TakeTwo Interactive and 2K Games recently faced a class-action lawsuit for deleting purchased in-game currency from accounts when the game's online features were offline. The lawsuit was filed on November 17 in the federal court for the Northern District of California by J.A., a minor, his mother, who is acting as his attorney, and his guardian.
In the lawsuit, TakeTwo and 2K’s new year sports games NBA 2K, WWE 2K and PGATour 2K are mentioned because these games provide in-game upgrades that require in-game (virtual) currency, which can be purchased with real-world money.
However, when 2K shuts down a game's servers, any unused currency purchased in that game will be removed from the player's account and cannot be transferred to another game.
The lawsuit states that this is considered civil theft and conversion because the currencies were purchased with player money and therefore TakeTwo (and 2K) no longer has the right to use the currencies. The two companies were also accused of unfair business practices because their virtual currency could be "destroyed at 2KGames' whim," and players were allegedly given no explanation when purchasing.
The lawsuit is currently seeking a jury trial and asks for "fair non-monetary and monetary compensation" for anyone who had in-game currency removed from their accounts by 2K as of November 17, 2019.