat.

False advertising much?

This, however, sounds rather stupid. 5 Million? For what is likely a billing mistake or revenge?

 

[RavingPenguin]

Well, this is odd. You would think that such issues would have been brought up earlier.

Maybe everyone else just read all the terms before hitting the "I Agree" button.

 

[VitusPrime]

His lawsuit is pretty useless,

"Monthly fees to play the game"

What was he honestly suspecting, needs to learn to read

"Termination of the Right to use the on-line game for the late payment of fees"

Again, kinda spelling out what a P2P game is,

Only in America folks... GO Square Enix

 

[Charli]

I'd need to see all the specifics of her case before passing judgement, theres not enough info to tell sadly... it APPEARS stupid but maybe yes Square-Enix I remember having issues a while back with over charging players... We'll have to see, likely it'll be settled away from publicity and never heard from again, but who knows.