Sacred Symbols+, #403 | Fine, You Can Have Your Money Back (Patreon)

Please welcome LSM legal analyst and friend-of-the-show Rick Hoeg back to Sacred+ for another wide-ranging conversation about a number of interesting topics. Mere hours before we began recording, we learned that Sony would be pulling Concord off of PSN and refunding all players at the point-of-sale, and thus we begin there. While we'll leave the primary conversation about this hullabaloo to Sacred Symbols itself, I (Colin) thought I'd pick Rick's brain about some of the noise surrounding such a radical choice. Why can players be forced to accept a refund even if they don't want one? What kind of stipulations and rules exist around taking a multiplayer game offline so soon? By bringing revenue back down to $0, can Sony now write Concord off even though they opted to release it? Other topics include a look at the seemingly-faux Black Myth: Wukong timed or "secret" exclusivity drama, how Vampire Survivors got away from so deeply copying Konami's Castlevania IP, and aggressive labor actions at French publisher Nacon concerning two of its key studios. Please enjoy.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:13:37 - Sony pulls Concord off of PSN

00:44:49 - Wukong's "secret" exclusivity drama

01:05:13 - Vampire Survivors copies Castlevania

01:26:42 - Labor actions at French publisher Nacon