The “Memphis Mafia” and Running a Company
This is just a short news post about credit card overcharges at Warhammer Online. It’s so peripheral to the “business” of video games that I don’t have much original to add from a legal standpoint. But I do have a short personal commentary at the end(after the jump) .
Mythic Entertainment has double and triple-billed some customers. Here’s a sampling of the dozen or so blogs I’ve found that have mentioned the over-billing “issue”.
Broken Toys is always reliable to have a snarky take on a subject, and they didn’t spare Mythic Entertainment.
Massively Multiverse has a critical article about the incident(s) and the response thus far.
Grimnir’s Grudge has the actual credit card charges scanned onto the site…
Slashdot Online has a mention of the alleged overcharges.
No Prisoners, No Mercy has it’s own take.
WasdStomp Gaming Blog talks about reading about it on Twitter, and then discovering it hit him too. Favorite quote: “It only took them 23 seconds to charge my account 16 times, but I may not see my money for two months.”
And now, for the usual suspects, Kotaku has an article on this incident, as well as Gamasutra.
THE OFFICIAL RESPONSE from Mythic Entertainment. They do assert “To be clear, at no point during this event was there a security breach or was subscriber account information compromised.”
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Personal commentary: Goodwill has been characterized as “Every possible advantage that has been acquired by a firm in carrying on it’s business” (Mills v Rich, 1930, Mich). Personally, I look to the example of the “Memphis Mafia” that Elvis had around him.
When Elvis and Priscilla split up in the 1970s, there were not to my knowledge a ton of tabloid articles about the subject. Rumors, innuendo, but there were no “inside sources”. You can look it up, I could be wrong, but my point is that Elvis, as the king of rock and roll, had “his people” who ran “his business” and there were mistakes, sure, but those mistakes were taken care of internally. You can read the Mythic Entertainment official statement and see that it seems they did everything right, yet “somehow” people were billed hundreds of dollars (each) in a mistake that has never happened before or will again.
That’s a relief. It shows great resolve they’ve immediately made a move to repair the overcharges and immediately refund the money. But where is the resolve that “heads will roll” and people will “get a good talking-to”? I read a commentary that said people who a $300 charge would overdraft them should stop playing MMOs anyway. With the way debit cards are set up, and the lack of consumer protections built into them, I would hope no one has thousands of dollars available on an online-used debit card! A couple of hundred unexpectedly disappearing SHOULD cause you an issue on a simple debit card; at least enough to make you notice. I’ve read the full “official notice” on the site and it’s a little more sympathetic than some of the blogs would have you believe; but it’s not the words but the “follow-through”. I’ll update this news item whenever there’s a significant change; keep in mind this is a dated post, and the online gaming blogs are your best source to follow developments on a day-to-day basis.
Photo Courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ninette_luz/3413779145/ ; Creative Commons, some rights reserved.
Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.
Tags: credit card, EA, Elvis, Mythic Entertainment, overbilling, Warhammer Online
The big problem here is that money is always a touchy subject. Doing something that causes someone financial harm adds another dimension to the problem: one of violated trust.
One thing I did when running Meridian 59 was to have an external billing provider. They had the time and energy to ensure payment information was safe whereas I couldn’t guarantee that. What ultimately caused us to shut down Near Death Studios was the lack of a billing provider. We had a merchant account, but I didn’t want to have to deal with billing information and situations like this if our billing software didn’t work quite right.
Of course, in every argument you get people arguing across the spectrum. I agree with you, if you use a debit card, best to NOT keep a lot of money in the account “just in case”. Actually, I wouldn’t ever use a debit card online; most of my offline transactions are made with a credit card because there is so much more protection afforded to them that aren’t to your debit card. It just takes a bit of self-restraint to make sure you don’t spend more than you can pay back on the credit card.
jaymoffitt Reply:
April 28th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
I like the idea of an external billing provider. You’ll note that it seemed Mythic in their “official response” seemed to distance themselves from that group. I took specific issue with that tact; if you hired them, you can fire them. If it’s a one-time “Act of God” (in legal terms), then prove it convincingly in your response.
Sorry it took me so long to respond to the comment, but frankly, your comments usually stand on their own and I agreed with most everything you said. Thanks for the input and your comments always enlighten me.
Jay