Home » » The Sims Social pulls a bait-and-switch on players

The Sims Social pulls a bait-and-switch on players

Free-to-play games have always existed on the edge of false advertising. After all, the very term "free to play" completely ignores the fact that people can spend seemingly limitless amounts of time and money on them. But a recent incident with Electronic Arts' hit Facebook game Sims Social describes a form false advertising considerably less reliant on a game of semantics.
A skull-and-crossbones thought bubble adequately describes the proper reaction to EA's underhanded Sims Social bait-and-switch.
 
Last week, an ad in the game challenged players to get a Vespertine Cocktail Bar Reward that would churn out simoleans (one of the game's four primary resources) and collectibles every hour. Although the reward criteria can be met without spending a dime, impatient players or those who won't meet the task's deadline can speed things up by dropping real money for an injection of SimCash. But after the offer went live and the original ad went out, EA changed both the deadline and the reward. Instead of an hourly injection of simoleans and gifts for as long as the game runs, players would instead get a one-time injection of social points (another of the game's resources). 

As one would expect/hope, angry players took to the game's message boards to complain about the switch. A number of players raced to get the cocktail bar only to find the reward they spent their time and money chasing had been switched on them. And those who completed the task before the ad was changed received neither the social points nor the advertised hourly rewards. And the only "official" word from EA in the thread is a moderator confirming that it's not a bug, and that the players complaints have been passed along. 

On the surface, this looks an awful lot like fraud. But I suspect the virtual currency buffers placed in between the users' money and the Vespertine Cocktail Bar will in some way protect EA from any sort of consumer complaint. After all, players didn't spend their money for that in-game item, they spent their money on Facebook Credits, which were converted to SimCash, which could then be converted to energy, simoleons, and social points in order to meet the reward criteria. 

But to focus on whether or not this protects EA from lawsuits and Better Business Bureau complaints is tangential to the point. The larger issue here that gamers should be up in arms over is that this represents a fundamental lack of respect for the customer on EA's behalf. They laid out a transaction for gamers with clear parameters then changed the deal mid-stream, neglected to notify gamers of the change, refused to honor their commitment to people who had already completed the deal, and then ignored the resulting complaints.
Share this article :

Comments Powered By: Disqus
 
Support : Creating Website | Johny Template | Mas Template
Copyright © 2011. PctechPortal - All Rights Reserved
Template Created by Creating Website Published by Mas Template
Proudly powered by Blogger