Illinois introduces MMO legislation

Posted Aug 2nd 2008 10:00AM by David Craddock
Filed under: Biz, Culture, MMO, RPG

After playing Final Fantasy XI for a few months, young Alex Edwards asked his parents to cancel the account. Mr and Mrs Edwards, who were paying $13 a month for their son's online game, obliged their son -- but only after one hour and 45 minutes on the phone with Square Enix customer support.

According to Alley Insider, the Edwards family's MMO cancellation woes entailed not only a call with customer support that lasted almost two hours, but some detective work necessary to track down the phone number in the first place. No overt method of online cancellation could be found by the Edwards, and their discovery of a phone number came about only due to referencing their monthly credit card statement. Finally, after the aforementioned time spent on hold, a Square Enix representative picked up the phone and canceled the Edwards' FFXI account.

Rather than curse out the developer, Mr Edwards took his frustration to close friend Raymond Poe, a representative in the Edwards' home state of Illinois. This past week saw Illinois pass a law stating that all MMOs must offer their subscribers a method of online cancellation, effectively leveling up the ease with which players can opt out of their MMO accounts.

Tags: final-fantasy-xi, mmo, square-enix

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

thank god for this. Vanguard was pretty bad tooPosted at 10:41AM on Aug 2nd 2008 by shemer

But FFXI does have online cancellation. I used it last month.Posted at 3:35AM on Aug 3rd 2008 by Winnie

This stupid..... FFXI has had an online cancelation ever since it was created. I used it over 3 years ago, started again, quit again, and started again. This is a BS story to apply to the new law.Posted at 7:22AM on Aug 3rd 2008 by G

This a very misleading article. Playonline has had an online cancellation option from the very beginning. I have used this service twice, once three years ago, and 2 years ago. The reason why they had so much trouble canceling was due to their own stupidity to not look at the online options, the online Q & A, or most important, the game manual that clearly outlines how to cancel your account online so that you do not have future charges. Most likely the parent's wanted to call have the staff do it for them, which would cause much trouble due to them having to verify the account, get permission from a manager or higher up, then have someone manually cancel the account server side. alleyinsider.com, the source, needs to research this before posting it.

Sorry for the rant, I just wanted to clear Square-Enix's name

Posted at 7:36AM on Aug 3rd 2008 by Garrett

That's dumb. Even if it was possible to cancel it online, it should have been a lot more obvious. Posted at 10:01AM on Aug 3rd 2008 by RichChap

about DAMN time! It took me almost 2 weeks to figure out how to cancel that MMO pirates of the burning sea, a great idea, but VERY poor implementation, and a horrible team working on it. I finally found a web page to unsubscribe with...but it was at some "sony station" website, I guess that's their parent company or major sponsor or something, but there was no link to that account or no FAQ question about canceling. I even submitted a new question asking how to cancel and it never got answered, JERKS!Posted at 11:50AM on Aug 3rd 2008 by Sam

Online cancellation for most MMO's is pretty difficult for anyone who's not tech savvy. Parents like these probably aren't even aware that there's a WAY to login and take care of account issues, much less HOW. If MMO's want to reach out to a broader audience, these things need to be taken into consideration. State government regulation is going a bit too far, though, and will probably never pass.Posted at 12:55PM on Aug 4th 2008 by Steven Wong

hahaha! the edwards just showed the world how stupid they are!

i wish whoever presided over when it was brought up for legislation played ffxi and said "you stupid f**k! you logon to playonline.. and cancel your stupid account! ffxi is well to be rid of you, you stupid incompetent f**k!!"Posted at 3:37PM on Aug 6th 2008 by hahaha