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Class action against Halo 3 for being "defective"
UncleSporky
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Someone told me they heard on the news that there was a massive Halo 3 recall because it was crashing/destroying 360s. I thought this was a bit strange, the game having been out for a long while now, so I hopped on the internet to check it out. No mention of it anywhere! I googled it and finally found info on the second page. Breaking Halo 3 news on the second page of Google?
Well they got it wrong, it wasn't a recall, it was a class action lawsuit. That ended up on the news for some reason.
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/11/23/halo-3-crashes-xbox-360-microsoft-bungie-face-class-action-suit/
I had heard that the game might freeze or tax the 360 to RROD as much as any game, but I figured this was a common enough occurance (or at least known and not unexpected). I mean, it's a game, sometimes there are bugs and sometimes there are minor system/disc imperfections. Apparently this is not good enough for Randy Nunez.
If he isn't a lawyer then I bet his daddy is.
Well they got it wrong, it wasn't a recall, it was a class action lawsuit. That ended up on the news for some reason.
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/11/23/halo-3-crashes-xbox-360-microsoft-bungie-face-class-action-suit/
A class action suit has been filed by a California resident against Bungie, the game developer of “Halo 3”, and Microsoft, claiming their blockbuster video game is not fit for its purpose of being played on an Xbox 360.
The defendants have breached the “statutory implied warranty of merchantability” and “statutory implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose,” the suit claims.
Halo 3 is supposed to run and function smoothly with the Xbox 360, but on the contrary, it consistently causes the Xbox 360 to ‘crash,’ ‘freeze,’ or ‘lock up’ while the game is being played, said Randy Nunez, the one who filed the class action suit.
Furthermore, the suit also asserts “Although faced with repeated and mounting consumer complaints and inquiries concerning this operational flaw in the Halo 3, Defendants have failed to recall Halo 3 or otherwise remedy its failure to function on the Xbox 360.”
The defendants raked in close to $300 million in the first week of Halo 3 released, according to the suit.
The class action suit seeks over $5 million in damages.
I had heard that the game might freeze or tax the 360 to RROD as much as any game, but I figured this was a common enough occurance (or at least known and not unexpected). I mean, it's a game, sometimes there are bugs and sometimes there are minor system/disc imperfections. Apparently this is not good enough for Randy Nunez.
If he isn't a lawyer then I bet his daddy is.
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But seriously, apparently there is some sort of implied contract that a game will work flawlessly in whatever system you buy it for. At least this guy thinks so.
That smiley caused my computer to crash! I'm gonna take you to the cleaners.
Your post offended me, I'm gonna sue the shit out of you, fucker!
Seriously though, this lawsuit is fucking retarded. I hate humanity.
Being a stupid American myself, I take offense to that, sir. Not all stupid Americans are stupid. In fact, I believe I have met a few stupid people from your 'united kingdom' who are stupid as well.
Its almost quotable.
Also, don't you need.. y'know.. more than one person for a class action lawsuit?
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
He is multiple man!
Stupidity knows no nationality.
Also, this guy is dumb. There's probably a lot of 360s failing during Halo 3 because a lot of fucking people bought Halo 3.
Logic, motherfuckers!
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
What a bunch of clowns. I don't recall viewing a waiver stating that halo 3 is omniscient and the disc version of God. Where were you when Warhawk was released? All games have problems, deal with it you cry baby
edit: beat'd on my logic!
Not that I know how these things generally work.
But I agree that this is bad press for them and they'll want it shut down as quickly as possible.
Rainbow 6: Vegas used to lock up my xbox every 15 minutes like clockwork until I turned the hd resolution down a notch in the dashboard. Everyone, set resolution to max and lets go sue Ubi soft!
Haha classic.
Looks like someone didn't bother to read all of the stuff Bungie did for the Halo 3 QA or didn't buy the Limited or Legendary editions to see all the fucking QA they went through. Yeah, Halo 3 has bugs, but that's actually unrelated to QA.
Honestly, the only game MS fucked over and skipped QA on was Perfect Dark Zero. They actually admitted that they skipped doing QA on it just so they could say they had a launch Rare game.
Although the game was probably doomed either way.
I think Katchem was referring more to the 360 itself.
Though if that's the case, this won't prompt Microsoft to do a damn thing: They'll first prove that it's the hardware itself and not the game (So the main claim of the lawsuit is false), and then they'll show the money they put aside and the extended warranties they offered to fix broken 360's (So not only is the lawsuit without merit, Microsoft has already gone well beyond what they're legally required to do to remedy the problems), and case dismissed, Microsoft goes home to their golden fortress on money mountain and counts their Halo 3 earnings.
Don't take offense, guys, he's right. Stupid Americans ARE stupid. It's just logic.
Hmm... maybe he had to go through therapy because of it... That is 40 dollars a session... Oh, and he probably had to get medication too... Assuming he had insurance, that would actually lessen the cost of a session... and 2 months of Fluoxetine would only be around 7 dollars... No it really doesn't add up to 5 million dollars.
I got hit by a car and I only got 20,000.
XboxLive Reverend Toast (Don't forget the Space); PSN ReverendToast (No space here)
It's a class action. That's $5 million in equal share across the entire class, which I assume is people who have suffered 360 failure while playing Halo 3. I just collected an $80 share in a $3 billion class action lawsuit against some RAM manufacturer I don't even remember buying back in 1996. It's pretty much impossible for anybody except a lawyer to get rich off a class action settlement.
Anyways, were there any Chromehound lawsuits? That game was alot worse for this freezing stuff right?
That's what makes this thing so delicious.
the fact that this guy has the ball to take on Microsofts lawyers who are, without a doubt, a few days away from taking his home, his money and all his possessions and then proceeding to rape him in court.
Pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject too.
How come people are happy about that?
It took years before Microsoft admitted that the 360 was flawed and decided to start fixing it. Do you think that would have happened if people didn't have the power to sue?
Did the guy call Microsoft and they told him "too bad"? Did he inquire further and get told "Sorry, we're not going to help you."? Nobody knows, of course.... we've been quietly trained by the media to hate people who sue companies. That's why the woman who spilled McDonald's coffee on her and sued is still ridiculed to this day, when she SHOULD have goddamn sued.
Do you all think that is OK for a company to sell you something for $60 and have it not work and not do anything about it? Wouldn't it be nice if companies were held accountable for releasing shoddy software?
The biggest complaint I see on this board is "Well, it is really the 360 that broke, not Halo 3." Well, its the same goddamn thing to the end user, isn't it? Not everyone reads the gaming news so intently that they're aware of every flawed hardware problems Microsoft has.
All signs point to no on the questions you raise. With thousands of people, myself included, reporting Microsoft support bending over backwards to fix their 360's, it's highly unbelievable that Microsoft has suddenly refused to do so with everybody who has had a RROD with Halo 3. Hell, Halo 3 was what killed mine, and I'm expecting the replacement any day now.
Edit: and with all his claims boiling down to the implied warranty of merchantability, Microsoft's warranty to start with was better than the legally implied warranty (Which isn't much better than "The wheels won't fall off until you get it off the lot"), and even before they extended the warranty beyond the likely commercial life of the console, they were fixing out-of-warranty systems anyway. Evidence is, Microsoft has more than upheld the implied warranty.
The woman with the McDonalds coffee is another matter: The common legal consensus at the time was that the lawsuit had no merit based on her claims. The coffee was the normal temperature for fresh coffee, the cap was secured. She handled it negligently, as a result her legs applied pressure to the cup and the cap came off. McDonalds said as much as they handed her the check - it was a calculated PR move. The media has not given the same treatment to lawsuits against pharmaceutical (except for certain ones regarding immunization shots) and tobacco companies, or even auto manufacturers. The ones who we've been taught to hate, we generally have reason to. The coffee lady joins the class action for McDonalds making us fat, the woman who cut herself on a can lid, and the guy who castrated himself with a chainsaw.
Because there's no law saying that your game should never crash. Shit, what's next, starting a class action suit against Disney because Pirates 3 was a shitty movie?
Right, because no copy of Halo 3 has worked, right?
And there were no replacements of discs that were damaged before use right?
Oh wait a minute, if we actually think about this, we realize that hey, Halo 3 works 99.99% of the time in a 360 which is functioning normally. The 360 has hardware failures which prompted MS to go above and beyond what they are legally required to do to rectify the problem, is still pouring money into R+D to get cooler running consoles to bring the failure rate down more, and all software is bugged. Find me one piece of commercial software that has zero bugs, or that will never fail no matter what happens to it. That's why this lawsuit is so retarded. Yeah, if the guy had a reason to sue, then there'd be a reason to sue, even if we're being "conditioned by the media" or some complete bullshit that you just made up to almost make a retarded argument that you probably should've stopped trying to make when you realized you had to speak in crazy to make it work, or say "Well stupid people are stupid, so it's ok for someone to sue someone over nothing because people are stupid".
I could probably actually make a decent argument for the McDonalds coffee lady.
This Halo 3 thing though doesn't stand a chance in hell. If it actually went before a judge, you'd probably have to replicate the entire thing in a court room. You'd also likely have to use a fresh and brand new 360 as a control. Plus Microsoft would just have to make the case that it is the 360 and they have taken reasonable steps legally to remedy that situation.
Also it's important to note that, as it was stated earlier, 5 million is actually not very much at all if these claims actually held any weight. It'd only really pay for new 360s and "non-defective" copies of Halo 3 for about 10,000 people but that's not even counting the lawyer's share of the damage award.
You never know though, Rockstar DID agree to pay a settlement on the "hot coffee" versions of GTA:SA.
edit: And on the mcdonalds coffee lawsuit(they deserve to be sued for what happened), I could go on for a while on this case, but the frank matter of the entire thing is the media never really reported correctly about the case at all, I heard so many different stories its ridiculous from people who like to "refer" to it out of their asses, and from the media themselves. The fact that you say "The coffee was the normal temperature for fresh coffee..."in the first place is actually not true(Im not getting into the semantics of what you consider fresh). Mcdonalds has operating manuals that states the coffee needs to be kept at the tempetures it was at, which at the time was 20 degrees hotter(180-190 degrees) then any other restaurant in the area, keep in mind thats hotter then the hottest, not the average.