EPTI believe one of the first mainstream games that did such thing was FIFA with it's Ultimate Team mode, I will get back to it as well in the story later.
Then for me was Genshin Impact and after a while was Medal Heroes that I used to play with my best friend and we used to compete who would perform better etc.
I never also stopped playing Starcraft here and there sometimes CS GO sometimes I d get back into some WoW classic and another favorite game of mine was DayZ which I still believe it s a great game but the downside is you need to find a nice group of people to play with and also there are cheaters/hackers and the community around this game is run mostly by modded servers that have discord servers and can be quite toxic.
Let's get into the present and the reason behind my blog. Almost a year ago I started playing a mobile game (Yes I know- BAD IDEA) called Age of Empires mobile. Which is an okay game, has some theory crafting and a nice community actually that's the main reason I didn't quit the game some months ago because they introduced migrations meaning you can transfer your character to another server and play with more active people etc etc.
So all this time I was spending money to improve my account, be stronger etc. etc. Roughly I had an idea of around how much I spent on the game and I was kind of okay with it. Almost a week ago I sat down and did all the calculations from my credit card and found out the exact amount which was 1/3 of what I thought I spent and the amount spent was kind of shocking, I couldn't sleep the whole night.
Immediately what came to mind was that I need to stop playing the game and for sure stop spending on it but for me that is not possible because when I know I have invested money and especially a lot of money into something I just can't let go.
And then it hit me. What if there is a way I could refund all the transactions made?
I read a bit on the https://aoemobile.com/policy/eula.html and found some very weird statements in there such as:
10. Refunds
Subject to applicable law (including as described in each country-specific addendum below), or App Store policy, (i) all Games, Virtual Goods and Game Currency remain our property, have no monetary value and are not redeemable, refundable, or eligible for any other alternate remedy for any “real world” money or anything of monetary value, unless they are defective, unavailable, or do not perform in accordance with the specifications we provide; (ii) we may revoke your license to such Games, Virtual Goods and/or Game Currency at any time consistent with this EULA without notice or liability to you; and (iii) except where the law in your jurisdiction provides a right of withdrawal that cannot be waived by contract, by purchasing and using any Games, Virtual Goods and/or Game Currency, you hereby waive your right to withdraw from your agreement to purchase the applicable Game, Virtual and/or Game Currency, and you agree that you will therefore not be eligible to receive a refund (or any alternative remedy) in relation to such Game, Virtual Good and/or Game Currency. Additionally, you hereby agree that any withdrawal right expires immediately upon purchase and delivery of your Game, Virtual Good and/or Game Currency, unless the law in your jurisdiction provides otherwise. This section does not affect your statutory rights.
I searched around a bit and there are some options banks give you or google play which are:
1) Someone without your permission did the transactions (which I have no idea if that could work since nowadays whenever you try and purchase something a notification on your phone pops up and you have to approve it).
2) You are dissatisfied with the purchases
3) Never received the products
4) I received another product and not the one I purchased or the product I purchased was faulty
5) Other reasons
I also want to share a story that happened to me at around 2019. I was playing FIFA and I had spent around 2000-2500 euro in it's game mode: Ultimate Team.
One day I log into my account and half my team was gone so basically I got hacked. I called customer support they told me my account was indeed hacked, they gave me back some players but what they gave me back had nothing to do with what I used to have, to give you a better understanding my team was worth 25M coins and they gave me back a team that was worth 5M coins. So I called them again and they said they can't do anything besides that. So I asked them for refunds they said they can't do refunds and then I told them I d go to my bank and they said I wouldn't advise you to do that, I don't think that will get you anywhere.
So I went to my bank I explained the situation after 3 months I had all my money back but the EA account I had was banned and also they banned my PSN account which the purchases were made from so basically my PlayStation couldn't play online games anymore but for me that was fine because I sold my PlayStation to someone that wanted it for his little brother and he didn't want him to get online anyway and yes basically with 2000-2500 euro you can just buy a new one so no sweat.
Gacha games really are a big addiction and once you start spending it is very hard to stop.
If anyone has any experience on refunding and how the law protects addiction in such cases would be good to know.
