Aspyr Claims The Star Wars: KOTOR 2 DLC Was Cancelled Due To A 'Third Party'

The whole lawsuit's just dumb anyway. Good luck trying to prove any damages when they offered an equivalent-value make good and advertised the DLC as a free add-on rather than a core part of the experience in the first place.

I just hope Rogue Squadron ports are not handled by Aspyr.

They likely should have just issued refunds.

@Lizuka equivalent value?, the pc version its a lot cheaper than the switch version, how is this equivalent value?; and if they announce that it was included at the game, they MUST have it, its like the uber textures for minecraft at xbox one x.

Aspyr trying to make themselves look like they were the innocent ones but they keep screwing people over when it involves the DLC fixer upper for Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2.

Aspyr really needs to stop screwing around being lazy

@Lizuka I'm not an expert on this theme but as someone else mentioned the prices vary depending on the platform so I wouldn't say that the value is "equivalent". Not only that, but many buyers already had the games that they offered.

From my understanding they did mention it on the store page and was changed after they couldn't deliver it. If that's the case I think that it would be false advertising.

This lawsuit has inspired me. I am now suing McDonald's because they got my order wrong.

I sent them 3 emails with all the info they needed. Never got 1 reply. I gave up.

@Lizuka “equivalent” according to who?

So I can give you two piece of crap cars that you have no choice over that combined may or may not equal the value over the actual car with all the features that was advertised that you wanted according to your dumb logic.

The DLC was still advertised apart of the package and should not have been advertised to begin with if the developers did their expected do diligence and made sure any legality issues was taking care of beforehand so it’s not at the consumer expense.

Failing that they should have offered refunds at the very least. Like what other developers did occasionally on similar levels of mess ups. They didn’t. Instead they offer a couple games that the consumer may already have or don’t care about period as “compensation”. That is not how refunds over defected/non advertised products work in the real world.

If you don’t see how this kind of practice screws over the consumer and shouldn’t be an allowed expected precedent then there is no helping you I guess. Sheesh good thing most consumers are not that passive sheep like toward the seller or otherwise we would have really been screwed years ago. :/

@HotGoomba The funny thing is similar things happened before against mega fast food/restaurant chains. If they mess your order up, they refuse to fix it to your satisfaction that meets how the meal was advertised or offer an immediate refund then you are allowed to sue them. Even better if you record the whole thing with your phone.

It’s why literally any on-site manager present will at worse give you a refund even if you ate the entire meal (you can theoretically claim “it didn’t taste right” or “made you sick”) because what was the loss? A $5 meal over a potential lawsuit that can be avoided period? X food company doesn’t know if this random customer is some rich person that can afford the time/money for dragged out frivolous cases like this or worse a lawyer themselves. That $5 meal could turn into a fat settlement check if it’s allowed to progress that far.

I won't buy anything from aspyr ever again. Lawsuits for something so trivial are ridiculous but they deserve all the hate they get. Maybe next time, check with everyone involved before basing all your marketing hype on something you can't deliver. Morons!

@Ninersdad Same here. They never replied to my email and I never received my game compensation that they claimed I was due.

I can only take from that, that Aspyr are a ***** company.

It does suck that they didn’t (or couldn’t?) make good on their initial promise but there’s also responsibility on the customer’s end. Just like it’s silly to buy a broken game in the hopes that it’ll get patched eventually, it’s daft to buy a game anticipating future content that would make it worth it to you before it’s delivered. Why not just wait until the DLC is out and then buy it if that’s what you mainly want the game for? Honestly I think offering a free game as an apology is fine in this case.

"All were offered a replacement product worth more than the one they purchased and none requested a refund"

"Defendants did not provide the Restored Content DLC, but refuses to give consumers a refund for their purchase of KOTOR"

Who to believe, who to believe...

A free game is a nice gesture as a gift or an apology to save face for a bad decision, think the Ambassador certificate for those who bought the 3DS at launch, difference being that people who bought it at launch weren't promised something they never received; they were just stuck with their purchase that was, according to Nintendo, $70 overpriced, but it was still worth the initial cost to those who bought it for that price. They can feel ripped off, but the initial promise of what they were getting for the advertised price was fulfilled, so it's a case of too bad so sad for them.
In this scenario, part of the cost of the initial purchase included the guarantee of content to come. You can't simply replace that promise with something that the consumer hadn't initially invested in, as the worth of the "free" games being offered is subjuective. The consumer could potentially view everything on offer as worthless, thus the promise of the value of the initial product is still broken and the consumer is still ripped off. If I am promised 3 courses at a restaurant, am only given one course, but am charged for all 3 with an apologetic coupon to a neighboring restaurant with food I have no interest in, I have every right to seek justice against them.
A refund is the only fair option here.

@larryisaman Not the same thing. Future patches for improving a game's performance isn't something promoted when you sell a product since they are not a feature. This DLC was promoted as part of the product not only in tweets from the devs and articles but also in the product's page. It's like a game saying that it has online functionality when it has none or that it features two playable characters and it only has one. When devs remove a previously planned feature from a game in development, they tend to announce it before the game's launch.

I rarely pre-order games or buy them at launch, but I find more "daft" to blame people for buying and expect something that is officially announced. Wathever product there is, they tend to include everything mentioned in the package because the customer is within their right to demand that, hence why there's messages saying what's included and what isn't on most products.

Also, the "free games" were already owned by many of the people screwed by this.

Based on Brazilian law, they should gave a full refund (following the exclusion of the game on the users library) if the buyer didn't accept the free game offer.

@Lizuka On the otherhand what about people like me who already owned the games offered?

@DennisReynolds Well, if you already own all the games, and you paid full price again for the Switch version, then it should be no big deal to just get another copy of another game you own in the collection.

@Lizuka Everyone is jumping on you, but for what it's worth I agree. I don't think anyone is owed a refund or even anything for that matter. The DLC was free. So no one is out any money.

@Vexx234 Was the game free? No? Then invalid argument. I know this might shock your very core, but there were people who bought this BECAUSE the advertised content for the KOTOR game including said dlc.

Ton of people played the base KOTOR game already, but much less touched the dlc so when you go “sike sorry” later on for what people might consider the main selling point then people have the right to get angry when they didn’t get a refund and was offered an inferior alternative instead no matter if a couple people here unironically go “guys it’s EQUIVALENT VALUE stop being mad at them!”

I think there have far more egregious false marketing by game companies than this. I think the only thing better they should have done was allowing refunds (though it's probably hard to do on Switch since Nintendo does not have a system in place).
But as consumers I think we should all take this lesson that continually is abused by publishers, developers, and reviewers that what is promised or 'will be fixed' is not what you're buying. If you are buying a game on a promise of content or fixes down the line, but are unsatisfied with the actual state of it when you buy it then you've made a bad decision.

@Specters Got it so when a seller sells you an incomplete product that goes against the advertisement then it’s your fault the buyer for even buying the product. Lol.

@Arawn93 The game isn't incomplete. The Switch version is the same version that was released in 2004. The DLC is simply fan volunteered content that was created by fans.

You would have case if the DLC was offical content that was present in the original release, but was purposely removed in later versions to be sold as paid dlc.

But it's not. It's free DLC, made by pc modders on their own free time.

@Ninersdad likewise. I read up on it and you were suppised to leave a report through their system or something. Did that months ago, no game code or mail or anything.

I know people are making light of this and true it's not really a big deal. But consumer law does exist and buyers have rights. It's not hard to see that if you pay for a red car and they give you a blue one then you have not received what you wanted and contracted for.

@Arawn93 I think you've misunderstood what I said. I'll take it out of games to make it clearer. If a car maker said buy the car now and we'll promise to get you the doors within a year that would be a pretty dumb decision. I won't buy that car.
If you didn't want to play vanilla KOTOR 2 now and wanted to play with the cut content then you should have waited till the cut content was actually in the game before buying.

@Specters For real. I'm all for holding companies accountable, but sometimes consumers want to remove any blame on their end.

This "third party" was Palpatine, right? It's always that chuffing Palpatine.

@roy130390 It wasn’t advertised as being part of the core product though, it was advertised to come later at an unspecified date as a free update. The game they sold was the game they advertised, with additional content at no extra cost to come at some point down the line. Unforeseen circumstances stopped that from happening, but those who bought it still got the game they paid for just without the extra that was expected. If they sold the game saying it came with the mod only to say “oh yeah no that’s coming later” or if they charged for the DLC early only to not deliver it and kept the money then I’d be right there with everyone lamenting this but that’s not what happened. Everyone still got the KOTOR 2 experience they paid for and a goodwill gesture to boot. It’s disappointing I’m not denying it, but a lawsuit is crazy.

@larryisaman I'm referring to your post in response to @Arawn93 if that's okay. I feel it expresses my thoughts on the matter more clearly.

@larryisaman It doesn't matter if it was advertised to come later, they simply shouldn't have announced it on the store's page because then it becomes an official feature. Also, the game sold wasn't the game they advertised simply because they used trailers that had stuff from that DLC:

https://youtu.be/rEhYnI1MqxI?si=x8UEKuTaVi-HYXln

There's a reason why Red Dead Redemption on Switch doesn't show or mention multiplayer features. It's also why trailers put stuff like "early footage, final product might differ in some aspects", although I don't think I have ever seen it being used for an old game being ported and an existing DLC that won't be included.

I'm usually in favor on developers in many aspects that lots people don't agree with it, but this has nothing crazy about it. Wanna avoid these things as a developer? Don't make these announcements and trailers that clearly boost sales in your product unless you are absolutely sure that you can deliver. If you can't, announce it before the release date comes and if you can't even do that, offer at least partial refunds to the people that are aren't interested on your other games or already have them.

Many games can't deliver what's initially planned and it's understandable, but that's usually not with content that already exists and it's clarified or rectified at any of the points that I mentioned before. At one point it becomes their responsibility, specially when their sales were boosted through false advertising.

@HotGoomba I just want you to know that your comments always make me chuckle, keep it up ✌

@Olliemar28 they probably knew where you work.

Guess KOTOR Remake was cancelled by a 'Third Party' too cause it was total crap. Aspyr did a decent job handling the KOTOR 2 release on PC, guess it lost the ball after this

Third party is probably Disney. Their legal team probably sh*t themselves over paying money to modders and the potential precedent for fan content going forward.