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Report: Some APB players receiving compensation, but denied refund

by Alexander Sliwinski on Sep 27th 2010 11:30AM

The short, brutal life of APB (and developer Realtime Words) recently ended, with consumers seemingly unable to reclaim whatever investment they put into the MMO. However, despite not receiving refunds, consumers are reportedly obtaining compensation in other ways.

Gamasutra and Dtoid both report that players have been offered a discount or free game after contacting EA's support line. According to the administrators behind Realtime Worlds' bankruptcy, consumers should contact the retailers from which they purchased the game in order to pursue "entitlement to any refund."

Via: Big Download, Blue's News
Source: Gamasutra, Dtoid, Steam

Tags: APB, compensation, EA, Electronic-Arts, pc, Realtime-Worlds, refund

Reader Comments (21)

Free games as compensation? It must be nice to be able to print your own money to get yourself out of a jam...but still be able to sue people when they print your money.

APB is the digital Hindenburg of this generation.

@TheBatman4141
Oh, the humanity!

Generally EA is offering you anything from their Digital Download store. Most people have only had success with getting current titles and no preorder stuff (DAO2, MOH ..etc). I was able to get DAO:Awakenings out of them. Just had to show a screenshot of my paypal purchase of the game (which I got via Steam) and uploaded it to imageshack, then sent the guy in the online chat the link to it.

Something is better than nothing I suppose.

@VGJunkie

I got Mass Effect 2 Digital Deluxe. Better than nothing, I suppose.

Why did anyone buy this game? Really, if you paid for APB you don't deserve a refund. After playing the beta for an hour, I knew this game would get raped by reviewers and thus fail majorly...

@DeeZeee

The customization. I'm not making excuses though. It's my worst purchase since the PC version of Just Cause 1. But that was free so I guess it does not count. Still...

I think if you read the reviews and watched the gamplay videos of APB, and STILL decided to purchase it at that pricing model....

it's a buy at your own risk game.

Its funny my mate was raving about this game trying to get me to buy it, he played it a couple of times and never played it again.
I dunno it seemed like a waste of money to me and look what it turned out as lol
I enjoyed rubbing it in his face as he seems to always find ways of throwing his money away.

@den69 I've learned the hard way... NEVER listen to your friends when it comes to MMORPG's. I still miss that $50 on Age of Conan...

@DarknessBear

Yeah I never listen to my mates anymore really lol they are always raving about some game trying to get me to buy it so we can co op, soon as I buy it they stop playing within the same week guaranteed.
Dodged alot of bullets this year including this and rubbish like Lost Planet 2 etc lol

This reminds me of long ago, someone on the internet told me that buying Saints Row 2 would be a waste of money and that I should wait for APB. I didn't listen to him.

I bought it. Honestly, pretty pleased with how this all turned out.

Got a few hours of playtime out of a decent (not great) game.
Watched on with mild amusement as it crashed and burned.
Replaced it with the Digital Deluxe version of Mass Effect 2, which I never bothered to pay for.

This is why I don't like digital downloads and DRM. When the company or service goes under, you're f#$%ed.

If you were dumb enough to pay for APB and were even drummer enough to pay the sub fees doesn't deserve to get any compensation... But that's too harsh I guess... I guess EA is doing "something" about this though.

I was at Wal-Mart yesterday and they were still selling this for 49.99

@BlackEyedMonkey Yeah, I saw it at Wal-Mart the other day too for the same price. It's incredibly shitty to continue to sell a game that is not even playable. I got the game a week or two after it came out 'cause I had been looking forward to it. I thought it was a cool concept, and I liked what RTW did with Crackdown...but they really dropped the ball on this one. Had I gotten to play the beta or see the 2/5 XPlay gave it I would have left it alone. But I gave it a chance and only played about 2-3 hrs of the 50 hrs it came with!

@Dukk420
They really ought to put away that thing from the shelf after the server had been shut down. That could be illegal!

Anyway, I do agree that APB does have enormous potential. They should've started out smaller, then work their way up with expansions. I still hope someone else will do it again..except not being so ambitious with the scale just yet.
And I hope they'd actually make it a real MMOFPS, rather than some half-assed MMORPG where level still decides the outcome of the combat. That's just dumb.

Oh kotaku, only you can free compensation and make it sound terrible. :/

@Sekai The lack of an edit button and the heat has ruined me.

"Oh kotaku, only you can take "news of compensation" and make it sound terrible :/"

I think i did better there, but /quit

The company went out of business. Why would you think you'd get your money back? From whence?

EA, as publisher, is going above and beyond by giving you anything. They could tell you to sit and spin, and legally there'd be nothing you could do about it.

Breaking News

APB: All Points Bulletin

Report: Some APB players receiving compensation, but denied refund

Reader Comments (21)

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 11:35AM sigma8 said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 11:35AM TheBatman4141 said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 11:40AM sigma8 said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 11:48AM VGJunkie said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 12:21PM jaydark123 said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 11:58AM DeeZeee said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 12:12PM Deschain said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 12:02PM Lerkero said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 12:07PM den69 said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 10:17PM DarknessBear said

Posted: Sep 28th 2010 6:30PM den69 said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 12:16PM mezzaninex said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 12:17PM Premaximum said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 12:29PM BigD145 said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 12:58PM LeonX84 said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 1:02PM BlackEyedMonkey said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 1:53PM Dukk420 said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 5:18PM Xocolatl said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 8:03PM Sekai said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 8:05PM Sekai said

Posted: Sep 27th 2010 11:28PM JCDoe said

APB: All Points Bulletin Info

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