I, for one, didn’t believe for a minute Blizzard would be genuinely interested in developing a PvE mode for OW2. They literally swapped some old maps for equally-crappy ones, added a couple of mid heroes, took their sweet time to release it and slapped a 2 on it to make it a sequel. I had zero faith in them actually developing basically a standalone PvE game; it seemed like far too much of a stretch.
However, now that they officially admitted they have been lying this whole time, I see a lot of people saying that the devs/execs are straight up thieves. I don’t believe this is technically true, but could this count as false advertising?
My reasoning:
Blizzard’s main feature when marketing this game was their PvE: people downloaded the game and bought skins with this future development in mind. Now they announced they no longer plan to develop this PvE fully, after they’ve marketed and promoted various in-game items for OW2 whose main point of differentiation was their PvE feature. I’d even be so generous to say if they ran out of money/manpower as of a couple weeks ago, I’d be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But this isn’t the case: the company self-admittedly came to this conclusion almost a year ago, and during that time span have been promoting and marketing in-game items worth real money to the audience that was promised a PvE development in the future.
I would say yes. The amount of promotional pieces showing PvE vapor ware and using PvE as the scapegoat when OW2 launched for why only 3 initial heroes when they had already pivoted away from PvE.
In order for something to be considered ‘false advertising’ (at least to the point where you can take any form of legal action), you need to have been advertised something that you then purchased, only to find that you didn’t get the thing that was advertised.
That isn’t happening here, since you didn’t purchase anything.
It’s the same game but they added a 2 so they could lock skins behind money as they couldn’t do that on OW1 - they attempted it in OW1 on the first event and locked skins behind lootboxes for first summer games and people went insane because they said nothing would be locked behind a paywall lol.
In a legal sense, probably not, unless you can prove that they knew that misrepresenting their product would improve financial returns and this had an adverse effect on consumers. Not impossible, but it’s a stretch because you’d need to show a clear relationship between PvE advertising and non-PvE content being purchased.
In common layperson understanding, yeah, I’d say it is
you could make a sound argument for a “perhaps”
BUT then again
ow2 is a F2P game
thus the whole “case” crumbles
specially when even if its archives 2.0 that IS pve…
No. None of the stuff they’ve ever demoed or showed they were working on was advertised as part of the product you purchased or invested in. If you did so assuming that, then that is your own mistake.
It would be like Ford demoing a new electric car so you invest money into Ford stock, and they eventually cancel the car or it gets shifted to a different product. Something being demoed isn’t an obligation to ship it.
They did however, advertise that OW2 will have PvE, and as far as I can tell it still will. Story missions, among other things in the future. Granted, it’s not what people were expected, and I’m sure most people, including myself, are highly disappointed. But they’ve never falsely advertised anything.
well no they would never actually be able to get in a courtroom in the first place. Too sue anyone or any business in a court of law you must show a personal or business loss of a financial, physical, or truly emotional nature. That is an absolute with no way around it. Blizzard has produced none of these unless you want to argue *emotional damage.
Blizzard never claimed anything contained pve at the time of sale so they can never really be sued unfortunately in that regard.
(this applies to the US maybe not other countries though)
That’s how I see it, based on having no legal experience whatsoever. They used the PvE to generate “hype” to get people invested into the game purchasing battle passes and skins etc. If they were honest then people would be far less likely to put money into it.
Having said that, I assume blizzards legal team would have been all over this so…
Technically, you don’t have to buy something outright for it to be false advertising. This is the proof a plaintiff must show that they were falsely advertised to:
The [defendant] made false or misleading statements as to their own products (or another’s);
Actual deception occurred, or at least a tendency to deceive a substantial portion of the intended audience;
The deception is [material] in that it is likely to influence purchasing decisions;
It describes false advertising as being likely to influence a purchasing decision. One could argue that the in-game items (skins, battle pass, charms, etc.) were marketed to an audience as a part of a game that was never fully developed while the devs withheld information of their decision to not develop the PvE part of their game for about a year. Doesn’t mean just because OW2 is F2P that it doesn’t market other aspects of the game that are purchasable with irl money, those aspects whose purchase was influenced by the marketing of a PvE section of the game which never came to fruition, the lack of said fruition whose knowledge was withheld by the devs for close to a year from their customer base.
It’s not that unlike that cavalcade of promises made by no man’s sky or any of the early access/kickstarter games. The only thing you’re guaranteed to receive is what you currently have
that is the proof to show false advertising unfortunately the proof need to get a case in a courtroom at all is an individual or business much show physical, emotional, or financial loss. that is essential to our legal system in the US.
Agree. Plenty of people, me included, forced themselves to collect skins in PVP and even spent money thinking that they would be able to enjoy them later in PVE. It was all a big miserable waste.
There is a financial loss… the financial loss is the purchase of in-game items whose customer-base was marketed a PvE aspect of OW2 that will never come true, the knowledge of the cancellation of said PvE being withheld for a year by the devs/execs from their player base.
