Many players complain of having been banned from online video games for no reason, including those from publisher Activision and its famous Call of Duty franchise. Blocking their account results in the loss of the sums invested, which can sometimes reach thousands of euros. An investigation has just been opened following the action taken by the UFC-Que Choisir of Nancy for several years.
Pascal, Brayan, Océane, Rémi, Andréa and Antoine are fans of Call of Duty, the best-selling shooting video game series in the world, but cannot come together online to compete. For what ? Access to their account was simply blocked by the game’s publisher, Activision. For no reason, these players protest. And this despite the fact that, during their games, they often spent hundreds, even thousands of euros on various purchases (weapons, costumes for their character, etc.).
Rémi, from Maxéville (Meurthe-et-Moselle), was the first to approach UFC-Que Choisir in Nancy, in October 2020, after being banned from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The association then contacts Activision to request the lifting of this ban or, at least, to obtain the reasons. “Many dissatisfied players have claimed to be in a similar situation,” she underlines in her letter. The publisher responds by accusing the player of having used cheating software, but without providing proof, and by refusing to reverse its decision.
The UFC-Que Choisir of Nancy therefore requests the Departmental Directorate for Population Protection (DDPP) of Hauts-de-Seine (the department of Activision headquarters), which quickly notes that “conditions of use [du jeu] and certain mentions in the contract are abusive.” Targeted: the provisions reserving the right to the company to terminate the engagement without notice. Building on this analysis, the association once again relaunched Activision, which ended up restoring Rémi’s account, before claiming to have “fully taken into account the observations” of the DDPP and working to “adapt the clauses in question”.
Several games affected
However, these promises are not followed through on. In 2021, another player, Jean-Charles, was banned and then readmitted by Activision after the Nancy association sent several letters. The latter has since been flooded with complaints concerning abusive bans on Call of Duty games, but also Destiny 2 (from the publisher Bungie), Dead by Daylight (Behavior Interactive), Dragon Knight and Men of Shadow (Opogamous), etc.
Proof of the scale of the problem, the alert article written by UFC-Que Choisir by Nancy is the most read on its website! For its part, Activision has not made any changes to the conditions of use of its games in 3 years, and has even stopped responding to requests from the local association. Faced with this silence, the latter once again contacted the DDPP denouncing “the termination of the contract without notice, in breach of article R. 212-2 of the Consumer Code; the absence of proof provided by the company, in disregard of article R. 212-1 of the aforementioned code; the absence of a mediation service, in disregard of article L. 612-1 of the aforementioned code.”
This alert caught the attention of the DDPP, which indicated in early July 2023 that an investigation into Activision’s practices had been launched. In addition, the UFC-Que Choisir of Nancy met with a lawyer so that a complaint could be filed in its name and that of its victim members, because the players concerned by this type of dispute, often young, must not be left behind.
The victory of UFC-Que Choisir against Nintendo over the Switch’s dysfunctional Joy-Con controllers clearly shows that in the battle against publishers, it is useful to have us on the team!
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