Is it legal for Blizzard to completely shut down Overwatch 1 in order to replace it with Overwatch 2?

Question

Overwatch (1) was a multiplayer first-person shooter video game created by Blizzard. It was released in 2016 and cost around 40€.

Earlier this year, Overwatch 1 was shut down:

• The servers are down.
• The game is not playable from the official Blizzard game launcher.

It has been replaced by Overwatch 2, which is considered its "sequel" by Blizzard and is free to play, but with very high-priced in-game cosmetics.

I do not understand how this is considered a legal action for the following reasons:

• I paid 30/40 bucks for the right to own Overwatch 1 (did I?) and to play it.
• Overwatch 1, for which I paid, is now completely unusable for me, so the service (if not the product) I have paid for is now not available
• It is replaced by a free to play game (what happened to my 40 bucks)

While playing OW1, I earned ingame credits which allowed me to purchase cosmetics (so, basically, I got those cosmetics in exchange for my time, not for my money). Those cosmetics have been "transferred" to OW2 and they now cost an insane amount of money (something like at least 10 dollars each, and there are a lot of them (purchasable and than I unlocked in OW1)). However, as I just said, I did not purchase the cosmetics, I (think I) purchased the product and the service provided to use it.

Questions

• Did I pay for the right to own and play Overwatch 1, or just for the right to play it?
• Why is it legal (I assume, as they did it and I did not hear about some legal action taken to them for that) for Blizzard to shutdown completely (more like "take away from customers"?) a product and a service for which customers have paid?

PS: I used the france and united-states tags as I am French and live in France and Blizzard Entertainment is a USA company.

Answer 1

I believe you have just misunderstood what you paid for.

Blizzard's End User License Agreement says:

Your use of the Platform is licensed, not sold, to you, and you hereby acknowledge that no title or ownership with respect to the Platform or the Games is being transferred or assigned and this Agreement should not be construed as a sale of any rights.

It also says:

Blizzard may change, modify, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of the Platform or Accounts at any time, including removing items, or revising the effectiveness of items in an effort to balance a Game. Blizzard may also impose limits on certain features or restrict your access to parts or all of the Platform or Accounts without notice or liability.

Answer 2

When it comes to (comment by usul)

"licensed, not sold" - Almost certainly they clicked a button that said "buy" or "purchase" when they paid for the game (excuse me, paid for the license). So it seems relevant whether that language was illegally misleading.

I'm certain you will find something regarding this in the EULA/TOS of the launcher/webstore that defines the wording definition. Just because a button says buy or purchase doesnt mean it refers to the product. it could just as well just mean buy "a license to access to the product" which is defined in the clause that you do not own anything.

Answer 3

Yes, this is totally legal in the United States. It's probably still legal in France, despite the stronger consumer protection laws. I say that because large international companies generally have large teams of people working to ensure compliance with the rules in the jurisdictions they do business in. Sometimes they screw it up, and sometimes they deliberately flout the rules, but generally they try to stay on the right side of things, because class-action lawsuits and regulatory actions are expensive.

When you "buy a game" you are not buying the game, you are buying a license to play the game (essentially all AAA games have had that in their EULA for decades now). That license is revokable. In addition to that, in the case of a multiplayer game, it is not expected nor reasonable to expect that the company maintain the servers that enable that multiplayer experience indefinitely: you aren't paying a subscription each month but the AWS bill still comes due. Even if you are (or paying the equivalent in microtransactions), supporting that takes operational resources that they would likely prefer to spend on the shiny new thing at some point.

I totally understand that stings when something you enjoy is taken from you, and I am dreading Nintendo finally deciding to shut off the servers for a particular game I love where some of the content is gated behind online components myself. But products and services come and go. Companies come and go: if Activision Blizzard filled for bankruptcy you wouldn't have a game either. Short of games open sourcing their software, which has it's own problems, there's no real way to square this circle.

Answer 4

Did I pay for the right to own and play Overwatch 1, or just for the right to play it ?

You paid for a license to the client software. Which isn't really either, but closer to the second. You don't own anything.

Why is it legal for Blizzard to shutdown completely a product and a service for which customers have paid ?

You haven't entered into any contract for that service. You may have given them money, but you didn't give them money in return for a promise that the service would be available over any given period of time. You paid for a license to the client software. Granted, that client is only useful in conjunction with the service, but:

1. That's the way a sizable fraction (probably the majority) of online games have worked for decades,
2. It's not reasonable to think that your one-time payment obligates them to run the servers forever, and no specific timeframe was agreed in advance,
3. The fact that the game needs Blizzard servers to run wasn't any kind of secret,

so it's hard for anyone to claim that they didn't know what they were buying.

And, not really legal commentary here, but six and a half years is not such a bad run. Someone who bought the base game in 2016 for $40 and played until shutdown paid $0.52 per month for the privilege. They cut the price to $20 in early 2019, so someone who bought it then and played for the remaining 3.75 years paid $0.44 per month. Only those who joined in the last year or so got a particularly poor deal.

As for any in-game purchases, it's pretty much a guarantee that you paid for the enjoyment of them "as long as the service is provided", so any transfer is a bonus.