Can MMORPG's that you personally put money into just shut down without a refund?

As the title asks.. Let's use World of Warcraft for an example. Let's not use gametime for an example but let's use actual in-game purchases with real money. Let's say you spent $20 in their online store for a mount or something like that. If WoW, for whatever reason, were to "shut down" (Hypothetically speaking) for whatever reason, are you in right of a refund?

You have spent your money for something you expect to have an "unlimited" duration and what if the day after you purchased it, WoW shut down. Do they just keep all the money and leave?

 

In every MMO that has microtransactions or subscriptions, their terms and conditions say that in the event of discontinuation of service, bannings, etc that you do not get refunded.

 

It'll be in the terms and conditions. It always is.

 

and that's why you don't tldr t&c's kids

 

They have no reason to refund you. They provide a service. If that service goes away they dont need to refund anyways. If wow went away its probably because they went bankrupt lol. So in that case they wouldn't have any money to give you.

Same with steam. Its in their tos. NO REFUNDS. This is what we deal with in the digital age. Once its gone its gone.

 

So, essentially, I could make an incredibly awesome RPG, get a bunch of kids to pay me to play it with their mom's credit cards, then cancel the service before I have to pay a second months hosting and server fee's, and walk away with all their money? And that's legal? Anyone on board?

 

read their TOS..

tells you everything, and the clause that we can stop services at any point, is put in there.

 

You could but if people were signing up and paying for membership, why would you want to?

 

So I get 100 people to sign up for the first month at $10 each. This covers my initial setup costs, hosting, and the like. Then, anticipating another month of gameplay, 300 people sign up or renew their membership for $10 each. Before I pay for my second month of hosting or whatever, I cancel and shut down the game. Then I've made about $3000.


Of course it wouldn't work that smoothly, but you get the idea.

 

People do that with MMO private servers all the time.

 

I remember someone made that 07 scape before the 2007 runescape came out and people invested a lot of money into it and they just ran with the money without even starting a game lol.

 

No the game was out for a while.

 

It's generally in the ToS that they can do that, yes.

 

Thats actually a very smart and cunning question killdank hmmm im not sure though..

 

happened to ragnarok i believe.. so many topped up cards and finally they shut down

 

It doesn't make business sense to do this, the development time and cost of a RPG is a lot more then you'd make on one month of hosting alone. Obviously keeping your game up leads to monthly continual profit.

Of course its legal, if their terms of service state that the game is subject to be taken down at any time they obviously can.

 

I use to play this game called Dragonica and I spent so much money buying power ups and items and they shut down and I received nothing in return. What they did do though was lower all cash store items to 1 coin each till they were closing and if you bought any game cash a week before they announced that they were closing they'd refund you. It was a fun game and I miss it but now I think it's only available in Europe?

 

If they state it in their ToS, they can do it. It's completely legal.

 

Seems reasonable , if your dumb enough to buy it lol

 

In past experiences, I believe most TOS, they say no refunds, but they will refund you if it was a recent purchase or if they own other games, they will refund you in the other game currency.