Rock Band player and Kansasian (Kansian? Kansasite? ... Resident of Kansas) Monte Morgan is suing the makers of Rock Band for a faulty drum pedal that he claims they were fully aware of. Here is his first complaint:
Due to a design defect, the bass drum foot pedal (which is an integral component of the Rock Band drum kit) fractures under ordinary and expected usage, thus rendering the pedal inoperative. Without a functioning bass drum foot pedal, consumers are unable to use the Rock Band drum kit or play the Rock Band game in the manner marketed and advertised by Defendants, thus depriving them of the value and enjoyment of their purchases.
However, Morgan's biggest complaint isn't the actual fact that the pedals break easily, but that EA and Harmonix knew that and still shipped the game anyway. And Morgan goes further to say that they released Rock Band 2 solely to take advantage of the fact that the first game shipped with fragile pedals.
His evidence does seem to make sense: Harmonix and EA extended their warranty through October, which was when the new Rock Band was coming out. And in Rock Band 2's marketing campaign, the new, redesigned foot pedal was featured prominently, which certainly doesn't seem like it would be a major selling point without people thinking they would need to greatly improve over the first model.
When EA announced they would retract their promise to fulfill warranties past the original 60 days, they noted that:
We decided (on our own and without any obligation) to allow our customers to take advantage of the EA warranty program even if they didn't have a receipt and even if they sent it to us after the 60-day period had expired. We did this to make sure that our customers had the best experience possible with Rock Band.
Over seven months later, we decided to no longer make exceptions to our warranty program. The reasons for this were (1) we have a great deal of confidence in our peripherals, (2) we believe we have a great warranty program in place and (3) we found that a large number of the reported problems--especially those after the 60 day period--were due to mistreatment of the equipment.
Well, they're allowed to do whatever they want, but that certainly ruffled a few feathers for people who had experienced the problems but didn't act in a timely manner and missed the deadline.
Of course, EA and Harmonix, whether or not they did know about the pedal issues, did act generously when extending the warranty for months and not requiring a receipt. And it is very likely that we are not looking at a conspiracy theory here. But it will be interesting to see how this situation turns out and how Rock Band and Guitar Hero will handle their warranties for their clearly mediocre-quality peripherals.
[ Via GameCyte ]
