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Codemasters cheat their customers
Kabaal
Member UncommonPosts: 3,042
I'm writing this in anger at the way our guild and the community have been treated by this company. Let me give a little background on what i'm about to write.
When the game Archlord first came out there was a competition to recieve a custom made PC case for the name the servers competition. The winner of this competition never ever received his prize.
The biggest competition Codemasters have ran in this game was to win a full sized real life Archlord suit of Armour. To win this armour we had to be the first in the game to be crowned Archlord. This we did, our guild were the first to become Archlord in the Western version of the game with Icecube being the toon that turned into the Archlord. 6 months down the line we are still waiting for our prize and recently Codemasters stopped replying to emails.
Today we find out that they are holding PR event in England called Connect 08. Surprise surprise they used OUR suit of Armour as part of it, here are the photos and the link to the Connect 08 page.
http://www.codemasters.com/image.php?id=3460
http://www.codemasters.com/image.php?id=3459
http://www.codemasters.co.uk/connect/index.php
It's probably pointless me posting this here, but i just wanted to let others know how this company treats it's players. We are the biggest and the best guild in that game by far, we've never lost our castle and held the archlord title more times than any other guild. Perhaps not a great thing but we are always the center of any drama in the game, drama is all that keeps it going. We worked hard for our position there and our achievements so it royally pi$$es us off to have this thrown in our faces by Codemasters.
Comments
Everything posted is totally true, CM pay no attention to their customers, take all the cash they can and don't improve the game....
Probably because archlord is barely making any money from the US market compared to the UK market.
It doesn't matter if they are making money or not. If you run a competition and then fail to pay the rewards they are breaking laws here in the UK.
I'm sure there are similar laws in the US.
Creator of ELTank and Nostalgia
That's true... they probably isn't expecting someone to sue them over stuff like that. To the OP: Well what are you planning to do then? Are you gonna file a lawsuit against Codemasters ?
Hahaha true.. the shipping cost probably expensive.
That armor is supossed to be worth 10k so i would be a bit pi$$ed if i didn`t get it.
I'm not surprised. Codemasters is well known for ruining every game they touch.
Codemasters as a company is hauling in more than enough from AL not to mention its other games to be able to fund this ....
The prize was offered and stated at costing 10k, instead they took months and even after that they offered an alternative of 3k cash. Bit of a differnce there, no ?
10K is that in US dollar or Euro ? Sounds a bit exagerrating to me on the cost of the armor then suddenly offering an alternative of 3,000 cash.... HMMM...... sound fishy to me.
10K is that in US dollar or Euro ? Sounds a bit exagerrating to me on the cost of the armor then suddenly offering an alternative of 3,000 cash.... HMMM...... sound fishy to me.
Codemasters themselves stated all over the internet and their own site that the prize is worth $10,000. During earlier communication they offered an alternative of $1,800 or the Armour. Now they just don't reply at all.
Here's the press release about Icecube winning: http://www.archlordgame.com/news.php?id=4177&articletype=News
Man that stinks for you guys. I found an article on the original contest here and the Contest Rules here. One part of the rules struck as funny after hearing your story:
"No cash substitution, return, transfer or assignment of prizes will be allowed. "
Isn't that what they are doing?
I hope you all finally get it. Looks like a pretty nice set.
"If we don't attack them, they will attack us first. So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike"
I've just been informed by the community officer for the game that that event is not today, but they are using photos taken from a photoshoot at the end of last year in their publicity for the event which hapens in March.
Not that it makes much difference.
Are you able to seek legal recourse? I have a friend in the UK who is in law school. In our conversations, it sounds like their laws are based on past lawsuit decisions and 'common sense' argument. The U.S. tends to be statutory for the most part, which can be good, but if there's a loophole or fuzzy language, it could go to the highest paid lawyer.
I hope you get your prize. Get as many people involved as you can. Maybe even petition?
http://www.allaboutgod.com/
Not sure about the legal stand point tbh. I contacted the UK's governement consumer website recently and they told me to give them 14 days in writing to come up with the prize (which has now been done) and after that they will take it to trading standards. I would think that trading standards would be entirely different than a law suit.
Yes, take legal action, they just can't do that.
As well as Trading Standards, you may want to contact this Ombudsman too.
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)
Mid City Place, 71 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6QT
Tel: 020 7492 2222
Fax: 020 7242 3696
[email protected]
website
Jurisdiction: UK
Category: Advertising
BIOA Membership Type: Associate, Complaint-Handling Body
Creator of ELTank and Nostalgia
Yup, agreed : Take legal actions.
Give us news
I quite agree that some sort of legal action should be taken, though from what I've read here this is an individual prize and not a group prize. That being said unless the OP is supposed to be the recipient then he really has nothing to complain about. The player who controls the Toon "Icecube" is the party that needs to initiate the legal action and if this was a contest that was offered to the U.S. market then the legal action needs to be taken here in the good ol' U.S.A.
I don't know where Codemasters as a company is located, but whatever location that is also a logical location for legal action to take place. To the OP, you can get all the advice you want here but its up to Icecube to get the ball rolling.
Im the founder of the guild. Icecube was the leader of the guild in that particular game at the time and i agree that legal action will probably have to be taken by him. He moved to Dubai some months ago due to work and will be back in Canada in a few months time.
Codemasters is a UK based company, the game servers are in the US but they are a british company so will be subject to UK laws. My post wasn't intended to be asking for advice although advice is being offered and appreciated, it was more intended as a way to warn people of how this company treats it's customers and to have a vent.
Ulric (community officer for Archlord) responded to one of my messages today, and stated that the reason it hasn't been sent is due to logistics and apologised. But all things considered, the shipping of this armour no matter it's size and weight should not be a problem to a company of this size.
It's an item shop game, what did you expect? Item shop games are all about making money and they lie about their content and what they offer to attain that goal.
The real question is, why are you and your guild still playing after being cheated like this? Sounds to me like you enjoy being abused.
I think it was a good thing to send out warning. The reason why I mentioned legal action was more from the cheering crowd who wants to make sure future cheatings from game companies don't happen. I was rooting for there to be a champion of the gamer community. It sounds like there was some kind of response from Codemasters though, so at this point it's a "wait and see"? If they deliver, the only thing they've cheated their gamers out of is time.
http://www.allaboutgod.com/
Bumping to keep your thread alive noisy one.
Well Archlord has meant screw up after screw up from Codemasters. Remember the guy who won the server names contest? He was supposed to receive a custom PC case. He poested a message on the forum asking where the hell did that PC case go... more than 6 months after winning it, that was a year ago. The case wasn't even made and I doubt very much he got it at all.
I can say one thing for sure about codemasters: they won't get any piece of my money ever again.