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.
