These lawsuits are starting to become a fixture around here...
It's been quite a while since Fallout 4 first graced the world. In fact, is so far back that I didn't even have this blog to talk about it in, thus I never officially got my thoughts out on this blog regarding the latest entry in my favourite post-apocalyptic franchise. (In short; the gameplay is fun but whole package is not a patch on New Vegas) And it seems I wasn't the only person in the world who never quite finished their business with Fallout 4, if judging by a recent class action lawsuit one man filed at Bethesda right in the middle of their transition to Microsoft management. That's some rough timing, isn't it? A few months after Bethesda hits a 7.5 billion rainfall they get a lawsuit shoved down their throat for a title they put out in 2015? Heck, were I a conspiracy theorist I might even purpose that this could be a case of someone reading a headline and rushing to stick together a lawsuit that takes advantage of it as quickly as possible. But I'm sure that isn't the case and this is a completely heartfelt grievance. You know, the sort of heartfelt grievance which can only be soothed with money. (Yeah I don't really have much respect for lawsuit chasers) But let's look at the details first and then decide where on the fence this lands.
Let me see, this is a case about some of Fallout 4's DLC and- oh, I've got it. This is about the DLC packs that straight up didn't work and which were never so much as looked at by Bethesda; isn't it? Remember those? The 'Arena' pack which pretended as though it would allow players to build extravagant arenas and pit NPC's against each other, even showing us a fabricated trailer of this all operating in flawless tandem, only for the full game to feature a pathetically underdeveloped and unworking framework that even modders won't touch with a tenfoot pole. I mean, coming around to calling that a false advertising issue my be factually correct, but I think it'll be really hard to secure that in court. Advertising laws are notoriously tricky to pin down and if you try to slip in the intricacies of game software, baring in mind this is a case that'll likely be bought before clueless normal folk, then this is pretty much destined to be a dead-in-the-water suit. Huh, it's not about that? In fact, that's not even close and the fact that I dedicated an entire paragraph to whining about an unrelated gripe is honestly distracting? Well maybe I'm just a little bit enduringly miffed and someone should whip up a class action about it. Heck, while we're at it we can whip up a suit against Zenimax too for just being plain confusing. (So they're the parent company but not always the publisher. Because sometimes Bethesda publishes it themselves, but then aren't they also doing that when Zenimax publishes? My head hurts...)
Okay so what's this really about then? Well it seems that the plaintiff is actually incensed about what he sees as a breach of contract with the consumer, and it comes in relation to the Season Pass. Ah- I get it! It's about the time where Bethesda drove up the price of their season pass 2 months after launch in a frightfully transparent attempt to force consumers into snapping them up. Hmm? Wrong again? Damn, I need to keep my mouth shut about the many weird Bethesda-issued red flags that really should have warned us that 76 was coming... No, this is actually a situation where the plaintiff believes that his Season Pass didn't grant him all the DLC of the game like it was promised. But he did receive all the content which is officially listed as DLC, what that pack didn't provide him with, however, was content from the Creation Club.
Creation Club, for those that don't remember, was Bethesda's attempt at creating their own in-house and curated mod storefront which would provide bite-sized mods to players in exchange for small prices. Essentially it was a microtransaction store for a single player game, but don't let Bethesda catch you calling it that because they'll deny it adamantly. (They got a rebranded name and everything!) Through the Creation Club, Bethesda reached out to popular mod developers and commissioned special pieces of DLC from them which was then flogged through the Creation Club, completing Bethesda's long held master plan of profiteering off their avid modding community. (Hey, at least the creators were seeing some funds too. That's always nice.) It's also, by this lawsuit's reasoning, a blatant attempt to circumvent the promise of Fallout 4's season pass and sell more content on the side. (And when you put it like that, he's kinda got a point.)
But obviously there are numerous examples of Season Passes who, mid way through a game's life cycle, stop offering content in favour of a second season pass; that's just part of the grift, baby! Yet as this plaintiff describes it, in those instance there has almost always been some sort of clause in the fine print that pre-empts this end of service, whereas for Fallout 4 that wasn't the case. (Can't confirm whether or not that's true but if it is; wow, did Bethesda's law team drop the ball on that one. You wrote a contract without clear escape clauses? What are ya, nuts?!) But even if that is the case, does that make Creation Club content another form of DLC? And does either even matter when it comes to dragging up Bethesda before the face of the law? Surely they themselves are the ones you decide these concepts and gives them value; thus the expectations of outside parties are responsible entirely to that party?
That's just my cold read, and bear in mind this comes from someone with next to no knowledge of any country's legal proceedings, thus I can hardly quote my expertise here. Someone certainly believes they have some sort of a chance for a court battle or, ideally, a settlement, else we wouldn't be talking about this today. For their part the accusing party seem to be going out of their way to draw up documents and slides helpfully explaining what DLC is for the courts, so it doesn't seem like they're teeing this up to fail. Someone is trying to prove that Bethesda has tricked it's entire customer base and it really does have me wondering about what sort of consequences this suit will have if it ever does make it to court. I mean, would this make the term DLC legally binding? Are seasons passes legally binding? Because if he's just looking for a 'false advertising' claim then, as I implied, this is a case going nowhere fast.
Beneath it all I am left asking that question, however; Is the Creation Club content just DLC with a different name? I always thought of it under the described pitch of 'micro content', even if the prices themselves were questionable, but looking at the stuff on offer: skins, missions, new weapons; this is the sort of stuff that other developers would call full blown DLC, so what makes it different for Fallout 4? (And Skyrim Special Edition, while we're at it.) Just because Bethesda had, up until then, held themselves to a higher standard when it came to content they'd charge their fans for, that doesn't shake the fact that commonly established market parlance has attributed a value and expectations to the sort of content that the Creation Club was selling. Bethesda can call them 'Berties every flavour extra content' for all they want, it doesn't change the fact that this content is essentially DLC. And perhaps the very fact that these content snippets are 'sold' is what makes them fundamentally different from 'Mods' as well. As for the legality of season pass promises, that all sounds frightfully boring to me. (I don't really care how that ends up.)
And of course behind this whole issue is the manner of poor timing because this hits right in the middle of a transitory period for Mircrosoft. Some people have thrown their two-cents in the matter to wonder if this will interfere with the deal, but that's obviously playing things alarmist; Microsoft dumped 7.5 billion into this acquisition, they're not about to let a silly little case like this get in the way of things. Still, it does paint Bethesda's 'altruistic' attitude towards its mod community in a slightly more negative light, which does actually reflect back on Mircosoft simply because they so openly supported Bethesda's efforts. Still, it's not like this is by any means the worst press that Bethesda has endured in recent years, so they'll weather it all just fine no matter which ways the courts end up ruling. (provided this even makes it that far) Perhaps ultimately all this will do is make the audience that tiny bit more dubious the next time we see Creation Club pop up, presumably in StarField. (Just how will Bethesda profiteer off that property?)
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