Way back in 2007 lawyers gathered together a group of gamers angry with Microsoft over scratched Xbox 360 discs to form a class action lawsuit. Nine years later the US Supreme Court is preparing to hear Microsoft's plea to have the case dismissed for a second time.
It's your money? You want it now? Tough. Now it could be another year before some $US27 million is distributed to gamers from Electronic Arts' settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought against the exclusive licence its Madden NFL series held. Why? Someone's objecting to the lawyers' fees.
EA promised PS3 owners a free copy of Battlefield 1943 when they picked up Battlefield 3. When they didn't come through, they upset a lot of gamers, both for the bait-and-yank and for the shoddy manner with which it was announced.
With a supreme court decision earlier this year making it legal for companies to include do-not-sue clauses in their user agreements, the only recourse for customers of companies like Sony and Electronic Arts is to opt-out of the clause via written letter. Now there's a website that does it for them.
Somewhere in Redmond there must a be a huge warehouse stuffed to the rafters with class action notices and a random legal claims against Microsoft. The hapless multinational has been walloped with another suit - this time from consumers who are a little ticked off about the Red Ring of Death.
