During the Black Friday sales rush, misprices can become quite common due to user error when updating a huge number of prices or systems buckling under the pressure as traffic surges. Games Republic, a trusted reseller of digital titles made a monumental error and offered Civilization VI Digital Deluxe Edition for £13.99. This equates to a discount of 80% and a massive saving compared to the £60 price directly from Steam. As you might expect, the misprice went viral and ended up on Reddit, HotUKDeals and other popular deals websites. This resulted in the site being extremely slow and people spending hours trying to get the game to checkout properly.

However, in a rather bold move, Games Republic decided to issue mass refunds and remove the game from people’s Steam accounts who had already activated it. Apparently, some users were enjoying the game and played a few hours, before suddenly seeing it being deleted without any prior notice. Ganes Republic sent an e-mail to customers informing them of their decision:

“Dear customer, Thank you for purchasing Sid Meier’s Civilization VI Deluxe Edition on Games Republic. As you noticed the price for such new game was really low. Unfortunately, it was too good to be true. The discount for Civilization VI Deluxe Edition was a price bug on our side. We’re really sorry, but we need to cancel your order for Sid Meier’s Civilization VI – Deluxe Edition. The money for your order will be transferred back to your bank account within next few days. If you already activated the game on your Steam account, the game will be deactivated and removed from your account soon. We’re really sorry about the whole situation. During such huge sales like Black Friday, where we have so many discounted games, such mistakes sometimes just take place. As a small form of compensation for the situation we’re offering you a 25% discount on your next purchase on Games Republic, as well we’re keeping your free Anomaly 2 game on your account. If you have any questions please contact us at support@gamesrepublic.com.

Once again, sorry for the situation and we hope to see you in Games Republic soon. All the best,

Games Republic Team”

The legality of this isn’t clear because Games Republic listed the title at £13.99 and allowed people to click the buy button. One could argue this constitutes a contact, although I’m sure the retailer will disagree. I think it’s a foolish move on their part because they’ll probably lose more money in the long run by irritating customers who are likely to leave negative feedback. However, the company might have been under pressure from the publisher to revoke the keys and had no other option.

Do you Games Republic behaved in a fair and just manner?