Did Gaijin Scam Players?

With 2022 here, Gaijin decided to kick off the new year with controversy. Specifically, a controversy that really could have been avoided easily. When trying to redeem a reward for the Play4Peace event, veteran players were able to get rewards meant for new players. Instead of letting them keep it, Gaijin not only took the premium away, but put players in debt for used time.
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#warthunder​​​​​​​​​​​​ #tanks​​​​​​​​​​​​ #tankhistory

[@Spookston]

Apologies for the VO and if I got anything wrong, I had to rewrite this multiple times and I'm pretty sure I have omicron. I got my jabs so it's mostly just a lot of congestion and throat soreness, but it definitely sucks.

[@michaelprovoast2698]

I hope you feel well soon!

[@cloaker2829]

rip

[@idahoanarmor9014]

Wish you a speedy recovery! And Happy New Year!

[@misterputin8898]

Omicron x Spookston R34 search JK fell well soon my favourite furry

[@VarenvelDarakus]

Get well soon.

[@NebulaIsTaken]

Never have ever seen a gaming company put their players in “debt”. Is Gaijin seriously that money hungry where they have to put players in literal premium debt? If it was a mistake, just change it and let those who already used it keep the stuff, it’s not that big of a deal considering how grindy this game is anyway

[@MrZarthalan]

FWIW, the system exists for credit card chargebacks (and sometimes credit card companies just do weird things.) A lot of other game studios will just instantly ban you until you appeal in those cases. They should have eaten the loss, but applying the debt was probably automatic when they rolled back the premium.

[@firestarteronyoutube5542]

I've seen putting in debt if people bought smth, used it, and then refunded the payment via their bank. Thats perfectly legitimate. This isnt, because no one paid anything for this.

[@cactuslietuva]

Gaijin is Russian company. And Russia is now very much capitalistic hell. So yeah, they are very very greedy.

[@PonyJarCollector]

@@cactuslietuva bring back USSR so gaijin cant exist in general

[@kommandantkillcode]

Gaijin did reimburse the players who used the link by giving them 1 day of premium and erasing the debt (that was probably automatic), but they could’ve handled all of this much better by just allowing everyone to use the link as a Christmas bonus for supporting the streams for the charity.

[@SilentButDudley]

The fact that they tried to charge players for their mistake is absolutely crazy, and just shows how inept and greedy gaijin is as a company. Pretty sad to see.

[@kamikazefilmproductions]

They will fall, we just gotta be patient

[@arbiter5853]

From what I've been reading this kind of 'debt' due to a company error is illegal in some European countries too

[@Jake-dh9qk]

@@kamikazefilmproductions When gaijin falls it wont be hard for other game developers to pick up on all the players that left

[@kamikazefilmproductions]

@@Jake-dh9qk true, i rather take any game company over gaijn, i rather take EA at this point.

[@GojoGunning]

And nothings gonna be fuckin done about it

[@張智程-k6z]

Warthunder is such a realistic game that devs even introduced debts as a premium feature!

[@hiruharii]

🤣🤣🤣

[@ey7290]

God I can't imagine how bad it would be once a Greek tech tree is introduced

[@adam346]

@@ey7290 imagine if they did a whole Tarkov thing where you could only gain currency in one tree by playing that country and it converted differently depending on the actual value of the money? Would be interesting. No one would be playing Russia atm.

[@riv4lm4n]

Gaijin reaction over 7 days of premium instead of taking the good publicity is amazing, they're very lucky they have no competitors.

[@LordOfChaos.x]

World of tanks would be but that game is arcade It does have same armor physics but tanks have hitpoints Crew and such can still die , modules can still break or get damaged upon hits

[@shepardpolska]

@@LordOfChaos.x world of tanks has nowhere near the same armor physics. Lets start with thee AP shell normalization, HEAT penetration against angles and spaced plates, module damage is just a % chance. They are only similar in that they both feature armor as a concept.

[@LordOfChaos.x]

@@shepardpolska war thunder is not realistic either i dont see how that affects the experience that much APCR in war thunder is useless while in rl it does as much damage and spalling as a full caliber AP and penetrates almost as good as AP shells against angles 122 mm HE turns 50 mm plate in 30 mm somehow 155 mm shells just fly thru vehicles with light armor doing 0 dmg and existing the vehicle etc

[@LordOfChaos.x]

@@shepardpolska HEAT penetration against angles is actually very accurate in Wot and similar to war thunder if u have actually tested it before u comment

[@shepardpolska]

@@LordOfChaos.x WT vs WOT is very similar to a COD vs ARMA situation, the games are so different they cannot compete against eachother gameplay wise is my point

[@ODST_Parker]

I ended up with the Bf 109 A and the PT-3, so I really can't complain since apparently we weren't meant to get even those. As for the premium time conundrum, I hit the link after it was fixed, so I didn't experience this personally. However, I have to reiterate that only a shitty, greedy company would make a mistake that players had little to no reason to believe was a mistake, and then make those players pay for the mistake, quite literally.

[@AHappyCub]

Can I ask for the link please, couldn't find it anywhere

[@azmanabdula]

@@AHappyCub Leaving a comment for update on this

[@ODST_Parker]

@@AHappyCub I found it on the War Thunder subreddit, I didn't save it anywhere.

[@ODST_Parker]

@@shape9372 Yeah, that's how it worked when I saw it. Once I signed in, the premium time was grayed out, but I got the two vehicles I didn't have.

[@theuglydumpling4772]

@@ODST_Parker i received three vehicles so ig that was fun.

[@MrMustang1945]

“Easily Avoidable” seems to be Gaijin’s running theme.

[@rezowifix8013]

Along with "Almost fun"

[@samhyman3246]

Gaijin did what a bank does, but the difference between Premium Time and USD is that Premium Time isn't minted; it's computer code. Gaijin won't address this, they'll sweep it under the rug and pretend like nothing happened.

[@TheRibbonRed]

And if people followed with "we don't want drama/lawsuit/ban/etc", then Gaijin gets away as usual.

[@Hunter_Bidens_Crackpipe_]

USD is also minted by the trillions.

[@TheoHawk316]

I mean, it's their fault. They caused it, they reap what they sowed. They should've done what WG did when they made a mistake similar. In WoTB, they put the IS-6 fearless in the store (the IS-6 fearless is a tank that only top players can own due to how hard the grind was) and a lot of people bought it, however, unlike Gaijin, they didn't revoke the tank, they took it out once they made the mistake, and admitted that it happened and that it was an accident. I don't see why Gaijin didn't do that, then again, compare Gaijin to WG and WG looks like a charity.

[@highlyconfused6493]

Well, you can at least say that for the blitz team, they do consistently work to make it more bearable for players as they take feedback quite well and work on it

[@SirNyanPanda]

They are absolutely braindead. Someone on Gaijin making these decisions is so disconnected from gaming it's absolutely insane.

[@ml-fishing1341]

@@highlyconfused6493 I actually enjoy blitz and the mobile warship one too, great time killers

[@VarenvelDarakus]

yeah , WG made many mistakes when i played too and never took stuff out , just look how they balance vechicles , even if its overpowered they dont usualy nerf it (who happens a lot in WT where you buy something OP , then nerf it and now its ok or useless) , in WoT that almost never happens and they dont nerf premiums after relese most of time and if they do they are minor touches. m,eanwhile gajin makes mistakes , blames consumer , breaks consumer kneecaps , and then be suprised thounsants of people leave TBH only toxic publisher i can recall more toxic then gajin is blizzard , id even take EA over gajin and that says a lot.

[@mrfun177]

​@@VarenvelDarakus WG has the issue that if a premium tank or ship is op they can't nerf it or risk getting sued over it. due to wargaming having to abide by EU laws and they want to keep all regions the same so every region for WoT or WoWS now abides by the EU trade laws.

[@foo-foocuddlypoops5694]

As shit as they can be, at least WarGaming are willing to give players a decent amount of free premium time (and other stuff) for events and such. Gaijin's insatiable greed over pixels would make EA recoil.

[@Lehr-km5be]

That was the thing I absolutely loved about World of Warships - events and various missions happening all the time, a lot of them with actual premium account - even though it was not much, (like 7 days at most) it was at least something. Meanwhile Gayjin has literally never done anything like that - no events for silver lions, back-ups or even boosters. One thing I totally loved Wargaming for, is that when there were server issues, they would give literally everyone free premium for one day - no questions asked, just sign up and you get it. Meanwhile Gayjin only gives it to those people who actually played on the specific time the servers were out (and lets face it servers are shit on a daily basis, game literally has to die for them to notice) and only players who at the time had premium account actually get this one day premium chargeback.

[@foo-foocuddlypoops5694]

@@Lehr-km5be I can maybe count on just 1 hand how many days of premium I've got free from Gaijin in 7 years of playing. WarGaming gave me a full month in WoWS because I hadn't logged in for a while.

[@bananomet4052]

@@foo-foocuddlypoops5694 Lol I got 1 day of premium in my 7 years old account and that was like a Enlisted stream drop. Never even got the 1mil SL from a daily login. Snail only taketh, never giveth, snail shall perish at a snails pace.

[@ZappaTheToaster]

I have like, over a year of unactivated premium on WoTB, a ton of premium currency and many premiums across tiers 1-8 while having never paid a penny. Meanwhile in WT, I literally never had premium account as far as I can remember (though my memory sucks, so there could've been a day or 2 where the snail smiled upon me) while I started playing back when there were only planes and premiums that I could count on one hand.

[@Lehr-km5be]

@@foo-foocuddlypoops5694 Yeah, I played WT since 2013 iirc, (with some breaks for obvious reasons) and I did not get a single premium day account since those very few moments when they gave premium away for server issues, I did not have premium account myself. Meanwhile in WoWs I got 3 or 4 premium ships from daily crates and more than a dozen other premium ships through events which were all extremely easy to complete - I pretty much never checked the requirements and always completed them in hours, just by playing the game normally - another great thing about those events :)

[@avtomat6471]

Gaijin Entertainment is without a doubt the most scummiest, greediest company I've ever seen in the gaming community and this wasn't their first scam and clearly won't be their last either.

[@Xlife93]

wont be their last because all they have to do is release new vehicles , pay streamers to show off the dev server and everyone forgets

[@FinestBritishTea]

Have you, like, never heard of EA, or Activision?

[@jasper-dq8gs]

@@FinestBritishTea gajin is much much much much worse my guy

[@avtomat6471]

@@FinestBritishTea they are scummy yes... but the ain't on the same level of scum as Gaijin Entertainment is. Gaijin is a Russian based game developer located in Moscow so naturally they are "stupid scummy".

[@bananomet4052]

@@FinestBritishTea Bruh Gaijin is like on a whole complete different level when it comes to greed.

[@Jezza_C_WT]

From a public relations stand point, they really screwed up. The reaction is petty at best. They could have just said, "My bad, bro. We screwed up, but enjoy the bonuses!" And that would have gone down well. But nope. Instead they had to go the douchiest route possible, in typical Gaijin fashion. What makes this worse is that, this is happening during the Christmas/ New Year period, and tied to a fricken CHARITY event! Imagine putting people in debt for your own mistake, during the Christmas holidays, during a charity event! Like, wut?! Apparently Gaijin didn't get the memo and thought "the season for giving" was actually the season for taking. Or maybe they just thought it meant the "season of everyone else giving to Gaijin".

[@Mangos1021]

Literally. They have no soul and want your money.

[@zacharysuvee5842]

Well said dude, they were literally scrooge McDuck and it’s pretty sad

[@julianbelkan2384]

Is kinda hilarious how they took such actions for basically a small time of premium a TIER 1 PREMIUMS, TIER 1, Vehicles that serve more for cheap collectibles than use in the tech tree lol More than any legal repercussions form this, it damages their public image a whole lot more than their other questionable decisions and actions.

[@MultiMcgruber]

Seriously, and consider that the premium time cost Gaijin functionally nothing, if they'd played it off in a magnanimous fashion, they might've *gained* subscribers, instead of this shitstorm.

[@Mangos1021]

Just got to wait until Gaijin does this stupid stuff a few more times until alot of their playerbase start leaving.

[@imwilllliwmi]

I don’t think they really care about the vehicles because you were able to keep them. The premium time is a bigger issue to them because of how much more progress you can make with it. It’s unfortunate Gaijin keeps doing things like this, I really thought they were being nice and giving everyone a free week of premium time

[@kajmak64bit76]

@@imwilllliwmi yea dude... a year ago or something... with 7 days of premium... i went from T-54 early... unlocked IS-3.. BMP-1... other T-54's.. got T-55A... got T-62... got T-72A... then got T-72B I may have missed something... But progress was INSANE... i did all that in 7 days lol

[@hunterbear2421]

@@kajmak64bit76 when i had 12 days of premium i went to tiger P but that was AB

[@-MarcelDavis-]

For all it's worth, I can confirm that when I redeemed the code it said that veteran players were eligible and would get three low tier premium vehicles (but not the premium time). What bothers me is that they took away one day of premium time (which I bought after they took back the 7 days) even though I only played around one our with the premium time from the code. Also there was no notification or warning that my account was "in debt".

[@unicorndelta6071]

Hello! Thank you for using our code. You are now in debt. Please repay at earliest convenience. Victory is ours, Gaijin Entertainment

[@riptidegaming8876]

i only played for a hour too will i be banned for being in debt?

[@kokaito7913]

@@riptidegaming8876 they tend to ban accounts in debt after some time if a player didn't pay it off.

[@hunterbear2421]

the people who sue them are going to be wealthy and the lawyers wealthyer

[@CheezeSpartan]

Yea they did, War Thunder is listed as free to play but in reality costs much of your sanity.

[@ITmotoNoob]

Thats exactly what freemium model is.

[@charlescourtwright2229]

Gaijin needs to realize that, if they dont care about the players, the second a direct competitor, aka another sim lite vehicle deathmatch, comes online, 80% of their player base would jump ship at this point

[@jochumm6099]

If only another company would make something similar

[@nick_steele9790]

@@jochumm6099 Investment and time needed (especially for models) would be HUGE. Unfortunately, with games like this, they are always changing and adding more and more vehicles and mechanics. For another company to make a game that was enjoyable enough to get the support it might have to start pretty bare bones. I hope someone does make a new one though and think they can!

[@02nightowl]

this is the exact reason i spent a few months learning how to play arma3, sick of a shit company making shit decisions and acting like they are the victims when ppl voice their hatred for it (for some reason this comment keeps being posted to your replays even tho ive tried to reply to multiple other comments, sorry)

[@ZappaTheToaster]

@@nick_steele9790 I feel like the models wouldn't even have to be incredibly realistic. Perfect example is Art Of Rally. Have low poly models that still contain a lot of detail and keep the physics realistic. This would make it mostly an issue of developing the engine, a map editor, game mechanics and server backend. It would still be expensive and time consuming, but if a team even sligthly better than Gaijin was actually to deliver a game like this and spread the word, I think that the people wouldn't mind it's graphics and would gladly jump the ship, me included.

[@justinsane332]

we are waiting for something

[@xxch1coriaxx]

Here i thought Wargaming was scummy, but gaijin is at another level. (More like 2 or 3 lvls)

[@Electronick7714]

Wargaming has very arguably improved over the last several years. Gaijin on the other hand just keeps seeming to get worse. I've never regretted the money I spent on WoT even when they were at the worst. But gaijin is so bad I've never spent money on them and never will because of crap like this. It also makes it a lot easier to shelf warthunder for long periods of time since I have no money invested into it.

[@nisqhog2881]

As long as WG uses lootboxes and actively fucks over their community creators, they won't be better than Gaijin, even if this was stupid.

[@theprimus7976]

as scummy as wargaming is, they at least recognize their mistakes, once on WoWB i bought an Italian premium battleship and it was way OP, so they removed it, said it needed reworked and i got like 3 days premium as comp

[@BassBanj0]

@@nisqhog2881 my guy Gaijin is way worse than Wargaming

[@W1CKED__]

Gaijin numba wan

[@richiestang78]

The biggest legal issue may be the fact they put players account into debt, depending on how the EULA is written along with various countries laws this may be very illegal.

[@hedgehog3180]

The EULA won't really matter here since you can't contract yourself out of the law. The EULA might say that Gaijin has the right to do this but contracts only hold up if a court recognize it and no court would recognize that Gaijin has a right to just randomly charge players for a product they didn't buy. This is definitely illegal in at least the EU I'm pretty sure.

[@mike4402]

The red herring is the idea that Gaijin was somehow losing money from this. Gaijin doesn't lose a single cent from giving people premium time. They are NOT losing money by giving something away that has no value. It would be different if it was a premium vehicle that other people had to pay for, but that's not what's happening. A free day of premium time does not invalidate a paid day of premium time, because they are bonuses that stack consecutively not overlap. Wargaming for example routinely gives people $20 worth of premium time as gifts to everyone all the time for the purpose of making them play the game more consistently. What gaijin did with the debt was give you a worthless free thing and then demand compensation.

[@hedgehog3180]

I mean lets be honest, even the vehicles have a dubious claim to having real value. If that's the case then I should be allowed to refund my purchase within 14 days of buying it like with any other item and Gaijin would also be responsible for it if I lost it since they're the ones who hold my account.

[@GewelReal]

problem here is that players that didn't have premium would've not buy it anyway. ever. so Gaijin would've not lost literally anything. they actually would've gained a lot because maybe even few players would see how much of a difference premium account makes and thkse free 7 days would make them actually go and buy more. but nah, Gaijin always makes illogical decisions

[@Spitflyer]

Well said. I honestly don’t know why Gaijin would actively pursue chasing up a single day of premium when the PR fallout from it would be greater than the cost of the bonuses. Seriously stupid move from a PR standpoint

[@SovietBear4]

they really need an actual PR agency lmao

[@ZeStreD]

Store screws up even with creator codes. Tried to use one last month and it said "supporting" someone else entirely and in the end I didn't even get that creator's decal. In fact, when I referenced the list, I did not even say the "creator" the store listed. Which makes me suspect it isn't just that their store is buggy and scuffed, but actually being hijacked and scammed.

[@politicalmonkeyfan]

had it happen to me a few times but i caught it before pressing purchase, just relog into the website and then pull the link up in another tab without closing the logged in tab, it should apply the creator code

[@AnotherWorthlessMoron]

@@politicalmonkeyfan That's ridiculous that you need to jump through all those hoops just to get what you pay for.

[@proofostrich9061]

@@AnotherWorthlessMoron You don’t pay anything when you apply creator codes lol. You apply them to items you are purchasing.

[@seasuper3402]

The most annoying part for me was that if it was you could enter account details and it wouldn't check for if it was applying it to an existing account I'd be fine with But it had the "already have an account sign in here" meaning at least at some point it seemed it was being considered to give to existing players

[@Lykas_mitts]

Not gonna lie, even if it WAS a mistake, it would have been the better decision to just go: "Oh yeah, my bad. Also the link no longer works from now, everyone who got the stuff before this statement gets to keep it as a bonus!" You lose a bit of (POTENTIAL!) revenue, people are mostly happy about it since it's a first come first serve thing that ran out. Even the free premium time could potentially lure people in since suddenly "hey, with premium I'm actually making progress!"

[@legendhun9342]

And those people would have (probably) bought more than 7 days of premium, like 90 days or so

[@Mangos1021]

@@legendhun9342 yep. But now more people see Gaijin for their greediness and decide not to buy anything.

[@docspaz4481]

Id say the link had mixed signals saying “only for new players” but also having a thing saying “already have an account? Sign in to receive your bonus” which to me seemed kinda sketch but i took it anyways cause i just had gotten the link from other players

[@johnblack8872]

Exactly.....new players won't have an account unless it's like idk based on time played or something. Because a person with 30 hours can still be reletively nee

[@LooperEpic]

@@johnblack8872 Relatively speaking, I'm pretty new to the game, I only have 400 hours

[@Ropetor]

Gaijin doesn't loose anything giving premium, it's an imaginary thing that costs nothing to make. And also saying that they lost money is a fallacy out of all the people that go the 7 days at most 5% would've bought it and even there the probability of them buying more is high, they do not loose anything by giving it, they are not potential sales

[@xobismarckox]

Exactly my thoughts. Must be some company economy gibberish to lull people who easily belive such statements.

[@rare_kumiko]

Gaijin must be one of the most incompetent game devs out there. I love the concept of the game but there's so many stupid decisions (like intentionally poor balancing or excessive monetisation) that ruin it for me, and it's already been a year since I last played. I do wish they'll improve at some point, but I don't think they will.

[@LordOfChaos.x]

Anything above br 5.7 is going to make u bankrupt

[@misterputin8898]

@@LordOfChaos.x Damn man, without premium above 5.7 u go directly to Venezuela's Economy.

[@LordOfChaos.x]

@@misterputin8898 -99999999 account balance

[@legaroojack1251]

@@misterputin8898 it took me longer to save up for my Leo 2A6 than to actually research it with how terrible the top tier economy is.

[@otaviom6480]

@@LordOfChaos.x are you playing france by any chance? I still make 30-70k silver per match without premium playing at *7.7* The rate you earn is definitely not keeping up with the research rate but you're definitely not going bankrupt past 5.7 (especially if you play Germany with their 2k repair costs)

[@jonathonspears7736]

Gaijin's business practices are why I have quit after 8 years and more than 2000 hours. I've spent nearly $3000usd on the game but the company is growing ever more greedy, reducing our earnings, refusing to expand BRs, refusing to reducing the ever growing grind. It's all to much for me now.

[@TheRibbonRed]

The only way to win, is to not play.

[@Matteoschiappacasse]

They dont care that u quited... u allready gave them what they wanted

[@misterputin8898]

Literally you are paying for get mad and disapointed everyday, not profit ngl

[@TheRibbonRed]

@@Matteoschiappacasse That's the problem with companies like Gaijin, Wargaming, ActiBlizz, Ubisoft, etc. *If you won't be heard, then save yourself.* Your statement is true, but I hope you don't use that to justify Gaijin's actions. You'll only be their cashcow by then. Play Sprocket or invest in GHPC instead.

[@jonathonspears7736]

@@Matteoschiappacasse yes, but if more players stop paying they will either have to change their attitude toward customers or fail as a company.

[@Hippo_Heli]

I love how they’re able to track how long of a premium vehicle was used, but if someone hacked your account because of their shitty security system then spend the GE or Gaijin coins that you bought, they wouldn’t be able to help or reverse the actions the hacker did. What a joke!

[@Hippo_Heli]

To clarify I had one of those computer generated password, it’s not easily guessable and my password library wasn’t compromised.

[@otaviom6480]

They didn't track how long the premium vehicles are used, they just deducted the time they took to find out about the flawed code and rectify it (which took them one day) and as such they removed the remaining premium time from people who redeemed the code + the one day they took to fix the issue (since they essentially took 28 hours to take the premium away). Still a dick move in a charity event

[@GewelReal]

@@Hippo_Heli if password was short then it could've been guessed in milliseconds complexity doesn't matter. what matters is purely lenght

[@alucardtherealvampire6470]

Time to go pay off my debt for the snail before it catches me and breaks my knee caps

[@alexchristian4438]

You've been posting alot and you've been doing great you should slow down, don't over work yourself love the work spend some time with family take a break looks like you could use one :)

[@sesew8933]

You really telling a KZbinr to change his schedule huh, he sounds fine to me

[@user-jw4fn6fh2x]

Great to know. Thanks. What I can't wrap my mind around is how Gaijin keeps going in the wrong direction with almost every decision they make. How is it that they are so deaf to the players and so greedy that they think all these issues don't hurt their business. This kind of stuff has been going on since I started playing the game. If only they would stop and think maybe War Thunder would be fun again.

[@unoriginal7392]

What sucks is like you said at the end, there are employees who genuinely care, but their not in the positions where they can make an impact on the player-base’s view of gaijin

[@laberdude]

then they should leave the company.. and let the ship sink.. i spent some money on this game but i am really not sad if this game is goin down the river. playing ur ass of for some buggy pixels.. the grind since the last update is fked up

[@meki___6881]

I don't doubt there are some people at gaijin who care But I am almost sure 99% dosent give a damn or is even on the same side Free abrams dude Warframe doas indeed have a female community something who doas regularly saves warframes devs back end but gaijin dosent even have that

[@6742-d4t]

@@meki___6881 this is so true dude, Shaun or Shawn (whatever), the fpe and parts dude, he's the pure evil, i think he taught Anton or Anton taught him on how to be the greediest possible.

[@unoriginal7392]

@@laberdude yeah the grind sucks, and gaijin has awful decision marking, but they know that they’re the only company with a game like war thunder, so they know they can get away with stuff because people will still play and spend way too much money on this game

[@laberdude]

@@unoriginal7392 sad but true.. funniest thing is watching the top Guys of the company playing their game. Greasy hair and not able to guide a missile on target. 🤣

[@Urban_goose101]

I very much enjoy this game. It’s obvious that many people put thousands of hours into its development. This seems like strictly a management issue.

[@mando_dablord2646]

As much as I'd like to agree with you, Escargot is a basket of rotten apples with just a few good ones. The different teams have little to no communication between each other. With the dev team only looking at game statistics over player feedback. Except in a few cases where outrage gets big enough. They prioritize monetization over balance and look down on players who complain about it, with bans even happening.

[@legaroojack1251]

not its not just management, the dev team itself is quite shit.

[@PotatoeJoe69]

The title might as well read "Did Gaijin Gaijin players?" Yes, they have Gaijined us, once again. Nothing new here

[@franklind.roosevelt7416]

I feel like this kind of thing must break some sort of trade law. Offering people something for free letting them redeem it and then giving them an actual in game debt that can only be payed off with real money seems like the kind of thing a con man would be arrested for.

[@VarenvelDarakus]

if wayback machine says disclaimer is not there that means it was not there , if i recall similar case was once with steam game and once with fallout76 and both things ended up in court , both times it sided with consumer. on end of the day if its not clear what you purchase , it is false advertising who is illegal.

[@auxityne]

I'm sorry, the mere concept of "premium debt" has ensured I wouldn't play this game it if was the last form of entertainment on Earth.

[@BassBanj0]

Found this out from the world of tanks Reddit as someone created a meme about it Gaijin removes players stuff when they did nothing wrong, and then Wargaming is here giving a good amount of stuff for the holiday event to help people out

[@StarkRaven59]

The lesser of two evils is still evil. Wargaming is still a shitty company doing awful things to a tank game.

[@CptJack-ws8nz]

what pissed me off is why gaijin had to go out of their way to remove just a week of premium time like how petty of a game company do you need to be?

[@kristianfagerstrom7011]

"Not as bad as blizzard" Hmmm, In what sense is Gaijin better?

[@litigation_jackson]

Less sexual harassment hopefully

[@TolerablyInterested]

Haven't seen any gj employees posing with a bill cosby photo and committing sexual harassment for whatever that's worth.

[@mamons_2339]

Do you know about Activition-Blizzard alegations? They sexually abused their own employee.

[@lobsterbark]

They are smaller and so their activities spread misery to fewer people. Every game developer that has money as it's primary goal is equally evil. If they haven't done some fucked up thing yet, it's because they wouldn't benefit from it, not because they are morally superior to any other company.

[@thorvonfalin9975]

Thats shooting REALLY low tho, cant get any worse than Actiblizzard. They didnt even pay their female CEO the same amount as the Male, while they did exactly the same in the company

[@henke7864]

One should never expect anything good from Gaijin. Gaijin keeps doing one fuckup after another.

[@hqwefg]

As someone who's currently working on my UK law degree and has worked with trade standards offices before, I can say 100% what Gaijin did was illegal under the Consumers Rights Act 2015. I know this because this is a fairly common issue. The Fraud part isn't the issue. It's the "Refund" part of going into debt. Is premium time nominally purchased yes/no? Yes so this falls under refunds, which companies HAVE TO GIVE no matter what. 99% of the time that means just a small discount or something on the next purchase and that's all that's needed legally. Forcing players to go into debt? Unless they disclaimed on the link that if you WEREN'T a new player then you would have it revoked then this is very very illegal. And yeah this falls under refund, it's a technical issue. And how illegal is it? Well it normally doesn't lead to criminal charges but your bank would refund the charges and probably any other orders part of the group. I say that because this mostly happens with online suppliers; get a faulty part and they charge you for it? The entire order, even if it's a $1000 and the part was $50 will be voided, I've helped people write boiler plate emails to companies who end up getting their entire PC for free because the companies just kept saying "That's not in our TOS, we will not offer a refund or discount". Like if those companies did ANYTHING, even a 1% discount, they would have been fine, but nope instead they lose thousands of dollars because they want to act like their TOS is above the law. You'd be surprised how often a TOS is legally unenforceable. Usually it's a case of it being based in another country and not understanding that domestic laws apply if you want to do business in that country.

[@obsidianjane4413]

"never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." I'm glad I have a real life and have been ignoring WT during the holidays.

[@hyperdimensionbliss]

Never attribute to consistent stupidity that which is adequately explained by consistent malice.

[@obsidianjane4413]

@@hyperdimensionbliss There is that too.

[@lolsadboi1238]

this is probably the most comprehensive video i’ve seen on this topic, good job Spookston. I saw TEC’s video on it and while I do like TEC, it seemed like he was just defending gaijin, and Spit’s video seemed a bit misinformed in some areas. Anyways, thanks for making this video.

[@lordgrimm2905]

I honestly love this game, and i cant tell it all started with a lot of love, im sure there is people in gaijin who love the comunity, sadly they are not the one that ultimately make decision, this game has so much wasted potential

[@shmekelfreckles8157]

To be completely fair it actually started not from love

[@ILoveNeeps]

When I used the link on the first day that it existed, upon signing into your account the check boxes besides the free vehicles still remained checked, however the one besides the "7 days premium" became greyed out. So essentially the vehicles were meant for everyone, both new and old. Meanwhile the premium was supposed to be for only new players however obviously everyone ended up getting it too.

[@SgtLevis]

last year wargaming this year gaijin, new year / christmas time is allways intresting to look to

[@WSSRIOTCONTROL]

Only problem is war gaming screws up literally every year in one way or another

[@SgtLevis]

@@WSSRIOTCONTROL +1

[@bro3217]

@@WSSRIOTCONTROL +2

[@hetzerproductions9447]

Happy new year spookston!

[@Palkia8842]

My question is: Is it even possible that they wouldn't scam players?

[@Qualex14]

Lol my reddit rant got featured on a spookston vid? That's something I never expected.

[@HK-do9dl]

Just wondering, does anyone know which vehicles were included in this "new user" bonus?

[@lapajgoo4572]

Premium PZ II and BF109 for germany and a PT-3 vessel for USA

[@lalad0]

flegel bf109 pz2c dak and pt3 i think it was called, the tier1 250 ge coastal fleet american motor torpedo boat

[@adambachraty2005]

SMK tank and p39k-1 ussr plane

[@katzenkralle7262]

@@adambachraty2005 two people already replied correctly and youre wrong

[@adambachraty2005]

@@katzenkralle7262 oh ok mate, I was thinking about something else

[@drezworthy]

As someone who doesn't keep up with the forums or reddit, thanks for the explanation

[@CarryPotter007]

I didn't feel any honesty in this video... if you *had* to make the video to clear gaijin, then i'd have nothing to say still a great video considering the type of players like me who only cares about the devs don't really keep up with these sort of stuff and don't really care but still, it's good to see what OTHER trickery they are pulling off (I don't give a dime about Gaijin's big massive big bucks corporation side but The devs, they made the best optimized high quality military realistic looking game that is really easy to mess around and have custom/user content added to it and have fun (but it seems like the passion is dying and its turning into what many games have been accused of, a big pile of cash grab mess)

[@Zombine45]

In my case, there was two separate disclaimers, the first one on the first page said it the entire bonus was ONLY for new players. The second page stated that existing players would only get the premium time(Or only the vehicles i don't remember). Regardless of what it said i received both premium time and the 3 vehicles.

[@ClonetrooperCaptain]

So they took away 7 days of premium for the vet players who inputted the code?

[@TheRibbonRed]

No, they added (and now removed) a debt to future earnings without any prior notification, despite the bug being totally on Gaijin's fault. This might not fly as "scam" under the legal eyes, but it's definitely something similar to fraudulent acts as they applied debts against their customers due to their own mistake.

[@mikeyh984]

​@@TheRibbonRed I claimed the link, got the premium and vehicles, is my account going to be safe or will they ban it (if i don't buy something)?

[@foggyhaze5496]

Hey spook hope u feel better!

[@StarkRaven59]

I see a lot of people saying "Wargaming at least gives out free premium" but remember this. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Wargaming is still a bad company ruining a good game.

[@Swat_Dennis]

There could've also been two codes, something small for old players and the regular code for the new players.

[@Phantom-dm9fz]

From a lawyer standpoint and judge as well, gajin can be sued and easily lose the court battle in most countries depending on their laws but it certainly does fall on fraud

[@cavemanbonk8320]

This could be 5 second clip of spookston saying "yes" and then a 4 me mute loop of the Seinfeld outro

[@sebulbableves]

My friend opened 100GE from a daily box and still haven t recieved it.

[@clone701]

Thanks a lot for bringing this. My team or squad is dead so I play solo and I didn’t knew bout this problem until now thanks my friend and awesome videos as always.

[@CssHDmonster]

scam no, being scumbags yes

[@TheRibbonRed]

They could be in hot water due to no prior disclaimer and/or notification though. Imagine having a payment mistake by you on your platform, yet you apply debts & bans against your own customers.

[@CssHDmonster]

@@TheRibbonRed could yes but nobody is gonna pursue legal action

[@TheRibbonRed]

@@CssHDmonster who knows? They're operating in the EU, comparably less infringement against the public has been punished before... -to the point EU became a nanny union.-

[@InfectedByZanza]

Gajin to its employees: You want bonus at the end of the year? Employees: Fuck yeah! Gajin: Watch this.

[@Techn1kal]

wargaming fucks up: over-reparates gaijin fucks up: puts you in debt if their game isn't better, their mindset surely is

[@MisterRz]

looking back at this from 2016, I'd be like, Hell! how did we end up here?!?

[@feraltrafficcone4483]

That background video only bolstered my desire to grind out the AGS. Fucking hell it looks cool, and I’m already on star eight

[@odethious5639]

Gaijin used to have massive bundles that had massive discounts. There were even people who calculated the money saved based on the amount of GE you get from the bundles vs outright buying the GE. The pacific pack was one of the good bundles you could get. When there was a sale, not only could you buy one of these packs and get more GE than what you were paying for the bundle, but you also basically got the vehicles and premium time for free.

[@adamsteven8186]

"The community is going for their throats". Okay, so nothing changed

[@NewtNewt117]

To even have the possibility to become in debt in a video game has to be the most cursed idea out there.

[@BrownFoxWarrior]

When I first saw the link, I assumed it actually was the New Year's gift just late (since they used to give free Tier I premiums for Christmas a long time ago). It was only afterwards that I saw it was for an event.

[@somberbadusern]

From what I know (I claimed it pretty early on), there’s always been a disclaimer that the premium days were only for new players, and that the vehicles could be redeemed for both new and old players alike

[@GewelReal]

it's still like saying "free candy" while there are chocolate bars in the basket even tho you only ate 1 small piece of it they not only take away your whole bar, because it wasn't a candy in their eyes, and you have to rebuy another one for them

[@KiithnarasAshaa]

Not specifically related to this controversy, but I do feel like so much could be solved with War Thunder if even 20% of their own development and QA staff regularly played and was invested in their own game.

[@snazzydazzy]

I literally woke up and this is one way to start 2022.

[@cana0]

the bonus wasn't intended for new playes only. The vehicles were for everyone, only the premium time was intended for new players. But for some reason, when a non- new player claimed the 3 vehicles, he recieved the 7 days of premium too

[@Gerojsk]

Well, consiering the players fulfill the consumer status legal criteria (aka protected by a bunch of consumer protection laws applicable internationally', Gaijin can easily be sued as they are objectively (strictly) liable in this scenario.

[@joshuamueller3206]

Most informative video I have seen on this topic. A lot better than the usual Gaijin bad vs. WT players stupid arguments. P.S. the AGS turret must be the inspiration for the Scorpion's from Halo. I got super focused on the audio for a bit and thought you were actually playing as a Scorpion for about 30s.

[@mahmoodali5043]

Didn't think I'd ever talk about WoT blitz team as a good example but here we are When they accidentally put the reward for competitive matches (IS-6) in the store instead of its regular premium version, they didn't take it back. Yes, they fixed it and put the regular version instead of the reward version later, but those who caught it kept it. Helps that both versions were exactly the same only difference is how they look and the names, the competition reward version being called Fearless. They then made a new reward for the competition, again called Fearless but a different tank (Lorraine 40 tons), and this time the reward version is just a little bit better than the regular premium version. So it looks like the IS-6 Fearless would either never be sold or would be sold after like a couple of years when players who care about the uniqueness of the competition reward tank get the new reward tank and keep their reward uniqueness, the rest of the players can buy the previously rare tank for a high price while old competitionplayers are happy they got the over priced tank for free previously, WG makes a shit ton of money while turning a mistake into a lucky strike for players, having a new rare tank money grapper and still giving competition players a unique reward tank. Triple win situation.

[@operatorrrr]

happy new years spooks

[@firestarteronyoutube5542]

What annoys me is that unlike other alternative companies or what us, their customers and playerbase would expect, they did not a) publicly admit on any of the easily accessible platforms that they had made a mistake, and then b) effectively stabbed anyone who claimed the bonus in the back. Its a horrible thing to do which has really destroyed the confidence of the involved and active playerbase.

[@yeti7227]

7 days of premium comes out to roughly cost $2.62CAD, which is just over $2USD, plus they had some tier 1 premiums thrown in there, so add like a couple bucks for them but I don't feel like they're the big issue the community has. I find it very weird that gaijin is willing to die on this hill over something that costs less than a energy drink. then to add that this is now overshadowing the charity event, honestly I'm impressed how bad they fucked it up, considering the community at a whole is seeming as fed up as ever. well played gaijin.

[@billyclement5141]

Hmmm. Hot take from someone who was considering taking up the game: I downloaded WT a while back, intending to grind my way to mid tiers and have an alternative to WoT. Nothing about low tier particularly interested me and the grind wall was real, so I put it on the back burner. I've been catching up on tutorials and walk throughs over the festive period, toying with finally starting the grind again. I'd like to personally thank Gaijin for saving me potentially thousands of hours of my time. If this is the way they treat committed, long term players then I'm just not interested. It's great that they're so up front and honest about how little their long term players actually meant to them!

[@Hawokki]

Damn I was looking for christmas and new years specials, but never caught any :( Missed this one too

[@josephervine1119]

I don't recall the disclaimer being there when this whole shabang started

[@skorpysk]

you know what is a fraud tho? selling something to someone and then giving them something else reminds you of something? i'm talking about premium vehicles

[@efewtenekeci]

Oh yes the m60 ariete

[@skorpysk]

oh yes, the T20

[@illturralli]

I'm up to my throat with studies so i haven't actually played at all, and completely have missed this thing. But your video is very well formed and explained the situation in both perspectives out of your limited knowledge that you also aknowleged. I appreciate people that can take both takes, make a decision to say "this was wrong but its not probably in this extreme wrong, but it could be because i'm not an expert".

[@JustAnotherRandomPersonOnline]

The thing about it is, I could have SWORN when I clicked on the link, that it said something about the premium time being for newer players, but that the vehicles were given. What I know I am not wrong about, is that when I went to redeem it, it had a check ONLY on the vehicles, and not the premium time. While I did get the premium time (didn't even notice since I had like 450 days of premium at the time and only looked at it later), I was only interested in the vehicles, which I had good reason to believe that Gaijin was giving to all players (Seriously? who as an older player is going to use rank 1 premiums, aside from cheap meme vehicles?). The way Gaijin handled this was enough to make me stop playing.

[@JockeyStrappers]

I doubt the legal action will have standing if gaijin already resolved the issue with the players. If a judge found that the player made no attempt to communicate the error before filing legal action that could be grounds for dismissal so long as gaijin cooperates and fixes that issue for the player.

[@larryboles5064]

Hey, I work at Blizzard and while I'm not on the CS or other public teams, and to be clear I'm speaking for myself here as an individual and not as a representative of the company, I definitely advocate for when in the wrong to give the customer the benefit of the doubt for mistakes.

[@flareflo362]

1. EULA specifies that you have no legal right to any ingame purchases 2. When I redeemed the pack it clearly said "for newly registered accounts" While I disagree with how they handled it, they are still on solid legal grounds.

[@HochgeborenKlown]

I already had the 109 and i dont play tonks or naval and therefore never brought either of those, they gave me a bunch of mods for vehicles I dont own and my 7 days...It clearly stated that current players log in here, which I did...

[@officialgeneral_soldiernat5717]

Stuff like this is why my game interests are slowly shrinking. Plus, there's all the paywalls and other pay-to-win stuff I've fallen susceptible to yet still unable to make good profit out of that I've been through, and Gaijiin seems to be the worst. War Thunder and Crossout used to be what I liked, nowadays I only rarely play the former, while completely quit the latter. Wargaming is still pretty greedy, but they definitely have improved over the years from what I can tell. Play4Peace is definitely not going to like being connected to this controversy.

[@Tomartyr]

I think the fraud part comes from Gaijin promising to give a product in return for actual money, then not delivering the product. They legally need to explain the concept of "Golden Eagle debt" and why that alters the product you receive when making the purchase of Golden Eagles.

[@GraytheKnight]

I took a multi month long break to get away from this game but still kept some tabs on it. Seems like Gaijin has changed for the worse and this sort of issue shows they're still disconnected from their player base, which is a shame because they'd be even more successful than WarGaming had they treated their fans and players a little better. Had it been up to me, I would've apologized for the mistake and just granted everyone 2-3 days of extra premium instead and removed the link/changed it to better show its for NEW players only (the premium) while allowing existing players to get the tier 1's. Putting players in debt? What the hell???

[@lexmen1089]

Pfft, me going 'OOOOOO' at 1:29, god dang it. It was nice meeting ya in battle, sire. also, at 3:10 I naed him like 2 seconds after through the wall, so there is a bit you dont see :)

[@donna-mariabassett3216]

On Xbox I can’t even play the game anymore due to them breaking the controls for movement

[@deboshadow]

Sounds like the Murmansk Incident in Warships.

[@Debilitator47]

Gaijin: Is Gaijibbles, as always. Me: My thorough lack of surprise.

[@malakov5]

When I used the link, it said only the premium time was for new accounts. And the premium “bonus” was forcibly unchecked/disabled. However it still applied the premium bonus time in game

[@RogerCharlamange]

I seem to remember the link saying "New and returning players"

[@kevox9933]

The high repair costs are so annoying and every goes minus for my lions even with kills.