Lawsuit complains of Xbox Live downtime
January 7th, 2008 |
Last Friday a proposed class-action lawsuit was filed by a group led by three Texans against Microsoft. The lawsuit complains of the network troubles experienced by Xbox Live users over the holiday season, and claims that this constitutes breaches of contract and warranty, as well as negligent misrepresentation of the Xbox Live service in Microsoft’s marketing.
The reasoning behind the lawsuit is that Microsoft must have expected the increased traffic on Xbox Live over the holidays, and that it failed to prepare for it. The filing explains:
“In December 2007, XBOX Live crashed and prevented Plaintiffs around the world from accessing online play for several weeks … Microsoft knew the increase in subscriptions would increase game-play on its servers yet failed to provide adequate access and service to XBOX Live and its subscribers.”
The lawsuit seeks $5 million U.S. in compensation, supposedly on behalf of the 8 million Xbox Live customers worldwide.
I see two flaws in this suit. First, the claim that Xbox Live crashed and kept people from accessing online play for several weeks is mostly inaccurate. I don’t believe Xbox Live ever “crashed” in the sense that it went down — it was an issue of access. Some people were consistently unable to use some matchmaking features in some games, granted, but I still think that’s inaccurate.
Second, Microsoft already revealed last week that it would give a free Xbox Live Arcade game to each and every Xbox Live member as compensation. At $10-15 each, the retail value of that is well over $5 million.
I wasn’t a fan of the downtime, either — and I’m not one to advocate for big business — but this suit does seem like its reaching a bit. An interesting attempt, at least… let’s see how it plays out.
#1 BonoRiau
January 7th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
very informative
#2 trench
January 10th, 2008 at 5:17 am
The downtime was terrible man. I completely agree! Everyone should get a FREE MONTH!!!
#3 Badger Gravling
January 12th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I’m willing to bet the lawsuit will fail, and that Microsoft have some protection in the terms and conditions of Xbox Live.
I wasn’t a big fan of the downtime either - but a lawsuit? A slight overreaction, methinks, along the lines of suing for hot coffee. Yes, some games experienced a lot of problems, and MS should provide either free time or games etc as recompense, but if they’ve already agreed to provide a free game, then what are these three Texans complaining about?
Since I started using Xbox Live back with the original Xbox, it’s always been a pretty robust service, and it was only this past holiday season that everything went slow - possibly due to overloading, possibly due to updates…but things have already got back to normal pretty much…
#4 Colin Temple
January 12th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Yeah, that’s one thing Microsoft was quick to point out — this is the first major issue in Xbox Live’s history.
#5 Xbox Living : Lawsuit forces Microsoft to keep us in the dark
January 15th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
[...] expected. They promised a free Xbox Live Arcade game to every Xbox Live user. A few days later, a lawsuit was filed by a group demanding $5 million U.S. in compensation for the [...]