RGeezy911 wrote:I'm just a volunteer moderator here, so I cannot tell you the details surrounding the metaserver. I'm sure Introversion would love to hire more people to help them out, and ensure all of their products are running as smooth as possible. Unfortunately, they've had a very rough history which might be why they are hesitant to hire.
Just my thoughts, Cheers!
EDIT: Also, the EULA states the product can be faulty. It can be used against the customer because the EULA is freely viewable to everyone who visits the website. Therefore, a customer buying a faulty product, and knows the product is faulty, is not covered under the SoGA. I'm not sure how much of a defense this holds in court, but it's what I was originally pointing out. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough!
Trading Standards, and the courts do not accept, and take an very dim view of, companies using general boilerplate contract terms to avoid their responsibilities towards statutory rights. If it was made clear in the general advertising materials that there were frequent issues preventing proper operation of the multiplayer aspect of the game, and that the company no longer actively supported that, there would be no case to answer. As it is, it's still being advertised and sold as a fully functional multiplayer game, with no specific caveats in the advertising.
To use a different example. If a company sells you a car and says up front "the air conditioning is broken, we're not prepared to fix it", that's fine and there's no legal issues. If they sell you a car for much more than scrap value and only say "stuff might be broken, we don't care", they are potentially liable. If they sell you a car for close to scrap value, informing the customer and endorsing the invoice with "sold for spares or repair only, not warranted as roadworthy or merchantable quality", it's caveat emptor. Being non-specific is where the problem arises and the company continues to be liable.
I'm aware of IV's history, and am keen to see them continue as a success story. I'm glad that they are being very cautious and avoiding rapid expansion, that's extremely prudent management. I don't want them to spend a huge amount of time and resource on this, but I do feel that they have a responsibility to spend a very small amount of time to take a quick look at the server and give it a kick if required. If the problems are something deeper, which can't be fixed with a quick kick in the right spot, then just letting people know that would go a long way to maintaining their reputation.
It's slow and hard to gain reputation, but it can be lost quickly and easily.