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Can someone please explain to me how this is not just a complete travesty and perversion of settlements? >In a way, the digital giveaway could even be seen as

Can someone please explain to me how this is not just a complete travesty and perversion of settlements? >In a way, the digital giveaway could even be seen as an effective promotion, luring players back to the games and creating the potential for them to spend more on additional microtransactions down the road. That. That's the part I need explained to me. Get punished, but use the punishment to hook players even more. How is this allowed?

jka 6y ago
Similar strategies have been used before; seven or so years after opening a lawsuit about a data breach at Zappos, claimants were offered 10% coupons for the Zappos online store. https://www.zdnet.com/article/zappos-data-breach-settlement-users-get-10-store-discount-lawyers-get-1-6m/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/zappos-data-breach-settlement-...
- dr_orpheus 6y ago
  Yep, I remember getting Ticketmaster credit for their class action lawsuit.
  - ourmandave 6y ago
    I owned an '76 Chevy pickup and GM sent a coupon worth $1000 off the purchase of a brand new pickup as a settlement. Never used it, but I assume Dealer Keeps All Incentives applied. (They had side-saddle gas tanks that increased the chances of a fire in an accident.) https://www.lieffcabraser.com/defect/gm-pickup-fuel-tanks/ https://www.lieffcabraser.com/defect/gm-pickup-fuel-tanks/
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    I got tons of free tickets in that one. I was never able to find an event to spend them on. What a fiasco.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Because the regulators are completely captured.
- ChicagoBoy11 6y ago
  What regulators, though? Class sued the company and agreed to these ridiculous terms. I'd see a role to question maybe the integrity of the lawyers accepting the deal, or the mechanics of entering/disputing/leaving class action lawsuits in this world where now class members can easily reach into the many, many millions. But, like another commenter posted, if these were just two parties agreeing to this (which in some sense it is), we wouldn't have a problem with this at all.
  - chriswarbo 6y ago
    > What regulators, though? Online gambling regulators.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't post ideological battle comments and flamebait to HN. There's no information here, just a trope repetition; that makes this strictly a discussion-lowering comment. We penalize accounts that post like this, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dmurray 6y ago
It's legal because both sides agreed to settle for it. If it was an individual suing Epic, and they agreed to go away in return for some shiny digital magic beans, you wouldn't see anything wrong with that. What's different if a million customers settle for it? Customers can opt out of the class action, or start their own competing one. What would be a real problem is if other customers opted out, sued Epic individually, didn't settle, and the judge used the "payout" from the previous settlement to decide what a fair compensation would be. That hasn't happened here.
- A12-B 6y ago
  Lol, I'm sure every single person in the class action suit agreed to the settlement, and otherwise would be able to afford to sue them again. Right. Settlements are decided by a single class representative, and other class members are often not given notice of their right to opt-out or counter-sue.
  - sudhirj 6y ago
    And that's why you'd opt into a class action in the first place. You have a problem, you elect someone to handle it for you, give them decision making power and accept the outcome they've been able to achieve. It's just democracy, no?
    - Arubis 6y ago
      All of this makes sense except for the bit about democracy. That's unrelated; this happens to be a process that's in use here, but it would work just as well in a monarchy.
- njharman 6y ago
  There are lots of things that are still illegal even if both sides agree to it. Slavery for instance. Also all the things covered by consumer protection litigation, which top commenter is probably thinking of. The conditions/clauses of the agreement must not be illegal.
- alasdair_ 6y ago
josho 6y ago
> Get punished But, this isn't even a punishment. In game currency isn't real. It doesn't cost the company anything. So, this is 'be found guilty and be forced to go back to your junkies and give them their next hit of crack for free.' I can imagine the ad banners: "Thousands of players will win new loot, will you be one? Play to find out".
- remram 6y ago
  I'm being pedantic, but no currency is "real". This one allows players to buy thing, which they are likely to want to do since they have in the past (and cared enough to start a class action over). You deciding that those goods are "hits of crack" is entirely subjective. However it is true that it only costs Epic the lost revenue from selling those v-bucks. If a freely-tradable currency was emitted to cover debt, you'd have the penalty of devaluation, but that is not the case here. Of course that makes no difference for the players, that's only about punishment.
  - Krasnol 6y ago
    > I'm being pedantic, but no currency is "real". It is real in the sense that you can chose where you spend it. While this is like coupons. It may have value but that is very limited and therefore does not qualify as currency.
    - tvprod1203 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store Somehow feels familiar.
  - joecot 6y ago
    One time I bought a Nissan Versa. It had a Continuously Variable Transmission in it. They knew that they broke constantly, and they sold it anyway. They lied to me and said my transmission was fine a few months before the warranty was over, so they wouldn't have to replace it. Years after I traded that car in and it went immediately to a junk yard, Nissan settled a class action lawsuit over it. The compensation? A voucher for a few thousand towards a new Nissan. I promise that when I joined a class action lawsuit over Nissan screwing me over, my goal wasn't to buy more Nissans. I would hazard a guess that many players who felt cheated enough by Epic to join a lawsuit against them likely feel similar.
jayd16 6y ago
Is it even about punishment? This is a civil case about loot-boxes. The settlement is to pay off the lawyers and make the case go away. I'm not that morally opposed to loot boxes and I don't believe any laws were broken. What kind of punishment are you looking for?
- _Microft 6y ago
  I hope the lawyers are also paid with in-game currency.
  - alpaca128 6y ago
    Or exposure
- stuaxo 6y ago
  The point of the settlement is to hit a company hard enough so they stop before doing something like this again. Using in game currency and not real money is absolutely not going to achieve this.
  - curryst 6y ago
    No, that would be the purpose of a judgement. This isn't a judgement, it's a settlement. To Epic, the purpose is to make this go away. To those suing, the point is take a small but guaranteed windfall rather than risk a lengthy and uncertain court process.
- njharman 6y ago
  A disincentive to continuing the activity the class action suit was brought for. In theory, class action lawsuits are either or both 1) compensate victims 2) "force" company to stop activity society deems "bad" Victims care about #1, the rest of us want #2 so we don't become victims in the future. In this case, stop exploiting addiction and other human psychology for profit via loot boxes.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
The question is whether the class action suit's intent is to punish them (as in, did they commit a crime?), or to get compensation for their behaviour. If the latter, then the suing parties probably agreed to them settling via in game currency.
chaostheory 6y ago
It reminds me of how Nintendo settled US AG lawsuits on price fixing with coupons for Nintendo products. There's definitely a precedent. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-26-fi-276-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-26-fi-276-st...
rhino369 6y ago
>How is this allowed? You are pretty much assuming they are liable for the allegations in the complaint against them. Settlements for low value are a sign that plaintiffs view their chances of success (including being awarded substantial damages) as being low. So one way of looking at this is, Epic did nothing wrong, and they are giving away essentially nothing to make the plaintiff go away. If plaintiffs thought they had a good case, they wouldn't take monopoly money.
- DevKoala 6y ago
  They probably saw their chances of winning against EPIC’s legal team being very low. That legal team is stacked atm.
- jonas21 6y ago
  Notably, the attorneys aren't taking monopoly money. > Additionally, the attorneys who brought the lawsuit (see FAQ 10) will ask the Court to award them attorney’s fees and expenses in an amount not to exceed $11,300,000.00, for the time, expense and effort expended in investigating the facts, litigation, and negotiating the Settlement. The Class Representatives will also ask the Court for a payment of up to $75,000 collectively for their time, effort, and service in this matter. https://www.epiclootboxsettlement.com/Home/Faq https://www.epiclootboxsettlement.com/Home/Faq
  - ccleve 6y ago
    The lawyers get real money, and the victims get fake money. That's the real scandal. Our tort system is broken.
    - gruez 6y ago
      Is the risk-adjusted price that the lawyers are being paid unusually high? Lawyers being expensive doesn't really mean "Our tort system is broken".
      - freeone3000 6y ago
mc32 6y ago
This would be like the big tobacco settlement being: big tobacco will pay smokers 100 billion tobacco bucks redeemable for cigarettes at an exchange rate of 100 tobacco bucks per cigarette.
- shagie 6y ago
  With cigarettes, there's at least a real product there that has some cost to the company that made it. With epic game currency, it's just a bunch of bits that could be created without any resource use by the company. They could create 10x more game currency at no more cost to the company.
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Some dev has to run an INSERT statement. And maybe a test case. Cheap.
vmception 6y ago
This is common and there is some psychology involved in how to create these scenarios. Basically you can scare the government into thinking the state’s actions will reduce competition (because your company wont exist anymore if you pay). The government uses so much energy trying to create/continue private sector competition that they don’t want to be directly responsible for creating closer to a monopoly of the remaining companies in the sector. So they’ll accept these consequence free settlements, or even get behind settlements that actually are advertisements. The court here is granting approval of the settlement.
nodesocket 6y ago
Remember this next time the HN crowd gets their pitch forks out against Apple and their dispute with Epic. Who is really the “evil” company here.
- jpambrun 6y ago
  They can both be evil.
retox 6y ago
It's like a casino settling with victims of an addiction machine with tokens for other games that can't be cashed out.
qwertycrackers 6y ago
It's because this is a settlement out-of-court. Basically the lawyers thought the case was really weak so they took what they could get. Or perhaps they were corrupt.

jka 6y ago

Similar strategies have been used before; seven or so years after opening a lawsuit about a data breach at Zappos, claimants were offered 10% coupons for the Zappos online store. https://www.zdnet.com/article/zappos-data-breach-settlement-users-get-10-store-discount-lawyers-get-1-6m/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/zappos-data-breach-settlement-...

dr_orpheus 6y ago
Yep, I remember getting Ticketmaster credit for their class action lawsuit.
- ourmandave 6y ago
  I owned an '76 Chevy pickup and GM sent a coupon worth $1000 off the purchase of a brand new pickup as a settlement. Never used it, but I assume Dealer Keeps All Incentives applied. (They had side-saddle gas tanks that increased the chances of a fire in an accident.) https://www.lieffcabraser.com/defect/gm-pickup-fuel-tanks/ https://www.lieffcabraser.com/defect/gm-pickup-fuel-tanks/
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  I got tons of free tickets in that one. I was never able to find an event to spend them on. What a fiasco.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Because the regulators are completely captured.

ChicagoBoy11 6y ago
What regulators, though? Class sued the company and agreed to these ridiculous terms. I'd see a role to question maybe the integrity of the lawyers accepting the deal, or the mechanics of entering/disputing/leaving class action lawsuits in this world where now class members can easily reach into the many, many millions. But, like another commenter posted, if these were just two parties agreeing to this (which in some sense it is), we wouldn't have a problem with this at all.
- chriswarbo 6y ago
  > What regulators, though? Online gambling regulators.
dang 6y ago
Please don't post ideological battle comments and flamebait to HN. There's no information here, just a trope repetition; that makes this strictly a discussion-lowering comment. We penalize accounts that post like this, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dmurray 6y ago

It's legal because both sides agreed to settle for it. If it was an individual suing Epic, and they agreed to go away in return for some shiny digital magic beans, you wouldn't see anything wrong with that. What's different if a million customers settle for it? Customers can opt out of the class action, or start their own competing one. What would be a real problem is if other customers opted out, sued Epic individually, didn't settle, and the judge used the "payout" from the previous settlement to decide what a fair compensation would be. That hasn't happened here.

A12-B 6y ago
Lol, I'm sure every single person in the class action suit agreed to the settlement, and otherwise would be able to afford to sue them again. Right. Settlements are decided by a single class representative, and other class members are often not given notice of their right to opt-out or counter-sue.
- sudhirj 6y ago
  And that's why you'd opt into a class action in the first place. You have a problem, you elect someone to handle it for you, give them decision making power and accept the outcome they've been able to achieve. It's just democracy, no?
  - Arubis 6y ago
    All of this makes sense except for the bit about democracy. That's unrelated; this happens to be a process that's in use here, but it would work just as well in a monarchy.
njharman 6y ago
There are lots of things that are still illegal even if both sides agree to it. Slavery for instance. Also all the things covered by consumer protection litigation, which top commenter is probably thinking of. The conditions/clauses of the agreement must not be illegal.
alasdair_ 6y ago

josho 6y ago

> Get punished But, this isn't even a punishment. In game currency isn't real. It doesn't cost the company anything. So, this is 'be found guilty and be forced to go back to your junkies and give them their next hit of crack for free.' I can imagine the ad banners: "Thousands of players will win new loot, will you be one? Play to find out".

remram 6y ago
I'm being pedantic, but no currency is "real". This one allows players to buy thing, which they are likely to want to do since they have in the past (and cared enough to start a class action over). You deciding that those goods are "hits of crack" is entirely subjective. However it is true that it only costs Epic the lost revenue from selling those v-bucks. If a freely-tradable currency was emitted to cover debt, you'd have the penalty of devaluation, but that is not the case here. Of course that makes no difference for the players, that's only about punishment.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  > I'm being pedantic, but no currency is "real". It is real in the sense that you can chose where you spend it. While this is like coupons. It may have value but that is very limited and therefore does not qualify as currency.
  - tvprod1203 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store Somehow feels familiar.
- joecot 6y ago
  One time I bought a Nissan Versa. It had a Continuously Variable Transmission in it. They knew that they broke constantly, and they sold it anyway. They lied to me and said my transmission was fine a few months before the warranty was over, so they wouldn't have to replace it. Years after I traded that car in and it went immediately to a junk yard, Nissan settled a class action lawsuit over it. The compensation? A voucher for a few thousand towards a new Nissan. I promise that when I joined a class action lawsuit over Nissan screwing me over, my goal wasn't to buy more Nissans. I would hazard a guess that many players who felt cheated enough by Epic to join a lawsuit against them likely feel similar.

jayd16 6y ago

Is it even about punishment? This is a civil case about loot-boxes. The settlement is to pay off the lawyers and make the case go away. I'm not that morally opposed to loot boxes and I don't believe any laws were broken. What kind of punishment are you looking for?

_Microft 6y ago
I hope the lawyers are also paid with in-game currency.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  Or exposure
stuaxo 6y ago
The point of the settlement is to hit a company hard enough so they stop before doing something like this again. Using in game currency and not real money is absolutely not going to achieve this.
- curryst 6y ago
  No, that would be the purpose of a judgement. This isn't a judgement, it's a settlement. To Epic, the purpose is to make this go away. To those suing, the point is take a small but guaranteed windfall rather than risk a lengthy and uncertain court process.
njharman 6y ago
A disincentive to continuing the activity the class action suit was brought for. In theory, class action lawsuits are either or both 1) compensate victims 2) "force" company to stop activity society deems "bad" Victims care about #1, the rest of us want #2 so we don't become victims in the future. In this case, stop exploiting addiction and other human psychology for profit via loot boxes.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

The question is whether the class action suit's intent is to punish them (as in, did they commit a crime?), or to get compensation for their behaviour. If the latter, then the suing parties probably agreed to them settling via in game currency.

chaostheory 6y ago

It reminds me of how Nintendo settled US AG lawsuits on price fixing with coupons for Nintendo products. There's definitely a precedent. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-26-fi-276-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-26-fi-276-st...

rhino369 6y ago

>How is this allowed? You are pretty much assuming they are liable for the allegations in the complaint against them. Settlements for low value are a sign that plaintiffs view their chances of success (including being awarded substantial damages) as being low. So one way of looking at this is, Epic did nothing wrong, and they are giving away essentially nothing to make the plaintiff go away. If plaintiffs thought they had a good case, they wouldn't take monopoly money.

DevKoala 6y ago
They probably saw their chances of winning against EPIC’s legal team being very low. That legal team is stacked atm.
jonas21 6y ago
Notably, the attorneys aren't taking monopoly money. > Additionally, the attorneys who brought the lawsuit (see FAQ 10) will ask the Court to award them attorney’s fees and expenses in an amount not to exceed $11,300,000.00, for the time, expense and effort expended in investigating the facts, litigation, and negotiating the Settlement. The Class Representatives will also ask the Court for a payment of up to $75,000 collectively for their time, effort, and service in this matter. https://www.epiclootboxsettlement.com/Home/Faq https://www.epiclootboxsettlement.com/Home/Faq
- ccleve 6y ago
  The lawyers get real money, and the victims get fake money. That's the real scandal. Our tort system is broken.
  - gruez 6y ago
    Is the risk-adjusted price that the lawyers are being paid unusually high? Lawyers being expensive doesn't really mean "Our tort system is broken".
    - freeone3000 6y ago

mc32 6y ago

This would be like the big tobacco settlement being: big tobacco will pay smokers 100 billion tobacco bucks redeemable for cigarettes at an exchange rate of 100 tobacco bucks per cigarette.

shagie 6y ago
With cigarettes, there's at least a real product there that has some cost to the company that made it. With epic game currency, it's just a bunch of bits that could be created without any resource use by the company. They could create 10x more game currency at no more cost to the company.
- edoceo 6y ago
  Some dev has to run an INSERT statement. And maybe a test case. Cheap.

vmception 6y ago

This is common and there is some psychology involved in how to create these scenarios. Basically you can scare the government into thinking the state’s actions will reduce competition (because your company wont exist anymore if you pay). The government uses so much energy trying to create/continue private sector competition that they don’t want to be directly responsible for creating closer to a monopoly of the remaining companies in the sector. So they’ll accept these consequence free settlements, or even get behind settlements that actually are advertisements. The court here is granting approval of the settlement.

nodesocket 6y ago

Remember this next time the HN crowd gets their pitch forks out against Apple and their dispute with Epic. Who is really the “evil” company here.

jpambrun 6y ago
They can both be evil.

retox 6y ago

It's like a casino settling with victims of an addiction machine with tokens for other games that can't be cashed out.

qwertycrackers 6y ago

It's because this is a settlement out-of-court. Basically the lawyers thought the case was really weak so they took what they could get. Or perhaps they were corrupt.