Microsoft lawsuit

[Cryonic]

ok these guys, have obviously never played an MMO before.


http://www.gamespot.com/news/6184323.html

[Tarryk]

Good lord, cry me a freakin' river. You're right, obviously people who've never MMO'd.

[Tastyvixen]

OMG lol

There is no way they are winning that. I wonder what the lawyers are thinking even bothering.

On the other hand I would be calling them demanding a free month out of it for my trouble for sure.

[Tarryk]

The article said somewhere that Microsoft already agreed to let anyone affected download a game for free. My opinion, so long as they let those people pick which game they want, that's MORE than enough compensation. That's up to like a 40-50 dollar value if they pick an expensive one. That's more than enough compensation for a few days of down-time. What are they paying per month for the live service? No more than 20 bucks per 30 days, I'd imagine.

[Cryonic]

The xbox live subscription, the gold service (I have it) is like $60 CDN for the year, so its not really a huge amount.

[Vallikat]

That being the case then I have to agree with Tarryk that they are already getting just compensation. Asking for anything more than that is just plain greedy.

[Negs]

As soon as i saw they wanted 5 million ... i laughed ... what morons

[Shigy]

I think its just a joke...as does the artist at Ctrl+Alt+Del so for those who haven't seen them
http://cad-comic.com/comic.php?d=20080107
http://cad-comic.com/news.php?i=1540#1540

[Acushla]

a careful read of the second link http://cad-comic.com/news.php?i=1540#1540 is quite interesting in that the author makes excellent points (and yes we see the same thing on AO Forums around the time they do a major patch).

ps: gotta love the point of the actual comic

[Mivat]

When I heard about this case, I once again came to the conclusion that humans, as a species, is the dumbest animal existing on this miserable little dustball (more like a waterball, but whatever).

If you're suing a game-company, who clearly states in the EULA that you accept the terms of the said EULA with all and any parts if you press "I agree", for money just because they have some unexpected downtime, you've got too much free time on your hands. Sure, I'd understand it if your life depended on the said service, but somehow I can't see Microsoft using it's LIVE!-network to control lifesupport-equipment.

But suing Microsoft for THIS? As people have said before in this thread; they can't have played an MMO. Ever.

Oh well. I notch this one up as yet another proof that humans are decendants of early primates, and that some are closer to our ancestors than others.

If they do go to court with this, AND win, I'll honestly say that there's not just a few things wrong with society in general.

[Stiofain]

As unpopular as the opinion may be, and as bad a precedent as it may set, I hope they win it. Microsoft has a long history of releasing things before they are ready and selling more subscriptions than they have the infrastructure to support, about time they were called on it. Now I think the whole thing is frivolous and will probably be thrown out, but that's one company that needs a wake up call. All the rush jobs they've foisted on the public just trying to meet deadlines they never should have set, the holes and lack of functionality, all the endless patches for things that should have been working when they released it. Probably has a lot to do with my experiences in the past though. I just think a company with that many resources should be able to handle what they get themselves in to, if you sold the x-boxes with the promise of a network you should be able to deliver, it's not like server downtime or a random crash. This was avoidable if they just thought ahead and planned to keep their technical aspect up with their marketing and sales. But what is Microsoft's strong suit, sure isn't a good product, it's marketing and good enough lawyers to keep them out of trouble when they frell it all up.

[Cheese]

I think everyone should just ignore this. It’s a dumb thing on many reasons but heres some facts about it.

Lawyers love lawsuits and as a law student I cant wait to file my first one. Win or loose just filing means I can bill someone. Lawsuits are easy to file, but they need valid proof of damage, or some other serious reason to be filed. They have that, couldn’t log on once paid, however that’s it. This case most likely wont ever pass the preliminary examination. If people could sue for outages of service we wouldn’t have any communication lines anywhere. (Have these idiots ever in their lives held a phone? Watched TV?)
So that’s, it. Many suits are filed that are terribly similar to this. The only way they are allowed into the court system proper is if Negligence beyond the actions of a reasonable entity (person or company) can be proven. Such as a phone company who takes contracts for service before it secures a contract to use the phone wires in an area. The negligence part will be extremely hard to prove, X-Box live subscriptions based upon new unit sales are speculation at best. I will leave that there, the courts will decide what was reasonable, if it goes that far.

On the legal part of this, people have every rite, and can file a stupid lawsuit, but filing is FAR from being in a court. MS made the compensation offer out of good faith to its customers, and did not do so because of litigation, they did it for the positive image. They could have raised the finger and laughed at everyone, provided their equipment was plugged in, and people were on duty its going to be really hard to win in court.

Second, people think its cool to hate Microsoft. WTF is this? I have never understood how it is Cool to hate MS. If you hate it so freakin much, buy an apple or learn about a computer and use Linux. Anyone remember using DOS? If you do you probably love MS and the windows programs. Sure there are problems and often the New OS package is incomplete, but its better than the old way I assure you.
Windows allows any idiot to use a computer generally easily, sure its invasive, and often annoying, but turn that part off and bingo, it’s a good system with decent support.

So in the end, just ignore this, its being done for pure attention and its so popular because the News agencies would rather report this to get people riled up than add anything important to the world, cause that makes people think, which is apparently a bad thing.

That’s my rant, ignore this, its only around to give people something to talk about, like me. Hah….

[Stiofain]

Well, I have to say that my hatred of Microsoft has been earned by them. Bad customer support, incomplete products at release, etc. Course I think they should sue them over windows rather than x-box. I do, however, thank Microsoft for building such inefficient and wasteful operating systems, if it wasn't for that we probably still wouldn't have broken the 1GHz mark on home computer CPUs. And if anything I find the hatred to run even more strongly in the other direction, too bad apple and Linux don't spend the money in "incentives" to make sure some software will only work on their OS an is excessively hard to port to windows. Bad business practice, locking their users in to their product, buying or sui g any competition even over something as simple as a progress bar which has been around since before Windows. Heh, I actually have a DOS Virtual Machine, as well as a Windows 98SE and XP. Been using computers since my old 8086, and while Microsoft did do well in bringing computers to the masses they've kinda slacked off and let their momentum and bankroll carry them. That's what I hate

[Renjori]

Hell if they win, then they are forking clever ol' gits - easy $5 Million. Though if they actually feel strongly about this then they're not so bright.

Though to be honest trying to sue one of the riches companies in the world is a bit dumb.

[Kyrros]

Gives those hordes of Microsoft lawyers something to do. Until karma catches up to them.

I know this happened a good while ago, but go check the picture. Notice how specific the damaged area is?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003435807_webcrane17.html

[eadaoin]

Egad, he was a Microsoft lawyer? Stiofain had enough of a field day with this knowing he was a Microsoft employee. :/

[Mivat]

It's beyond me why being a Microsoft-employee makes you a bad person *shrugs*

[Nicodar]

It's beyond me why being a Microsoft-employee makes you a bad person *shrugs*

Because microsoft is ythe big evil soulless corporation so you must be a terrible person to work for them.

[Shigy]

It's beyond me why being a Microsoft-employee makes you a bad person *shrugs*

Because microsoft is ythe big evil soulless corporation so you must be a terrible person to work for them.

Kinda like omni-tek...hang a sec all of my toons bar 2 are omni...cool I'm evil

[Stiofain]

Heh, like I always say, Microsoft, Omni-Tek, Umbrella Corporation, The Weyland-Yutani Company. Any real difference between them? And the mega-corps in shadowrun, except they have MS going bust in the first big matrix crash