Not allowing us refunds on stuff we've bought breaks EU rules

Writing this as a personal opinion piece for personal entertainment (and in case anyone else is interested). Please don’t take as legal opinion. From a UK perspective, for digital goods (like video games) where rules are bit different from physical products and services):

Fundamentally OW2 was free, so whatever acti-blizz do to it - there’s no damage or loss to you if planned/anticipated features were removed. A game can be shut down and they don’t have to refund people. Hence a lot of cash shops stay open until few weeks before a game goes offline forever (without any successful challenges in europe I think), recent example EA shutting Apex Legend mobile at 90day notice) and I think there’s been tighter ones. That’s the bar you’d have to surpass to prove damages - complete loss of availability at 1-3 months notice.

Other option would be if your purchases were because you were promised or had reasonable expectation that your purchase would relate to future content (for example unlocking a feature) and were mis-sold. You’d have to carefully scrutinise the OW2 marketing material, but I doubt you’d find anything, the goods and services you purchased were likely solely associated with the current version of the game. Didn’t follow the OW2 launch but I think for example when purchasing the OW2 early access pass thing you knew it gave access to the existing version of OW2, and knew/expected no new PvE content was available or would be provided during that service.

If someone can conclusively prove acti-blizz had no expectation they could deliver on their launch promises when they were making them there might be a case for false advertising? But that’d likely be a fine from advertising/trading regulators as a deterrent action proportionate to financial benefit (and market harm) caused by acti-blizz’s miss selling, you probably wouldn’t see a penny.

…turns out I can’t link anything but you can google oft1519 by CMA “Principles for online and app-based games”

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That’s not how it works here in EU tho.

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It’s how it works everywhere.

Promises aren’t legally binding.

You probably didn’t ask for a refund when they cancelled the Batgirl movie, despite them promising to release it and even finishing working on it.

Nothing has been sold as a pve, so nothing can be refunded.

Good point.
OW2 was released as “early access” and PvP only. So that’s the case closed.

Disclaimer before we begin: I’m not a lawyer.

Right let’s begin: In the UK at least, you cannot waive your right to a refund, it doesn’t matter if the terms of service say it, that term is not enforceable, I’m sure the EU as a whole is the same.

HOWEVER: The game was free to play, and the money was spent on pvp battle pass and content, so Blizzard has provided what they promised for the money, you can try and have a refund on the free base game, but a refund of £0.00 seems not worth going for.

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This is a very long thread about refunding something that was never sold lol

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That’s incorrect. In fact, Blizzards EULA isn’t even valid in EU. You are fully entitled to a refund if you didn’t get what you expected to get.

None of the stuff that was bought here was advertised as pve, so no misdirecting advertising.
The person got exactly what they paid for and thus only had 2 weeks to get a refund.
2 weeks that have expired a good while ago, so no refund.

can’t believe that in this case, the consumer has to pay for the false expectation that the product and the company selling it offers. I understand it has been a marketing technique, so I can only have a negative opinion of the company in the future. Now, I am embarrassed to be a fan; well, I was… that is in the past.

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It is foolish to bring the Terms of Use in front of the law.