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Deceptive crystal sales
Trailfire
Posts: 590
3.0 includes a change to the crystals menu that I absolutely don't like at all. It's actually by far my least favorite change out of every chamge I've seen from Kabam.
I'm talking about the way energon is represented as an input to butable crystals.
It looks like I "have enough resources" to claim the crystal, but energon is the one resource that you typically buy directly for cash. I expect it to be clear when I'm spending a cash analogue. Anything else is in my view deceptive conduct and would not stand up against consumer law.
I strongly urge Kabam to reverse this change before they face legal challenges over it
Most regulars here know I'd be the last person to point fingers at Kabam, who I mostly think of as awesome coders of games I love playing, but this is not cool at all.
I also typically reject claims of "money grabbing" in favor of claims that "companies have to survive etc". This is different. This is a clear attempt to trick customers into buying products by accident. It would absolutely not survive a court challenge and should immediately be removed. This is more urgent than the problems with AM difficulty levels
I've uploaded a pic of what I'm talking about
I fully expect this to be fixed in 3.1 tomorrow
I'm talking about the way energon is represented as an input to butable crystals.
It looks like I "have enough resources" to claim the crystal, but energon is the one resource that you typically buy directly for cash. I expect it to be clear when I'm spending a cash analogue. Anything else is in my view deceptive conduct and would not stand up against consumer law.
I strongly urge Kabam to reverse this change before they face legal challenges over it
Most regulars here know I'd be the last person to point fingers at Kabam, who I mostly think of as awesome coders of games I love playing, but this is not cool at all.
I also typically reject claims of "money grabbing" in favor of claims that "companies have to survive etc". This is different. This is a clear attempt to trick customers into buying products by accident. It would absolutely not survive a court challenge and should immediately be removed. This is more urgent than the problems with AM difficulty levels
I've uploaded a pic of what I'm talking about
I fully expect this to be fixed in 3.1 tomorrow
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Comments
You need to get rid of this kabam.
Two reasons:
1) it is misleading and you will piss off your player base when they inadvertently spend their energon, OR...
2) Players will purposely purchase these crystals and then refund through play/iTunes citing bait and switch tactics, and you will be out of pocket.
It is in your best interest to remove the energon counter under those crystals.
Change it with the utmost urgency
Probably not illegal, but definitely not cool.
Dark Patterns are tricks used in websites and apps that make you buy or sign up for things that you didn't mean to.
This is a very good example.
Now, it may not be the greatest UI design, and I'm sure they'll look at it in the future, but there's no legal challenge here, and raids/AM not working absolutely has to be the priority right now.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll be sure to take your concerns to the team!
Consumer law isn't so straightforward and different countries have different levels of protection - if you want to sell globally you have to conform with all of the countries you trade in. If you're making a purchase many countries require that it has to be clear that you're making a purchase. This absolutely isn't clear
You could argue that using energon isn't a purchase because you can earn it in game without ever spending money. It might sound like a good argument but its unlikely it'd win a case. I'd have to look up case history to be sure.
The point is this is misleading and not ok
Here's a grab from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission explaining some of the relevant law here. Australia is not an outlier in this regard. Misleading, even unintentionally, is clearly not legal.
Saying "owned 8983/150" is absurd, and not even true. I already have a number on the open button for how many I actually own.
Energon is not the same as chips and shards and shouldn't be presented in the same way. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the old display and the new way doesn't improve or make anything better.
The reason these were displayed differently previously is precisely because energon is a form of currency. This is deliberately misleading.
It doesn't matter in the least if some people find it easy to see through and it isn't a matter of "pay attention". A lot of players are kids who can't be expected to distinguish between available currency and already obtained objects if the available currency is displayed as an obtained object.
People will have very strong cases under consumer protection laws to claim reimbursement for crystal sales until this is reversed. But more importantly, this is unethical, barely better than attempted theft
I regularly comment against threads about "money grabbing" since they're mostly just unfounded gripes. But this is not that.
How? How exactly is this misleading? Do you go to your shards tab when you have 10k/2000 PBC shards and THINK you already have 5 crystals to open? No you don't. You think, hey, I've got enough SHARDS to obtain 5 crystals.
Same thing here. There was no intent to mislead. None. They're showing you the SAME EXACT thing that you see on the SHARDS TAB. How much YOU HAVE vs. COST for 1 crystal. The price just being energon instead of shards. And claiming you thought it was shards is also invalid as that requires you to be on the shards tab. The only "shard" crystals being available on the main tab are Arena crystals and surely you didn't think you were getting those.
This is on the parent for giving their child unrestricted access to their bank account. My daughter is on mine or my wife's phone playing games constantly and has NEVER bought anything by mistake because it requires more information than my daughter will ever have. And children tend to be far more observant than the average adult so you can't claim they thought they were using shards or some other currency. The child will already be fully aware that they are spending energon and not care 1 bit. So it boils down to mommy and/or daddy allowing the little ones access to bank account which, AGAIN, is the parents fault. Not Kabams.
You can clearly see the difference in these two photos. Any crystals I own and can open anytime without spending more is CLEARLY labeled. Crystals I own none of are CLEARLY different from those I do own.
As has been stated. Kabam has done nothing wrong. Failure to pay attention is the culprit here. Picture proof here and I can only hope this helps Kabam not to lose money to frivolous refunds from people just trying to get one over on Kabam.
Energon is a shared resource for everything in the game and to be bought with real money, and to show it in the same way as shards as if you've achieved something specifically for that, is actually misleading. Yeah there is a little icon next to it that shows energon, but that's hardly redeeming.
There was nothing wrong with the big ol price tag on it before. The only reason it's changed is that Kabam counts on people spending more energon like this. If they wanted to mark that you have or haven't got enough energon for a purchase they would have made the text of the price red instead of white all the time.
It is alright that you have no issue with Kabam trying to play with a misleading UI, but that does not mean that others won't get confused, right?
So why don't we just let the players that are affected by this bring the issue up and let Kabam defend their own decision?
Oh but energon is a premium currency. And your point? Nobody has complained about the store setup and guess what. Energon purchases in the store are identical to purchases with raid chips. Gasp! Nobody complains about it there. So quit your bellyaching because you failed to pay attention and bought PBCs with stockpiled energon.
All your doing is giving new players the impression that Kabam is just playing the money grab game and that simply is not the case. Have they had some really awful deals for sale? Yes. Did they change the crystal UI on energon acquired crystals for the purpose of making you buy more energon? Not in the least.
This is an excellent solution. And hilariously enough, it's already been done by separating the crystals into tabs. One for energon, one for shards, and one for the special/random currencies.
It could be confusing to new players the way it is now, so I support a rework, but threatening legal action when you've played the game for months (as I know a few here are from global launch if not betas) and absolutely know better is a little too much.
Hired_Goon is right about this, people. It's not deceptive. Not great, but not deceptive. Move along.
This change to the display does not benefit players in the best case, and confuses some in the worst. That's why it's not a good one. I don't believe it's actually legally wrong, but I'm no lawyer. In Europe at least consumers are very well protected so it wouldn't surprise me either. Counting on Kabam having a legal person that checks this stuff though.
As for the UI itself, I don't really see the confusion but thats me I guess. Definitely zero cause for legal action.
If I have a similar issue like this in the future, I'll be sure to keep it off the forum and just use the feedback form. It was a mistake to air this publicly.
I'm sure it's obvious from the rest of my comments that I'm a fan of mostof what Kabam does. I see this as completely different, and nothing that Hired_Goon says is persuasive to me in the least. That said, I don't want to flog a dead horse.
Mike already acknowledged the issue and said he raised it with the team, which is all I can ask for. After that, this thread just started causing more heat than light. I think it's probably due for closure.
I think this is why it's a problem. Trying to bring 'energon' in line with shards is a terrible idea because a shard is a shard, it's a piece of a crystal, it can only be used for one specific crystal, it can't be used for anything else. Even compared to raid chips, it can only be used for one crystal and so it makes sense. On the actual raid purchases screen it shows just the cost to buy items.
Energon is a currency, used for everything, not just crystals and can be used for multiple different crystals.
It's like if I went to McDonalds and wanted a burger for $3.50 and the menu updated to "Owned $23.40/3.50"
I see the new UI as cluttered and redundant. Energon is already in the top right hand corner. Instead of a big 150 or 100, or 75 or 20 for the various crystals I can buy, I now have a much smaller number, at the end of a big long number and a slash, a number now displayed multiple times on my screen unnecessarily.
Information is less clear than before and can cause unnecessary and unneeded confusion trying to make Energon (money) look like shards or raid chips.
Forget intentions behind the change entirely... Look at it from a purely design perspective, to try and present information in the clearest, most appealing way possible, I'm amazed any designer would think it's a good idea to do it this new way. Why mess with something that had zero issues. Was there ever any feedback that the old system needed changing? Why are they even devoting resources to change things that aren't broken when so much is actually broken.
Can anyone say the new display delivers information in a better way than before? I certainly can't.