Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-26829117-20160522124555/@comment-26829117-20160523065652

1.136.96.145 wrote: For the list, Australia. Have 2 games iOS & Android, different ID's. Both now get 20 per day at exactly 24 hours since the last batch was watched.

@Sirebel - I know we are all hacked off about the ad reduction but I don't understand your argument about Consumer Law breaches? I am not a lawyer but I don't think there is a legal argument you can make. If you pay for Gold and don't receive it then there is a breach of service as you have not received what you have paid for. However, there is no legal right to receive free gold. It's free and it is entirely upto the distributor if you get it or not.

You say that there is a 'recovery' of gold from EA but this is not true. They don't take Gold from your account. Ok, so it limits additional free gold but again, it's free, it's a give away not a right.

I don't see any legal breach of a Consumer law here, just a bad business model where poor customers who pay for GC get treated worse than those who haven't. It is no different to having different levels in a subscriptin service, not everyone is equal.

The game is free, the gold is free, you haven't paid for anything you haven't received. You aren't obliged to play the game, you have entered into it agreeing to the terms of service and you can leave when you choose to do so without incurring a loss. Other than mass complaining from the community there is really no other remedy to the situation. If enough people stopped playing then it would become unfunded and the game would stop. In these cases, Consumer responses change behaviour, not legal arguments.

And for reference, Terms of Service are here http://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBTERMS/US/en/PC/

I'm unclear why you are hacked off if you are still receiving 20 ads per day. However, let me put it to you in a more straightforward way:

If I purchase 1000GC (at the eye watering cost of £79.99) then after 66 days of playing the game we both have exactly the same amount of new gold ((20 * d) = 1000 + (5 * d) where d is the number of days, solve for d). So after 66 days, what have I received for my £79.99?

Now if time was of the essence then I would agree with you that I did receive something, I received my gold earlier, but it isn't and that isn't how the gold was sold to me. If the gold was sold with an expiry date of 66 days then again you might have a point. However, none of these conditions were stipulated on my purchase and if they were I would never have spent any money with the firemonkeys.

Basically, purchasing of gold is a deception as you don't actually end up with more gold than anyone else. This, in most legal systems, is termed fraud.

Free gold isn't free gold, you are being paid to watch adverts for which EA receive revenue from advertisers. The reason adverts are limited is because EA only receive so much per advert from the advertisers and want to maintain their value. If they had more advertising revenue then we would see more adverts, it's not a difficult butisness model to understand and one I've implemented for different companies at different times.

I shall be seeking legal advice but I do need to find more examples of people who have bought gold and still receive 20 ads or have not bought gold and only get 5 ads (primarily in the UK) The exceptions are what will prove the rule.

One thing that really annoys me about this game is the inherent unfairness that two people playing the game in exactly the same way, but at different times, don't get the same experience. I don't understand why anyone would start playing this game today as the gold required to get to 100% completion is now totally unrealistic. Do the maths, it's just weird.