From a law -student-, here:
I'd just like to note for the people talking about the EULA, that while the EULA is considered a valid 'terms of use' agreement, it is superseded by any actual legal contract. The purchase of a service for money constitutes a legal contract. While NCsoft has the right to cancel their service at any time, if you have paid for twelve months and only receive six they are effectively in breach of contract and may be required by law to remedy the breach.
Keep in mind, breach-of-contract and partial breach penalties are calculated on the concept of returning the involved parties to their standing prior to the harm caused by the breach. Harm will be calculated by prorating the unfulfilled amount of the contract.
Fraud has a whole different set of rules, and is much harder to prove. My coursework hasn't done a lot on that topic yet.
Tarelgeth is exactly right here. The "easy" remedy in this situation is to try to enforce the contract, not to start an action for fraud.
As Tarelgeth noted and as explained in the Legal Considerations thread, when a party fails to comply with the terms of a contract, that party has breached the contract, and the other party may seek damages (i.e., money). In contract law, damages are most often calculated based on the positions the parties would be in if the contract had been performed. This doesn't mean that you get the additional months for which you've prepaid for City of Heroes. They need not keep the servers on just because a court rules that they've breached the contract. Rather, you get the
value of those months. In other words, as people in this thread have pointed out, you get a refund. (NCSoft might also try to pay you in an equivalent money value of time on their other games.)
Keep in mind, though, that all that depends on the player's convincing a court that there's been a breach in the first place. In a situation like this, NCSoft would use documents like the EULA as evidence of the contract's terms, even if the court is disinclined to treat the EULA itself as "the contract." Translation: Don't read any of this to suggestion that going out and suing NCSoft would be easy.
Note that parties, when creating a contract, can try to control the damages in advance. Oftentimes, you'll see things along the lines of "the parties agree, in case of a breach of this contract, that liquidated damages of $50 will be paid." The phrase I used there means that, in our NCSoft example, when NCSoft cancels service and the player is entitled to the remaining time, NCSoft just pays the player $50 rather than the full value of the unused subscription time. In our case, this kind of term isn't as likely because the value of a subscription is pretty low, by international business standards.
Where we might see a term like this is something along the lines of, "In the event of a breach, the subscriber will be compensated for the full, unused value of the subscription, in property to be determined by NCSoft." Yes, parties can agree to something like that. Such a term is what would enable NCSoft to compensate a player in time on their other games, rather than money, without potentially running afoul of a judge who doesn't like the contract.
So, all in all, if NCSoft
weren't offering refunds, contract law would provide an avenue for obtaining them. But it is providing refunds. Anglo-American-style contract law is one of the best-known bodies of law in the world. Every U.S. law student studies it. So, I suspect, does every in-house attorney drafting contracts for the Western market. Thus, NCSoft knows enough not to get painted into the corner of contract.
Notice that this reasoning appears to apply just as much to Ms. Lackey's five-year "lifetime" subscription as it does to any ordinary player's subscription. The specific terms of the contract might vary, though; look for a clause describing what happens in the event of cessation of service. Obviously, none of us around here can say much that's helpful; this sounds like a matter for a private attorney.
All of this is totally separate from fraud. And that's separate from class action issues. I'll have more to say on those topics later today, I hope.
And, once again,
the above and all my other posts around here (and, I imagine, all the other lawyers' and law students')
should not be taken as legal advice! Soundtrack's and Toast's posts earlier are right on the money. If you want to sue NCSoft, at some point, you need to consult a reputable attorney in real life.
