Slightly off-topic, but stuff like this does not just happen at Apple.
When Cyberpunk 2077 came out, my wife bought it with her credit card and gifted the game to me. It was fine at first. I even managed to play through the game. However when coming back to the game a few months later (to see all the bugfixes), it was gone. I contacted the (gog) and they said it was removed due to automatic fraud detection and that the balance had been paid back to the original credit card (my wife's card, she had obviously not noticed this in her bank statement).
Point being automatic fraud detection systems can wipe out stuff you purchased even months after the fact (or in some cases lock your account)... It feels kafkaesque.
If you buy milk at a store and then walk out of the store and then the store refunds you 2 days later, that's the store's problem and you're still allowed to drink the milk. You didn't steal the milk. Subscription logic only applies to subscriptions, and GoG is a simple exchange of money for goods, not a subscription.
If the store tried to sue you claiming there was a contract for you not to drink the milk if refunded, it would be laughed out of court and banned from suing anyone ever again.
Incorrect, the milk does not disappear. You are contractually and legally obligated not to drink the milk, much in the same way I should not go around killing people, but I certainly have the ability to.
Now, if you sell the customer electrically locking milk bottles which won't open after the contract is over, then the customer "can't" drink the milk, they couldn't.
Let me guess, you think GOG was perfectly justified in unilaterally taking away nake89's copy of--excuse me, I meant unilaterally revoking nake89's license to play Cyberpunk 2077--when they judged the gift transaction to be fraudulent, just because it could have been a conspiracy between nake89 and their wife to defraud GOG of the princely sum of eighty United States dollars[0]?
I don't dispute that GOG has the right, from a strictly legal standpoint, to revoke a license for any reason their terms of service allow, and that someone continuing to play a game after their license was revoked would be in breach of contract. What I do dispute is that this is a correct, fair, or desirable state of affairs, especially when the license in question was received as a gift and believed in good faith by the recipient to have been acquired non-fraudulently.
And in particular, if GOG wants the absolute and irrevocable right to prevent consumers from using products for which GOG has decided to revoke the licenses, they shouldn't advertise themselves as a DRM-free platform, nor claim that "Here, you won't be locked out of titles you paid for, or constantly asked to prove you own them - this is DRM-free gaming." -- advertising copy may not have the force of law, but courts tend to take a dim view of ad claims that are provably false.
[0]: the list price of the Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition on GOG as of this writing (though it is currently on sale for 38% off)
GOG may have the right to revoke a sale, but since it lets you download the game without DRM, it doesn't have the ability. Unless you delete your copy of the game and then try to download it again.
If you buy milk from the supermarket and they reverse the transaction 2 days later claiming you used a fraudulent card, but you didn't use a fraudulent card, you have the right to keep the milk and the loss of money is the store's problem.
GOG has a Steam-like client application that you can use instead of downloading the installers (which, in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, would be more convenient because its installer is in 28 parts, with another 11 for the Phantom Liberty expansion). It may be that if you install games through that, GOG can remove them if they revoke a license for any reason. I don't know that for sure, though. Just pointing out that they may, in fact, have the ability, at least in principle. But to be clear in case there's any doubt, I think we're on the same side: I think if nake89 had downloaded and installed CP2077 manually instead of through GOG Galaxy, and had continued to play it even after GOG decided the license was fraudulently acquired, they would have been in the right in every way that matters, and at least from a moral perspective, GOG could go pound sand.
It wasn't a sketchy retailer though, it was one Apple has authorized through its handpicked affiliate (in the US, this is probably Blackhawk who basically owns the third-party-giftcard-sales business).
For Apple to say "Don't buy gift cards from our authorized retailers, or prepare to face incredibly harsh consequences due to fraud that you can't detect or predict" while continuing to sell them through those channels is morally bankrupt and completely unacceptable.
I have no doubt fraud is a big problem. It is for all gift cards. But this is a 3 trillion dollar company -- and they make minimum 30% of every gift card sold in pure profit. If they can't secure those channels without torpedoing innocent customers' entire digital lives, they need to drop that channel.
Your comment reminds me of this news story of a guy trapped in his work's elevator for the weekend. How was he supposed to know it'll be only for the weekend.
Hah, because it went viral. Good luck if you aren't able to reach a wide audience (99% of people aren't). Else it would've been locked for eternity. Stop defending atrocious behavior like this.
If somebody bought something from Walmart you wouldn’t insinuate he’s at fault because he bought it from a ‘sketchy retailer’. Just stop it lol. There is literally no way to defend Apple on that one.
What matters is that the purchaser had every reason to think that it was legitimate and they were not the malefactor in this scenario, but they still got banned.
If you buy stolen property without knowing you still get punished by having the stolen property taken away. Just because you don't know, it doesn't mean you have not done anything wrong.
Having your purchase taken away is not punishment. It's done because it's not actually yours, it still belongs to the person it was stolen from. It's a negative for the person who made the purchase, but that's just an unfortunate side effect. Unknowingly buying stolen property is not legally wrong. The typical law punishing receiving stolen property requires the receiver to know that it is stolen. Otherwise you're innocent of any wrongdoing, you just got ripped off.
If unknowingly using a stolen gift card just meant you lost your money, nobody would be complaining about Apple's behavior here. The issue is that they didn't just lose their money, they also got their account locked, which locks up a lot of stuff completely unrelated to gift cards.
Terrible analogy. The victim here bought the card from the retailer. Someone else had gained access to the secret contained on the card and stolen or attempted to steal the value on the card because Apple can't figure out how to sell a gift card securely.
Our victim was the victim of the only theft that involved the gift card. Then Apple stole the person's whole digital life with no recourse because they are ham-fisted and don't care.
this kind of stuff happens all the time across major companies with minimised support. sure your google account is likely to be there tomorrow but it's only a very good chance that it's not locked forever.
i would be surprised if there's any company with millions of users where .01 or .001 (still a LOT of users) just get screwed with zero recourse
Elsewhere in this thread, you assert that perhaps Apple simply reversed all this out of the kindness of their heart without regard for the social media blowup that this lucky victim was able to create.
This is cognitive dissonance. If Apple reversed it due to their conscience, it's because they are pretty convinced this user is honest and Apple PR isn't (or didn't need to be) involved.
If on the other hand, Apple has proof the user is not honest, then Apple PR took a huge hit for nothing by forcing Apple Support to unban them, when they could have said "Because we have documented proof the user couldn't have bought this from a legitimate reseller, we cannot unban them."
Is there any evidence of this happening with an actual legitimate gift card and bot one which was stolen or originally purchased via credit card fund.