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Music Media Entertainment Games

Video Games Live National Tour Canceled 62

Posted by Zonk from the dadblastit dept.
Plaguefox writes "Video Games Live ('The first major North American concert tour featuring music from some of the biggest video games combined with video footage, lasers, lights, and live action') announced today that they have cancelled all tour dates in their national tour except for two scheduled for this weekend in Seattle and Vancouver. Fans across the country who have paid for tickets to these events must now manually request refunds and suffer convenience charges. The event was cancelled 'because ticket sales were slow and did not reflect the great interest expected.' This news comes after a previous tour-wide cancellation(with similar convenience charges) when the creators decided to increase tour stops and venue seating to match what they perceived as vastly more interest than they anticipated. As one person said: 'I've already paid enough convenience fees and facility fees to see a broadway musical. I wish I had.'"
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Video Games Live National Tour Canceled More

Video Games Live National Tour Canceled

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  • What a tragedy! (Score:3, Funny)

    by denverradiosucks ( 653647 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @02:12PM (#13883232) Homepage
    Did Yoko Ono break up Mario and Luigi too!? I don't know what to believe in anymore!
    • It really was a tragedy. They had a great idea... but horrible implementation.

      I was at the Hollywood bowl concert... The quality of the (musical) performance was horrible!

      1. The LA philharmonic had trouble keeping it together on multible songs. I'm not sure it if was a problem with the tracks they were playing with.

      2. They had some horrible clanging during the Halo intro, metal pipe style that was overly loud and grating. (not in the original score mind you).

      3. They had a renouned 80's guitarist perfor

  • This sounds like duke nukem forever (Score:3, Informative)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @02:16PM (#13883275) Journal
    Sorry, yeah we were almost finished but we decided to use a new engine so now we got to start all over again.

    First cancelling because you want to do a bigger tour because of claimed high interest in your show and then cancceling again because there is not enough interest?

    Smarter people then me should probably be able to figure out if this is a vaporware product wich exists just to get gullible people to give them money. Phantom game console like.

    • I'm in Seattle and bought tickets a few weeks ago. We'll see what they deliver here.

    • Fortuantely, I doubt anyone who had to pay for these tickets themselves (ie, are not living in mommy and daddy's basement with a weekly allowance) actually bought any tickets or intended to go. I mean... holy crap. If you want to watch video and listen to videogame music, you can do that at home. Granted, you wouldn't get ths tinky goodness of unwashed dorks, but...
      • Don't be an asshole.

        I guess people who are into classical music shouldn't bother with the symphony right? What about people that like particular bands - I guess they shouldn't bother with concerts, since you know, they could listen to the CD at home.

        Ya, it's a troll, and I bit. But you're still an asshole.
  • Fans across the country who have paid for tickets to these events must now manually request refunds and suffer convenience charges.

    Not to be one of those lawsuit happy types but...

    If the organizers don't cover convience charges to the fans, I'd say bring on the civil suit!

    Why should the fans pay out these fees to a show they never got to see?
    • They don't pay fees to the show. They pay the fees to the company that handled ticket sales. Even with the concert cancelled that company still had to pay someone to handle your purchase, and now they have to pay someone else (more, I'm sure) to handle your refund. You should be glad that the different parts of the price are spelled out in advance, it is better than the "15% restocking fee" you might find when returning hardware.
      • The difference is that you don't buy something from the store, then have the store demand that you return it, and pay a 15% restocking fee.

        Even though they didn't get the "convenience fee", they canceled the show. They should pay it.
      • You pay those? If they try and hit me with them, I tell my credit card to refuse the charge. The one time they fought it I won. Admittedly, I don't return items that work as expected, I might lose if I tried that. If I had tickets, I'd do the same thing for the concert. I don't care if there's a 3rd party involved- if *I* can't get what I paid for (the concert), I'm not paying a damn cent for the ticket.
      • You should notice that you aren't charged a restocking fee on defective hardware, nor are you charged for returns when the manufacturer recalls them due to a safety defect. Paying for somebody else's screwup is never good.
    • FTFA:

      "Tickets can be returned to the point of purchase for a refund which includes the full value of the ticket, plus fees with the exception of the one-time handling charge. The handling/convenience fee averages about $4.50 per ticket ORDER, not per ticket. So if someone bought 10 tickets, that one-time charge of $4.50 is levied once, not 10 times. That money is used (in part) by the ticket provider to pay for postage, envelopes, etc. and that is why it is not refundable."

      It's Ticketmaster who has the s
  • 1: Promote Event
    2: Sell Tickets
    3: Cancel Event
    4: Profit!

    I can't believe they are charging "Convience Fees" for an event that they canceled. I mean, its one thing if I decide I can't go and return my ticket for a refund. Yeah, I'll suck it up and pay the return fee. Its completely different when they CANCEL the event. Full refund, including all service charges and fees are in order for the people that bought tickets.

    If this goes kind of stuff continues to go through without a hitch for the promot
    • It is a scam, but it's not the concert organizers making the money - it's Ticketmaster. If you buy tickets online, you pay something like $10 in fees for the privilege. And the monopoly that is Ticketmaster sure as heck won't give that back. Oh well, I can't stand Tommy Tallarico anyway, so that right there is one reason I wouldn't buy a ticket.
      • I'm guessing the convenience charge is to cover the costs of Ticketmaster hosting the event on their servers. The event may have been cancelled, but someone still needs to pay Ticketmaster for the use of their service.

        That said, I agree that its not fair for the end user to have to pay the cost. It should be the concert organizer. But if they aren't able to pay, for whatever reason, it should be good PR for Ticketmaster just to eat the cost. If there weren't that many sales to begin with, the amount of fees
        • "Better to keep customers happy, otherwise they'll just end up using another service." Hahaha...yeah right. Another service? What other service? Ticketmaster is all there is! I think the last time any band tried not to use them was Pearl Jam, and I seem to remember hearing that it didn't work out so well.
          • That's because Ticketmaster is owned by Clear Channel - who also owns the concert venues. Therfore, the venue cannot sell tickets on thier own.

            I believe the Greatful Dead and Phish sold tickets without Ticketmaster (or at least some of the tix). But it only works when your concert is at some wierd place not normally used for shows.
    • I have never seen a concert/performance ticket that was refundable.

      This happened to me a few years ago for the "Field Day" concert in Long Island...they never got approval from the town to actually hold the event. I got my money back for the tickets, but not the charges for the (mandatory) FedEx shipping.

  • And they're planning more shows... (Score:3, Funny)

    by SoCalChris ( 573049 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @02:32PM (#13883399) Journal
    From their press release:

    Due to circumstances beyond our control, Video Games Live will not be playing any of the previously scheduled shows, with the exception of Seattle and Vancouver on October 29 and October 30. Furthermore, plans are being made for additional shows in specific markets across North America for 2006.

    These guys have a nice racket going. I would hope someone who bought tickets files a lawsuit.

  • How to get a full refund: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IRhino ( 920664 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @03:01PM (#13883624)
    Assuming you paid with a credit card...Call your credit card company, explain that the concert has been cancelled and that you have not been offered a full refund. They will ask if you tried to work this out with the merchant. Tell them you can't seem to contact anyone at the merchant location. More than likely your credit card company will immediately credit your account (provisionally) and file a dispute with the merchant's processor. The other plus side of this option is that the merchant will most likely be handed a 'chargeback fee' from their processor. Vengeance is yours!
  • I attended the event at the Hollywood Bowl and bought some cheap bench tickets for about $16 (pre Ticket-master eye-gouging inconvenience fees) and was pretty disappointed at the whole thing.

    There was a lot of back-patting going on, for which I blame on Tommy Talarico. I still can't believe music from crap games like Advent Rising (Talarico did the music for this) and Headhunter was included in a concert that also features Mario Brothers and Halo.

    My experience was further soured by sitting in front of a

  • Well, while you quoted much of the initial announcement that was posted on our main page, you failed to quote the portion that we included SPECIFICALLY about ticket charges:

    "TICKET REFUND INFORMATION
    Our ticket providers (Ticketmaster & Tickets.com) have given us the following information.

    Tickets can be returned to the point of purchase for a refund which includes the full value of the ticket, plus fees with the exception of the one-time handling charge. The handling/convenience fee averages a
    • Yet another reason to avoid buying tickets from TicketBastard.
    • It does not matter which company keeps the money. Who cares??!

      The fact is that the customer was right royally screwed over when YOU cancelled the show. Why the hell is the only person who has NOTHING to do with this have to pay for all of it???

      Just because you use an (expensive) third party, does not mean you get to (morally) wash your hands of the whole thing. It is not someone else's problem, it is YOUR problem.
  • Lollapalooza suffered a similar fate in the summer of 2004, when a huge, countrywide tour had to be cancelled for lack of sales. Spreading these arena-sized tours across the country doesn't work anymore unless the act is a recognized, national draw, because it simply costs too much to book, promote and accomodate the shows to pull them off unless the venue reaches near-capacity. If it were a club tour, this would be totally different... but then again, this kind of show would be impossible to do at crappy l
  • I can understand why the tickets weren't selling - it's all music from new games that aren't particularly well-known for their music. If they wanted to do symphonic renditions of game music, they should have picked great game soundtracks and done arrangements of those, instead of just picking a lot of recent top-selling game soundtracks that few people ever noticed in the first place.
  • I would say the cancellation was brought on by the realization that nobody would want to give their hard-earned cash to that douchebag, Tallarico.
  • I was actually hoping to go to the one in San Jose two weeks from now. Fine, they may be playing mostly newer game music, but it still would've been a cool place to go...and who knows? Maybe I would've met some game producers who were visiting.

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