By Alec Meer on May 15th, 2009 at 4:37 pm.
There’s an almighty debate going on between the creators and consumers of videogameland today – whether a proposed European law that allows refunds for buggy games is good or bad for the industry.
For the defence: the right to get your cash back if there’s some showstopper bug in there. Or if it fails to meet “fair commercial conditions”, to use the legalese. Potentially – less games released in a hurried or unfinished state.
For the prosecution: developer/publisher fear of this becoming commonplace preventing them from taking risks. Additionally, the potential for consumers to abuse the system and claim there’s an error once they’ve finished playing (or copying) the game.
Who will you fight for?
The proposed law isn’t singling about the videogame industry as such, but rather aiming to putt it on equal footing with other commercial products. Which seems fair enough, really – the problem is that, unlike a kettle or an iPod, there’s a whole lot of ground between “works” and “doesn’t work” with a videogame – and especially a PC videogame, which has to cater for a vast range of different hardware configurations.
What constitutes justifiable grounds for a refund? Would Demigod’s initially broken multiplayer count? What about Boiling Point’s raft of hilarious screw-ups? That crash-to-desktop from the boat in Vampire: Bloodlines? What about a game that runs fine on your mate’s PC, but freezes on yours? What about a patch that introduces new problems, or indeed a patch that fixes the initial problem but the refunder hasn’t yet tried?
There’s a lot of ground to be covered to make this a watertight system – if it’s based solely on the judgement of shopkeepers, based upon the word of customers, all hell could break loose.
What I’m a little less convinced about is the argument that it could force the industry to play it safe. Creative risks are not technical risks, after all – crazy-concept games aren’t inherently any more or less buggy than Shooting Grey Men With A Submachine Gun VII. But then again, perhaps this law would convince publishers to lean even more on guaranteed money-spinners than they already do if they’re braced to lose a certain percentage of all profits to refunds.
The Business Software Alliance has its own somewhat sinister take on things: “”Digital content is not a tangible good and should not be subject to the same liability rules as toasters. It is contractually licensed to consumers and not sold.” In other words “the consumer’s just borrowing it and so has no right to complaint.” Bloody copyright.
An incredibly thorny issue, then – conceptually, the right to return something that doesn’t work properly is bang-on. In practice, there’s so many vagaries involved in software performance that coming up with hard and fast rules seems almost impossible.
Seeing as we’re all here, let’s be all Text The Nation about it with an insta-poll:
(Excuse that floating ‘n’ – a bug in our polling plugin)
Original story, with quotes from both sides, on the Beeb.
Original photo by liewcf, used under a Creative Commons license
Two months ago I had three broken games. Then I upgraded to XP SP3 and downloaded a program to fix a bug in my dual core processor, and now all three games work.
I like the idea of returning buggy games, but on whose authority? A gamer saying “it doesn’t work” doesn’t mean the game is actually buggy — it could be the gamer’s hardware or software causing the issue.
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The “you’re just licensing it” argument makes little sense. When I license something, I still expect it to be in working order, weirdly enough! If it doesn’t work, I bring/send it back, expecting a functioning replacement at the least, or otherwise a refund.
I don’t see how licensing would put all the liability in the consumer’s court.
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I’ve had several games over the years which plain didn’t work. Deus Ex was one. It would CTD constantly within minutes. It did this through 2 different PCs (with Ati Radeon cards). I tired everything, reinstalls, different drivers. It wasn’t until I bought an Nvidia card on a third PC years later that I could get it to work.
Glad I didn’t take it back, but it was essentially useless to me.
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Imagine the returns on E:TW! 90%+ i bet.
I don’t even want to sell my copy on ebay as i feel i would be ripping off the buyer.
One good thing did come out of it though…it narrowed down the list of game reviewers i can trust to 1!
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I have actually returned games because of bugs and got my money back without a problem. I just think it’s common sense. But i can see the problem with people abusing it.
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I disagree on how creativity does not equal technical issues. As new ideas require new engines or code or basically it requires the game to be made from scratch. This allows for more mistakes then if your building on previous ideas since preexisting works exist already for you to borrow from.
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Oh boy, Eastern-European developers will be in trouble… :D
(Good thing GSC licensed that CryEngine 3 – let’s hope that means they’ll focus on polishing that gameplay thingie more)
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what are these “90%” of people doing to there copy of E:TW to break it so badly.
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I’m probably an odd man out, but I really, honestly don’t mind bugs in my games. Yes, if the game is an unplayable mess (and I mean really an unplayable mess) I might be a little peeved. But I purchase games with the inherent knowledge that these are extremely complex programs developed by people, and that flaws are not only to be expected, they should be almost considered the norm.
And honestly, I’m more angry when the game I bought is boring rather than buggy.
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I’m not sure how laws allowing consumers to return a defective product prevents developers from taking risks. Some of the most derivative and uninspired games, using existing licensed engines, are the most buggy.
I see absolutely no correlation between unique, “risky” games and buggy games.
I also think the clear potential problems of people returning a game that isn’t buggy is being over-exaggerated in scope. It is being implied a lot of people will do this for no particular reason. That’s silly. I can return any product (except software) to any store I shop at with a receipt, and no explanation beyond I didn’t need it or it doesn’t work.
Does that mean I rush weekly to return all of my personal belongings? Umm, no. I bought them for a reason.
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Yeah, this could kill a bunch of studios if it happens, although it might encourage publishers to be a bit less happy to throw something out of the door to make a quick buck.
As people have said, it often depends on your system – some people have very few bugs, other people have games crashing all the time. It then depends on the culpability of the various people who made the PC bits, the OS and the game publishers. It’s not like buying a faulty toaster, where the problem is clearly with one thing alone.
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@qrter: Agreed absolutely. But the problem (for the BSA) would then be that releasing any software that wasn’t up to scratch by these rules would mean free licenses for everyone for the price of a bug or two. You can’t exactly send back data… So I think we’ll see them sticking to the ‘licensing doesn’t count’ line for a while yet.
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Stardock apparently give refunds:
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/45038
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@RARGPHLAM
Do you have the same mentality when you purchase a car? Extremely complex piece of engineering, made by people. Sorry, but that is an absurd defense of bugs.
Nearly all modern products, from pharmaceuticals to airplanes to processed foods, are the result of extremely complex processes. That doesn’t mean consumers shouldn’t be protected when they don’t work as intended.
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Would having to supply a DxDiag file with your complaint help to catch substandard systems/outdated drivers/etc, thereby reducing the number of returns?
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I’m in favour of this in theory – if I pay for something it had better bloody well work. And don’t you try and pass your “license” nonsense off on me – if I rent a car and the wheels fall off a hundred meters down the road I’d be gunning for a refund there too.
But in practice… oh dear. The practical considerations of how this would work are nightmarish to contemplate. Still, it’s be nice to see a some effort taken to bring consumer rights up to date with the modern world.
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s.t.a.l.k.e.r. banned forever :(
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I personally think that introducing this extra bit of legalese has a very strong potential for abuse. Smart videogame buyers will do a bit of research before purchasing (thanks to chaps like the ones here at RPS), and should know what they’re getting. I think the real burden should be on video game developers to continue working after a game has been released on patching any errors. That is an expectation I have as a buyer, at least.
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I agree with the people saying that it’s too tricky to say whether a game is buggy or not. It might be you have a software clash, incompatible hardware, you twunted the install files somehow or you have some sort of virus.
Also who would be paying the refund? Would the retailer have to foot the whole bill or would the publisher refund them as well? What if that money has already been invested back into the developers? I’d rather put up with some texture pop for a couple of months than have a whole developing studio dissolve as the publisher takes back all their money.
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Technically, as you point out, this already IS law – there isn’t some sort of special exemption saying software shouldn’t conform to reasonable expectations that other products do. The problem is that it’s completely unenforceable because of all the problems you pointed out with the complexity of PC configurations. Publishers and retailers have unscrupulously used this to their advantage, refusing to refund even games that ARE broken by claiming that it must be the fault of the consumer’s PC.
A new law reinforcing this right will, unfortunately, be equally unenforceable, unless a special industry-wide government agency is forced which consumers can complain to and which will be able to force publishers to issue refunds if necessary. Seeing as most games are (eventually) patched to semi-playability, the slow grind which government institutions work at would make such an agency redundant, as the most serious problems would probably get fixed before the cogs turned.
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In any case, the EU shouldn’t be touching anything anyway, let alone the gaming industry, so this debate is rendered moot by the fact that we’re talking about a corrupt organisation who doesn’t have much anyone’s best interests at heart.
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The “publishers won’t dare take risks” argument is BS. Risk doesn’t have anything to do with releasing buggy software (if anything, that is one of the risks we should try to prevent them from taking)
But apart from that, it seems like the biggest problem is defining what “fair commercial condition” is. If a game won’t run on my PC, does it automatically warrant a refund? What if the problem was with my PC? Maybe I have a virus messing up my system, or maybe I’ve just messed so much with my Windows installation that the game fails to install. What if the problem is a buggy driver from NVidia? Or an inadequate PSU? Maybe my optical drive is just too old and dirty and can’t properly read the DVD?
And what if the game works, but is simply buggy? How buggy should it be before it warrants a refund then? What if it doesn’t crash, but performance is worse than expected? Or exploits exist in the game. Or it is badly balanced?
And of course, as already mentioned, the fact that it is “licensed” has nothing to do with it. I still paid for a license for a working product. If they can’t deliver that, they have a problem.
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While I agree that people should be able to return their purchases, the problem lies in that you can’t guarantee they still don’t have a copy unless it’s completely sealed. Even with console games you can say with some certainty that it’s unlikely a person doesn’t have a copy.
Speaking of which, don’t most stores offer a refund? I know Gamestation offer an unconditional 10-day refund (even if you’ve finished it) and I think Game/HMV have similar policies. My guess is they have no obligation to do this.
Does this issue extend to stores returning goods to publishers? I know this happens with books – places like Waterstones can return large numbers of unsold or misprinted books to a publisher for a refund. Does anyone know if a similar practice happens with games?
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If I can return my museli because I don’t like the taste or it was not at a standard I was expecting then why the hell can I not return a buggy game.
As consumers we should expect the highest quality when purchasing products, but as PC gamers we have come to expect problems on release day.
There are people (namely younger people) that only get 1-2 games per year, the idea of a game being broken and having to wait x amount of time is just not cricket. If the experience is inherantly broken on day one you should have the right to return it.
This ruling will not affect that many PC gamers as we have lived with this for years but there is a new trend to patch in console gaming and just maybe you have to assume that not every console gaming is linked to the internet.
Our ‘ah bless them, they’ll get it right’ attitude is what allows developers to not be held to the highest standard.
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Do people get to return any car they like if it breaks down? Sounds like an amazing deal!
The devil is in the details here, if consumers are granted carte blanche to return any game with a minor glitch or a ‘I say it has a minor glitch right near the end but it’ll take you thirty hours to get there’ and the publishers are required to refund based on these claims then it would be madness. If its based on what we would call 100% ‘class 1s’ where the game crashes to desktop 100% on every console then it would be justified.
On a user’s PC, likely festooned with outdated drivers and malware? Not so much.
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Of all the ideas being tossed about that just might kill the PC gaming industry, this really is the one that could do it. Congratulations, EU bureaucrats! You’re fucking things up for everybody once again.
I’m not arguing in support of buggy products. But seriously, when a significant number of bugs are hardware-related and/or user-specific, how stupid would a company have to be to not just say ‘screw it, let’s just make it for consoles’.
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I’m with the EU on this one. Absolving yourself of all responsibility for a product because “it’s complicated” or “it’s not a physical thing” is daft; lots of things are complicated (if it wasn’t there wouldn’t need to be “engineering” after “software”), and physical or no people have still paid you for it. If it doesn’t work you shouldn’t just be able to shrug your shoulders and say “tough shit, it was only licenced”.
Especially when the licence terms tend towards “If The Software decides to go to The Kitchen and take a crap in The User’s dinner, The Developer and The Publisher bear no responsibility and blame shall lie wholly with The User”.
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“(Excuse that floating ‘n’ – a bug in our polling plugin)”
I demand that you demand a refund for your polling plugin!
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I could get behind a national/pan-national stability rating system, if such a thing could ever prove viable. It would provide an accreditation system rather than be a BBFC-style censor.
(Regardless of the merits of that system, leaving deciding whether the game works to the purchaser is a ridiculous idea wide open to abuse.)
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I would say just up front that I am opposed to a law that allows consumers to have the legal right to return a buggy game. In theory, I agree, it would be a great law if everyone were a moral, upright and truth telling individual (on both sides of the issue even). However, I’m positive that in practice all this would end up doing is bogging down the justice system even more than it already is. All it would take is a consumer returning a game for a supposed bug, the retail saying “Not going to happen Mr. G. Amer” and then a lawsuit would be leveled against some sort of entity, either the retail or the developer, etc.
What about companies that create a game, and are having a great time of it (KotoR 2) and then the pub says, hey, by the way, you’ve got 2 months to release this thing. That’s hardly the developer’s fault, where can we draw the line? Or a company that provides active support and releases updates to correct the bugs. If they’re making an active effort, should they be punished?
I’m still convinced the “n” in that code is a failed link break or new line in JavaScript.
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I don’t mind getting a buggy release, after all, the solution would be to release later and i’d rather go ahead and play the game earlier if i can, shelve it and have it already if i can’t.
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“Creative risks are not technical risks”
Speaking as a programmer who works for a game development studio: yes, they often are. There are good reasons studios stick to rehashing the genres they know, and one of them is that they build up a safe and stable engine and toolset that they can reuse.
Creating gameplay that you haven’t done before requires creating technology for it, and that means incurring risk (and bugs). Even worse if it’s gameplay that NOBODY has done before.
Also, if a law like this were to pass, then be prepared to pay more for your games. That extra QA doesn’t come free.
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How would this apply to games with online activations (Steamworks)? Would the game be removed from your account? After all, it’s supposedly broken and buggy; no need for you to have access to it. No one would ever abuse that system, right?
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I don’t think anyone is proposing making a loophole so child-eating curs can take back games for whatever reason they like, citing technical excuses. That isn’t how laws work or should work in general. Unless you’re my mum, you can’t take a broken 5-year old kettle back to Morrisons and get them to give you £5 for it out of warranty, just by loudly declaring the problems with it while it was in warranty.
The point is that there is no official mechanism that consumers can use to force a more reciprocal relationship in regards to software licenses. Stardock gives refunds only because they consent to, but they are unusual.
This legislation is only being proposed because publishers repeatedly demonstrate their lack of any good faith in their dealings with consumers. They have themselves to blame for putting the bottom line first even though their customers give them more money than their shareholders.
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This would be viable if it also meant the introduction of some kind of independent authority to enforce it. This organisation would test software that they received lots of complaints about (or before giving them permission to be released) and if they have serious problems, force the publisher to issue refunds at the customers’ will. I can’t see any other way of this working right, personally.
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Yes. Because I want a refund on Plants vs Zombies because it keeps deleting all my saves ><
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Congratulations, EU bureaucrats! You’re fucking things up for everybody once again.
I don’t see how people trying to introduce fairness into a system is somehow devilish.
I think the problem is that tangible goods such as, say, crisps, can’t be updated after the fact. If you find a problem with your crisps you can seal up the packet and send it off for a refund. Walkers cannot update your crisps as you eat them.
To me, the issue then depends on whether or not the developer is then responsible for updating their product – I would argue yes. If I rent a car and it breaks down through no fault of my own, I would expect a replacement or for it to be fixed. Publishers are quick to point out that games are licensed to us, so I feel our licenses should have a quality of service (which this policy is attempting, but going the wrong way about it).
This would be viable if it also meant the introduction of some kind of independent authority to enforce it. This organisation would test software that they received lots of complaints about (or before giving them permission to be released) and if they have serious problems, force the publisher to issue refunds at the customers’ will. I can’t see any other way of this working right, personally.
Unfortunately that would cost a large amount of money and would open up even more complaints about bureaucracy.
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Risky games not being buggy? Wow, what risky games have you guys been playing?
Pathologic, Stalker (both of them), Bloodlines, Boiling Point and even games with huge budgets behind them, like GTA IV. All of them get released with loads of bugs and it makes perfect sense that they would be released in such states, the developer is trying something unique and testing out new ways of doing things.
I love the idea that we can return games because of show stopping bugs, but it is impossible to implement.
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@Gorgeras
couldn’t agree more.
Sycophantic support of developers and publishers will only lead bigger problems.
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A good amount of my favourite games are riddled with bugs and glitches. I just take it as part and parcel of being a game – especially PC games (if my console game crashes and breaks left right and centre, I’ll get a bit more annoyed).
But I’m not a fan of allowing refungs for buggy games (although games that you can’t get to run on your system? that’s fine). Especially when games developed by smaller or more inexperienced teams – and therefore, most often the ones that try new things or explore interesting concepts – are the ones that are both the most prone to bugs and the ones most deserving of and reliant upon financial support.
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Matt Kemp: Because they’ve proven time and time again they can’t be trusted. Not just in general, but also in designing laws properly.
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I can’t see any other way of this working right, personally.
The minute you involve central authorities and certifications, you have a console-like system, only without the conveniences of a standard hardware config. The cost of compliance would be disastrous for small studios.
I think the responsibility should be on the retailers, digital or otherwise. Retailers with favorable return policies have an enormous competitive advantage. (I buy most of my electronics from Costco because they have an excellent return policy.) Based on return rates, retailers can decide how to deal with publishers who sell them buggy-ass games.
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Well how about this since software is immutable barring physical error in a disc: the EU must provide a free validation service where they try all applicable software on however many PCs they require to declare it a good product. Done and done.
Also, you young ‘uns don’t know you’re born with your occasional crashes and release day glitches. When I were a lad games came on cassette tapes, where the chance of the media itself being borked were incredibly high, and returning it often meant a week or two’s wait while they ordered another copy from the supplier. Then once it loaded there was no such thing as patches. If it always crashed when you jumped on the last boss’ head, tough tits.
Even later on the early PC it was expected that you would whip your system into a perfectly honed vessel through the use of arcane boot configs or many games would just refuse to run and inform you that you were inadequate.
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I’m a software engineer who loves games who decided I never want to work in gaming software. One of the reasons for this is the sheer number of companies that are happy to just release a complete piece of crap that needs lots of patches before it’s actually enjoyable.
The quality of software outside the gaming world is poor enough but inside is just depressing. Of course you have people like Valve that try and get it right first time and are prepared to delay but situations like Demigod or any of the other bugs mentioned just show a lack of professionalism in the industry.
It’s a depressing state of affairs that the open-source software done by volunteers and many mods seem to worry more about trying to not mislead people in regards to deadlines and release day bugs.
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I don’t think anyone ever proposes to make a loophole, but the human mind is ever capable of finding them. Words are fairly arbitrary when it comes to the concepts of law and law-making. That’s why simple laws about restricting even one action have page after page explicitly describing in great detail exactly why said consumer cannot perform said action, in what circumstances and at what time of day and within range of which streets, buildings and geographic formations.
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I don’t care, but look! A clicky button!
, sorry couldn’t help pressing, love stupid pole options.
i wouold have voted no, for this there will always be bugs, its unavodable on PC with the background aps like msn or anti virus. this would kill gaming as ive had bugs on every game ive brought. not all major like the not joining game on Empire, or 2 crashes in DOW2. you just live with it.
However they should have to have some post relese suport for games to fix the bugs (looking at you EA). This should perhapss be a legal necesity but a refund for bug would be to hard to enforce.
only time i have reterned a game was for a difective disk, otherwise you put up with bugs or read the tech support forum for fixes and workarounds
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Dracko: I’d also argue the EU has had some pretty good successes, and misinformation is quite common. All quite irrelevant to the issue, though – if the UK government had proposed it, it wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) change any opinion of it.
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Define “bug.”
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When was the last time a buggy game killed you in no way can you compare a buggy game with broken medicine or cars.
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It shouldn’t have any effect. Because, in theory, they should already be ensuring the best consumer experience, right? Ahem.
I wouldn’t be returning STALKER, Pathologic, Bloodlines, because I enjoyed them anyway. And most people aren’t going to bother practising their rights.
Also, demos.
Edit: That said, does this make developers liable for the software? If the same thing applies to applications; bugs there actually /do/ cost people money, can cause buildings to collapse and damage the real world/people.
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In a couple of words: DAMN YEAH
About time some regulation is being put into a multi-billion dollar industry.
Also, fuck the BSA.
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I think the developer has an obligation to squash any bugs encountered in any game they’ve made to a reasonable point. Using a car as an example is valid. Cars, however, also come with warranties and insurance as well, which games most certainly do not.
I don’t see refunds happening anytime soon. CD-Keys make refunds to a Best Buy, Target, or whatever pretty much dead weight. As it’s been pointed out who’s to say the game is to blame in the first place? Video card drivers updated? OS patched up to date? Latest DirectX version? Trying to play your 16bit game on a 64bit OS?
The potential for abuse is huge and I for one, don’t trust the community of gamers to “do the right thing”. I submit City of Heroes i14 as an example for gamers “doing the right thing”.
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I think people are hung up on the notion of bug free software, or even what qualifies as a bug. That’s not really how consumer regulations work. The key part is stuff like “fair commercial conditions”.
If I bring a game back within some defined period and claim it does not meet “fair commercial conditions”/”it is a dead parrot” that is my opinion. The shopkeeper can do one of two things, give me a refund or challenge my opinion, at which point I can engage some sort of local court procedure. That’s the point where works vs doesn’t work can be argued. That’s done at the expense of the two local parties not the game company.
Most likely I’ll be offered a refund. It’s the customer friendly approach which most shops should take. If a customer thinks a product is duff, whether it is or not in your opinion, you’re better off in the long run just accepting that.
People can abuse the system on both sides. Welcome to consumer rights.
I guess it might be worse because a lot of game buyers are youths and youths can be scheming freeloaders. But really, wouldn’t they just pirate games nowadays?
This won’t affect the cost of games in any bad way. If you release a buggy game, you’ll get more refunds and make less money. Oh boo-hoo. If you have to spend more on Q&A to produce something saleable and this makes you unprofitable at current game costs perhaps a change of business is in order?
All this really changes is it clarifies that the content of software is as much a consideration in making a product saleable as the physical condition of the DVD, something we all know but has been a long time grey area.
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Most of the problems with games seem to occur because there wasn’t enough time put into testing/QA.
Developers/Publishers get away with this because we are used to putting up with crap on release, because theres gonna be a patch. (usually several patches in the lifetime of a product).
Publishers will say anything to stop this going through, because they love the current arrangement, where the game is tested in the marketplace, saving them lots of time and money.
I’d happily see a refund law for “broken” games, where there is a definate game-breaking problem. Once you go further than that, you get into murky grey areas, as peoples experiences are wildly varied.
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@psyk: So I’m only entitled to a refund for a broken car if it’s killed me?
If you buy something that doesn’t work, you are generally entitled to a refund, even if it is not life-threatening.
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Immediate refund? No
This could *ruin* smaller devs, who have less man hours to devote towards bug stomping. Shit will *always* get through on a massive 200 man team, let alone 5 people in an upstart company.
Now, if they don’t have it patched up in a timely manner? Yes.
But there is going to have to be a *lot* added to this to prevent abuse.
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@yutt amen to that!
Incidently, the bug not being their fault doesn’t work for other products you can buy a toaster or a motherboard plug it in to a shoddy electical system and fry it, it’s your fault but legally you can rma it as there’s no proof it ever worked, the same’s true for software, the sensible optoin for a game rma is if your pc is encompased by the minimum settings then it should work and you have the right to your money back otherwise you chose to take the risk.
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Games already take 3-5 years to reach retail. If you expect them to be bug free on release you can add another year to both ends. For smaller studios with no existing royalties or indulgent publisher thats 4-6 years with no income at all. This would only encourage cookie cutter games because publishers can longer risk changing anything in the coding. So you can expect a whole slew of re-skinning jobs and “off the peg” levels and we’re left with an even more generic selection than we have now.
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Personally, I think most people that go out and buy a game, do so because they are interested in it beforehand. If it doesn’t work when they buy it (won’t install, crashes all the time, whatever) then I equate it to someone returning a pair of pants someone got them that doesn’t fit. Now, I also believe if a person truly is interested in that game, they’ll hold onto it until they have a system or a solution to fix the problem, like that same person thinking they’re going to lose some weight to put on those brand new pants.
The real issue I think, the real worry, is what kind of system could be put in place to test the authenticity of the complaint. I feel for the person who’s computer the game won’t work on, but what aside from ‘their own words’ differentiates their complaint from someone lying that took the game home, installed it, played it, beat it, and is now returning it claiming that it doesn’t work. Although I still think the number would be relatively small in comparison to the user base, it still opens grounds for abuse.
When it comes to ‘game breaking’ (those that completely prevent your movement forward in the game, like being permanently locked in a room you’re forced to go through, etc) bugs though, I’ve only really run into a couple since I started gaming over ten years ago. Now, ‘annoying bugs’ or bugs that make the game unplayable due to my level of stress and irritation (like poor technical performance dropping frame rates to like 10, etc) well, I guess I’ve just been blessed with a lot of patience and a cool head because those don’t really bother me that much. They can be pretty bad, but never bad enough to warrant my wanting to return or throw away something, especially when the majority of PC games usually get patched or modded days/weeks/months after they are released these days.
I do think it may help sway developers/publishers to keep their games a bit longer, or at least test them a bit more before releasing, but I don’t think it will change too much. Its always in their best interests to release good working games that people want to buy, and people can play. And I think most developers want their games to be good, to not have bugs in them, to keep them longer and make them as smooth and polished as possible, but deadlines are deadlines. Yes, I’m sure some companies will move to the opposite end and mine their cash cows to death, but people will buy them, which means there is a demand for them, whether I/we agree with it. However, there will still be companies that take risks, push boundaries, come up with new ideas because with risk there is always a higher potential reward, an even bigger, greater cash cow on the horizon if you will, and we as gamers will support them by buying it if we’re interested.
At the end of the day, if something like this passed, it would probably just help push PC gaming into digital distribution faster then its already going, then companies can do whatever they want with their buggy games (stick you with it/resale/patch/’store credit’/trade ins/etc).
In the end this doesn’t effect me at all really. My wallet doesn’t open unless RPS tells it to. Its a total slut like that.
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Incidently you can return a car that breaks down for a repair or replacement just like every other product, it must however still be within warrenty ;)
And the you can’t be sure they haven’t still got a copy is void also because as certain people are so eager to inform us you don’t pay to own it you pay for a licence and the physical disc as long as you return the disc and the licence is revoke whether or not you copied it is irrelevant, it’s not illeagal to own a copy of a piece of software it’s illeagl to use it without licence
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This would be a bad diea. People making actual buggy games are already punished by forum ranting and bad user reviews, that part works well. I’ve steered clear of games as a result.
But I know (as a game developer myself) that so many bugs are out of your control and some are VERY machine-specific. Some are also a result of older games on new hardware / software.
here are two examples:
Game assumes a vertical resolution of 768 pixels minimum when released 2 years ago. Modern gamer tries to run it on his 1280×600 widescreen laptop == crash bug.
Game works fine under windows XP and conforms to all directx and windows standards. It mixes GDI and directx (unusual, but approved). Microsoft release Vista with the vista ‘sidebar’ which now flickers on top of the game in total contravention of how they say GDI works. result == angry customers.
Added to that you have drivers that just plain don’t work (hi intel!) users that install a release candidate or beta O/S and fail to mention it. Users who overclock their machines, users who have machines with a dozen trojans running in the background. Users with faulty hardware (especially video cards and RAM) and a million other things.
The PC is a notoriously flaky and variable system. What people should be doing is campaigning for free demos on release day for all games, and fast, efficient tech support if and when problems arise. A new law is just no help.
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This would destroy the industry.
Lets be honest, everyone is a tight bastard. If someone told you that you could get back £40 because a game that you had bought and completed had now officially been declared “broken” you would totally do it. £40 for nothing? Even if the problem in question didn’t affect you? Hell yes you’d take it.
So now all revenue taken by companies is in flux. Every single penny you earn off your game can potentially be lost, because it’s not like having a single defective toaster, it’s declaring EVERY SINGLE UNIT defective at once. That £5,000,000 your company took in the first month of sales which has already been given to employees as a bonus, and spread around investment in new titles? You’ve got to give it all back.
It raises risk in the games industry to astronomical levels, which will have 2 major effects…
1) The flow of titles will be limited because of the hugely overextended and exhaustive testing periods.
2) Investment will dry up because whilst the risk has gone up dramatically, the return remains broadly the same.
tldr: Stupid.
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i dont mind some bugs in games, its a part of the development process, what i dont like is games that are unplayable because of bugs.
only if it was completely unplayable would i want to
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@ SteveHatesYou
I agree. Making a new game in a new genre means writing everything from scratch.
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Sorry don’t have time to read all the comments…
But I’m pretty much all for such a safeguard as long as implemented in a fashion that works for both consumer and developer — ie, stops a consumer from fasely claiming show stopping bugs after copying the game; but also holds the developer accountable when a game is in no fit state to sold in the market.
And while I may not be in Europe, hopefully if Europe enforces such a measure it will benefit the rest of gaming world too.
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I agree with those who have said that it shouldn’t be that you get a refund, rather that they should be legally obligated to patch it to a playable state (if they can’t in 6 months then refunds + a fine)
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GTA IV’s DRM fiasco should have been grounds for a refund, as well as the crap that was Mercenaries 2. Took 3 months for a patch to arrive.
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@clifski the time based thing is what a warrenty is for and applys to all comercial products the have some kind of interoperability and developers already specify what machines their games can be expected to work with any atempt to use it outside of those parameters wouldn’t be covered by any warrenty.
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Every single penny you earn off your game can potentially be lost, because it’s not like having a single defective toaster, it’s declaring EVERY SINGLE UNIT defective at once.
So like, a product recall?
These ever-elusive game-breaking bugs people are talking about are equivalent to someone finding plutonium in their children’s toys – it’s something that means you can’t use it and needs to be returned (albeit without the radioactive infant).
Sneaky edit:
I’ve never found a bug in a game that has stopped me playing it. I’ve found bugs that ave made the game suck, but never personally had my game stop because of a bug that breaks it.
The last (and first!) one I’ve heard about was TR:Underworld on the Wii. If I remember correctly, that was patched (I think?) and also came with an offer to retun the disc to get one with the bug fixed. I think people are overexaggerating the problem.
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Killer teddies! I can get behind that.
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That photo is fantastic.
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I can see how it could be valuable to a consumer, but for me, as a PC-centric gamer, I think it would be even more motivation for game companies not to develop for PC. It’s easier to make a stable game on a console, where you can program for the exact hardware and know it will work for everybody, but with the VAST difference between almost any two PC’s, it could make PC development less profitable for the devs and publishers, and give them less motivation to give us games.
But then again I’m from the U.S. so you could just ignore this if you want.
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All hail floating ‘n’ god of RPS polls.
Actually, “tech” demos of games might be a good idea.. even if they are very short, just basically a run through of the engine/sound etc to see if it works on your computer.
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Who the fuck cares if it’s good for the industry? It’s good for the consumer. It would be good for the industry if they could get away with charging $100 per game and had them be single use only, but would we want that? Consumer protections are typically against the better profitable interest of the industry they’re effecting, but we have them for a reason. Especially since we have to agree to an EULA we can’t read before buying a game to be able to use it, games really need a way to be returned.
Personally, I would hope this results in games getting delayed if they’re buggy and spread out some of the holiday season clump. Rushing games to release for Christmas or something similar is a big cause of buggy releases.
I don’t think this would really effect PCs except in those laziest of publishers that are already for the most part ignoring the platform. Modern gaming PCs have basically four variables, each with two options, that need to be adjusted for- XP or Vista/Windows7, Intel or AMD, 32 bit or 64 bit, Nvidia or ATI. Windows, processor command sets, 32-bit compatibility mode, and DirectX help bring these groups together to parity for the most part, and most freely released indie titles can manage it just fine.
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People are exaggerating the problem and people are exaggerating the proposed solution. Call me when you’re ready to get serious.
Serious me is serious.
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With games such has Rise of the Argonauts (Who almost constantly crashed on me and many others but there still hasn’t been 1 patch released to fix this) I would say yes.
But I’m sure people will miss use it especially in shops who have people who barely know what video game is, so I’m going for no.
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Let the free market decide. Look what happened to Troika! There’s the policing in action right there.
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This is an utterly silly idea, utterly utterly silly.
It does not protect consumers at all, or would not – given there is no way at all to determine if the bug belongs to the program, the users machine such as hardware drivers and the like.
It will also pretty much force everyone onto a subscription model or some kind of sneaky get around “This is a preorder game, with beta access included” stickers on games.
Games will disclaimer themselves to high hell and no court in the land (any land) will be able to enforce it if the customers buys something -knowing- that it is still full of bugs.
Then Echo on what Lu-Tse said.
Bottom line is software is NOT hardware, you cannot expect it to work to spec, because there IS no standard spec to aim for. Not when it comes to PCs.
It’s not just a question of works/doesn’t work – with no way to establish the cause or degree of failure.
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Of course PC game developers don’t want a law like this, they are famous for selling broken games, so much so that it is almost expected. Used car salesman who sell lemons don’t like lemon laws either.
Also, with the toaster analogy, there are various degrees of working for physical products too. If I buy a toaster and it mostly works, but 1 button (say the bagel setting) is broken most places will let me return that toaster for another one. If the whole line of toasters are defective, most places would at least let me get store credit and pick a different model.
LCD monitors let you return “mostly working” monitors with dead pixels. It varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, but after a certain amount of dead pixels they let you return it. You didn’t pay for a “mostly working monitor”, you paid for a working monitor.
If you release buggy games, yes you risk having a massive amount of returns. You better start having good customer service at that point, which again the video game industry is famous for having terrible customer service.
The fact that a law like this is even being discussed and specifically fingers out games, not software in general, shows that there is a problem.
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Just for the record, if a game bugs out on you, then generally the only thing it might affect is the computer your running it on (Which might also be the cause).
If a toaster or car is dodgy, say bad wiring, then lives can be lost.
Thats the key difference in my mind. I’m sure theres money that’d be spent on this which could be put to much better use. Sure, its inconvenient if your game doesn’t run as expected, but its not likely to kill you. That said I’m all for better bug fixing prior to a release date, I just don’t think regulation is the answer. We need real solutions, not more laws.
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Reply to JetSetLemming
“…it would be good for the industry if they could get away with charging $100 per game and had them be single use only, but would we want that?”
You don’t *get* how an industry works do you? Competition? Defacto standards? Price points? RRPs? Market pricing? Undercutting? Anything ringing the bell?
The big problem is it takes just one person to find a show stopper to entitle every single customer to a refund. That’s recalling a product which can wipe the strongest manufactuers (who ship a dozen models a year) let alone developers who may only get one game out the door in two years.
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“@psyk: So I’m only entitled to a refund for a broken car if it’s killed me?”
when did I say anything like that and you would be dead so how are you going to get a refund also where are you buying cars from where you arent looking at them before hand to see if there broken?
I said you cant compare the two, on one hand you have things that can kill people cars, medicine and have millions spent on testing on the other a bug in a game that will most probably be patched and unless its really extreme isn’t going to leave you with a game that isn’t even playable.
“What constitutes justifiable grounds for a refund? Would Demigod’s initially broken multiplayer count? What about Boiling Point’s raft of hilarious screw-ups? That crash-to-desktop from the boat in Vampire: Bloodlines? What about a game that runs fine on your mate’s PC, but freezes on yours? What about a patch that introduces new problems, or indeed a patch that fixes the initial problem but the refunder hasn’t yet tried?” this
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I would only support this law if there was wording in it that made it only apply to console games (strictly defined hardware architecture) and would only be enforced if the developer didn’t issue a correction/patch within a “reasonable” timeframe.
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Reply to viper34j
But what about firmware updates? What about DLC? What about new peripherals?
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As you get closer and closer to release, you start to concentrate on which bugs to fix and which ones to leave.
So I could easily see this new law having a knock on effect, where a bug that could trigger a refund is placed on higher priority than a bug that could improve the gaming experience.
Do you fix a bug with enemy AI, which would improve the experience for all gamers?
Or do you fix an issue with running on a particular GFX card that might only effect 1% of the customer base, because it may trigger a refund?
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Are you on crack? 4 variables?
Try BILLIONS.
OS: Windows XP 32/64, Vista 32/62 Windows 7 32/64 – Ignoring legacy support for older OS, Mac and the variations between differing builds (home, ultimate etc) that is 6.
CPU Single core, Duel core, Quad Core, instruction set (SSE, MMX, SSE2) so on: Call it 10
Display: 4:3, 16:9, 16:10, duel monitor (ignoring the rest): 4
Audio: Hmm, very conservative estimate, maybe about 16 differing setups (various Hz and 16/24 bits) at 2.0 2.1 4.1 and 5.1 maybe even 7.1
Graphics Cards: Assuming a modern game that does not support older cards: ATI (4 differing generations) Nvidia (4 differing generations) + Choices of shader model, and other technologies like SLI, crossfire, and PhysX: 11
Other possible factors: Lets again be hyper conservative about things like conflicting hardware drivers, controller support (just 360, or others?) gaming mice, tablets: Say 25?
Thats: 6 * 10 * 16 * 11 * 25 = 264,000 combinations with this stuff alone, any one of which I’d imagine can break, or conflict with some part of a games coding/engine and the systems hardware.
Even if it was as simple as your X or Y list that is still 2^4, which is 16, not 4.
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@Bhazor
Firmware updates that break games can be easily blamed on the console manufacturer. Any claims against the game developer would be, or should be (by right or by a written article in the law), dismissed. The same goes for new peripherals.
As for DLC, these would, or should (once again by right or by law), be treated as individual software packages where all expressed laws apply. If the DLC is for a console title and has bugs that are not resolved in a “reasonable” time frame, then refunds should be permitted for that software package only, not the original title or any other previously purchased DLC.
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@Warskull…
Imagine a world where every house used a different electrical standard.
One house runs their plugs at 200V and 90Hz
Another runs at 120V and 50hz, another runs at 200V and 20Hz…
Now, lets say that produces a range of 10Hz > 200Hz and 50V to 400V in 90% of homes.
That’s the “toaster” equivalent of the PC world.
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why is this a civil issue? Games retailers each have their own returns policy, some commenters have already noted that they’ve had no problem returning buggy games in the past. Surely it is the consumers responsibility to read up on a game before they buy it, to assess whether it will run on their computer and to decide whether they agree with the retailers returns policy.
On a related note I would like to see a wiki project dedicated to archiving bugs and compatibility issues in games to provide people with a greater understanding of whether their computer will run games or what bugs are frequently experienced and if workarounds exist.
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/rant
I’m with panik on this one: games reviews, in a sweeping generalisation, are often utter balls. Empire Total War is a rubbish game yet most reviewers went mental over it.
Admittedly it takes a little time for it to dawn that there isn’t actually much of a game in there, neverminding the issue of bugs. I mean, the AI can’t fucking use boats – how basic a premise is that to a game that features very prominently land/sea battles and invasions? I’m disgusted they had the temerity to release it when they did. I expect it’s the publisher’s fault.
I can understand games reviewers not wanting to destroy a games company – maybe they’re damn nice guys, maybe the original idea for the game was great, maybe they’ve sunk their life savings into the development. Maybe there is some tomfoolery going on sometimes.
However, for the long-term good of the industry, specifically the PC games industry, reviewers are going to have to start really slating shit games. This will probably mean going out and buying them to get a review copy.
Equally, the public must learn to read a real review prior to buying. I’m guilty here too, if Empire is taken into account; but then, had I read a review, would I have been better informed? No, the vast majority of them spunked over it.
/end rant
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@Cliffski A two year warranty is far too long, and that could cause the things you mention to be a problem, but let’s say it’s something more reasonable like 90 days.
Now in 2 years if a store is still selling a game that doesn’t work with a modern OS, or resolution I’m not saying the developer should be obliged to make it work (as some are here), but I am saying that he should not complain when someone buys it and then asks for his money back. That’s just reasonable.
You could say they should be forced to keep it since they purchased it and there are no take-backs nya-nya, but what has that achieved? You’ve cheated someone out of money for something they can’t use (even if it’s their own fault).
It’s also good business, people will be less hesitant about buying things if they know they are protected should it not work. It’s not like food or other things which can’t really be sold again once returned, there’s no loss in a return.
Also in response to others, it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to see grand cases raised to the European court declaring X game unsaleable in the entirety of Europe. More likely if someone in GAME won’t take back a game you’ll complain to Swindon OFT and they’ll do whatever it is they do and 6 months later you’ll get a result. But that won’t happen because GAME management will have told all its staff that they must take back games with any complaint.
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@Starky But if we follow that, and I’m rocking 140v at 49Hz and either I don’t know what I’ve got or your toaster can’t possibly tell me if it’s going to work with that, and it doesn’t, and I go back with a pristine undamaged toaster to Comet and ask for a refund they should give it to me.
I wouldn’t dream of forcing them to make their toaster work for me, but I would expect that I had a reasonable expectation for it to work and it doesn’t so there should be a refund.
So it’s harder for these toaster manufacturers to hit all possible voltages (or even know which ones will work in this analogy), fine. They just aren’t going to make sales from the ranges that they don’t hit. Where’s the problem?
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Don’t we already have this in the UK with trading standards?
There’s a form of protection in UK consumer law which is actually pretty unique (and it’s one of the little things I absolutely adore about our little country, which capitalism hasn’t rotted to the core, socialism is still holding out), and it basically claims that if a UK consumer purchases a product, and the product cannot function as described or that the consumer is dissatisfied with the performance or quality of the product (i.e.: they feel they’ve been ripped off) then the product can be returned for a refund/exchange.
Why do you think a bunch of UK products already offer this by default? They think it’ll make them look good but they’re ust offering what’s already available to the consumer by law. Granted, there is a common sense aspect there, but if one has a case then that case will be supported by Trading Standards, and you’ll win, as simple as that.
I’ve literally had to quote law at some stores when returning games, but I’m happy to do so. The UK isn’t a country where the company is always right, after all. On the contrary, faith goes to the consumer by default. So I’ve returned quite a few games in the past, ones that misbehave and do naughty things. Grand Theft Auto IV is one fun example.
This is also why I think it’s a shame that digital distribution is becoming a huge thing, with services operating overseas, they can sidestep their obligations to our trade laws, which is very annoying indeed. For example: Did you know that Steam only provides one good faith refund and no more than that? Even if the game is broken for all users, they have a NEVAR REFUND policy. That annoys the snot out of me.
There are times when I’ve been tempted to look into this to see whether there’s any way that Steam can be held liable for poor trading practices as they’re actually operating in the UK, but I digress.
Another fun example of this is that if a product isn’t exactly as advertised and doesn’t operate in such a way, the company can still be held liable, even a year later. I was once upgrading my uncle’s computer when I noticed that a few components weren’t what he claimed they were, basically, the computer was under-spec against what he’d ordered.
He was able to get a full refund on that, and I built him a better computer with the money that was returned.
If there are some European countries that don’t have this kind of fairness in their trade system then I support this law so that they can be awarded a little more fairness, because I believe in the UK approach, and I also believe that many companies are sharks that would, if they were to find you in a dark alley, stab you in the back and steal your wallet.
One of the reasons some countries are sue-happy is because they don’t have the same level of fairness to their trade system that we do, and anything that shifts the balance in favour of the consumer is a good thing, it just means that the company selling a product has to try harder to make sure that they’re selling a good product for an equivalent price.
Isn’t that a good thing, ethically speaking?
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@Wulf yes
ohh and EULA’s that make you agree to them to play a game you’ve already bought aren’t legally sound the presedent has been set on this one a long time ago.
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Caveat Emptor and the major software companies like EA and Microsoft will ensure that it stays that way.
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The impression I get is that journalists often review using pre-gold-master release candidates and therefor have to be aware of this fact when doing reviews. Sometimes they’ll be able to warn of bugs or problems but not always. For instance, I’m pretty sure I remember one of the RPS quartet mentioning that the review candidate of GTAIV they were usign was more (Not less) stable than the final release candidate, how could they know therefor that performance would degrade so in that timeframe?
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I remember returning Battlecruiser 3000 for being a buggy mess back in the day, but that was about the last game I ever returned. I think too many 13 year olds who aren’t good enough at torrenting will just buy, rip and return nowadays. Caveat emptor is the way it needs to be.
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@Wulf yes.
It can be hard with PC games and some stores though. They seems to have different opinions about PC software.
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“Sorry, you’re only leasing that car. If it doesn’t have an engine, it’s your problem.”
Yeah, no.
Software should be governed by the same laws as all consumer items. Publishers can suck it up.
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Caveat Emptor and the major software companies like EA and Microsoft will ensure that it stays that way.
Caveat Emptor is why I never buy PC games at release, especially if the EA logo is on the box. Thanks to piss-poor quality control and stupid DRM schemes, the PC game industry has made impulse buys an unwise decision. There’s your free market solution.
I’m sure Empire Total War will be all patched up and good to go in two years. Pay less money for a more complete product.
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I’m with those who are uncomfortable about the definition of “bug” in regards to PC games and the incredible flexibility in hardware choices you get from this platform.
Last night I was playing the new Prince of Persia game. I was playing it with an original Xbox controller, using an adaptor I bought off of eBay connect it up to the USB port on my PC and some unofficial driver I got off the internet. Since PoP was designed and tested to work with the keyboard+mouse or the Xbox 360 controller, setting up the controls was a bit wonky. The button prompts were meaningless nonsense, the map behaved oddly, etc. Although it did work alright in the end.
Were those “bugs”? Do I have grounds to return PoP because the button prompts didn’t make any sense? What if it had been a little more serious, and plugging in my Xbox 1 controllers crashed the game? If so, should Ubisoft have tested their game with every possible controller out there? Or would they have just locked the game down more, requiring me to use only specific keyboards+mouses or only a Xbox 360 controller? Or just forget bringing games to the PC altogether?
With a console, I would never even have considered using anything other than the official controller. But the great advantage of the PC is that , with maybe a little more effort than “plug and play” and some tolerance for “bugs” I can have a gaming experience my way, not the standard way.
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Wow… Disregard everything I said earlier against this… Wulfs post just made me realise something…
I didn’t stop to think that most other countries didn’t’ have the basic right to a refund within X number of days for ANY reason that we have in the UK (with a few exceptions), I thought that people were wanting some kind of stupid guarantee of perfection “or your money back”. Like a year long warranty you get by law on hardware (at least in the UK).
So yeah, there should be at least a 14 day return for refund law for ALL products, software, hardware, clothes, furniture, whatever – for any reason. Exception been perishable goods, and items like ear rings that cannot be returned once used.
There should always be that basic window for return… but software should not get some kind of special “it works, but it has a bug on level 5 so I want a refund after I have completed the game anyway” exception.
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I think this would be awesome. If publishers had to recall buggy games, then no publisher would ever dare to release an obviously buggy game again. Imagine if JoWood had known beforehand, that releasing Gothic 3 in it’s state would mean, that it would have to refund each and every copy of the game. There is no way the game would have been released in that state. Maybe the game would have been good. Maybe Bloodlines or Hellgate would have been good, because the publisher simply wouldn’t have had another option than to delay the title.
And even more ideal would be, that if the game developer could prove, that it’s the fault of some other company’s buggy operating systems or drivers, the court would force that other company to fix the problem.
And for those freaky kind of bugs, where it’s no ones fault, usually the customer should get his money back. Like the vertical resolution example cliffski mentioned: Obviously the customer should get his money back in that case, because he can’t play his game. Why would you expect him to pay for something that simply won’t work, and that can’t be fixed?
As for how this would work? I guess there would have to be some kind of form for consumers to fill out, to prove that the game really doesn’t work. They would have to provide their PC specs, operating system and driver versions, and they would have to write how the bug happened. The publishers would get copies of those forms so they could actually fix the problem. And if there are too many complains about a game there would be an official investigation.
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while your trying to get a refund for your games that you still have installed and cracked on your pc ;) you might as well slip on there unmarked wet floor and sue for that to :) on the up side this is one bloody good reason to pirate before you buy.
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@Starky :) That’s all I meant.
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@Starky:
Almost all of that is standardized. Audio (except specialty stuff like EAX), control inputs, and the difference between graphic card generations is handled by the generalization of DirectX. DirectInput, DirectSound, Direct3D. Windows itself also handles the major differences between CPUs.
In a modern windows environment, drivers and DirectX work in between your program and your hardware, opaquing hardware differences and requirements. The game gives generalized calls based on what it needs- DirectX or Windows or your hardware drivers handles how it behaves and where it goes. A game doesn’t need to know all the unique behaviors and functionalities of a mouse or keyboard- it sends a generalized imput code to Windows, that turns it into a key input code and sends it to the drivers, that are configured to assign those key codes to buttons on the device. It’s why for a game that supports USB controllers you can pretty much use any controller with it- generalization. The 360 controller is different because of the analog shoulder buttons (bumpers) and that’s about it- the main addition of 360 controller specific support is 360 controller button graphics ingame for control directions.
Compare today to a decade ago and pretty much it’s harder to support all three consoles than it is the different variables of a PC.
Did you SERIOUSLY think that game developers have to code unique behaviors and exceptions for individual brands of mice!?
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Devs/Pubs should have tech support for the games. If working with them to get a buggy game working (whether bugs are due to poor programming or hardware conflicts) gets nowhere, they should send a form to the customer entitling them to their refund.
If the dev/pub cannot solve the problem, then they can admit its unsolvable and refunds would be proved and official. Otherwise, the game works and problem solved. I can’t see another way around compromising for both sides.
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I suppose this is another argument for releasing demo versions of the game, what better way to be sure the game will run at all? Ok, other than the method some regard as underhand/wrong.
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@Rei Onryou
So if the consumer goes through the process and then claims the game still doesn’t work, the company/courts take that on trust? If not, how do you verify it, and who pays?
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Larington only problem with that is what you said in your last comment unless everyone started releasing the full version but time limited.
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this would kill off many inexperienced and low budjet game developers
I imagine Stalker didn’t rake in that much, if it was forced to refund every buggy copy, it could easily have crushed the dev team.
This would also damage the spirit of PC games. Dozens of developers go to the courtesy
If you want a refund, buy from someone who gives you a guarantee. I don’t see why small and inexperienced developers shouldn’t be allowed to just say:
“hey, this is our first game, its probably gonna have some bugs, and we’re gonna support the shit out of it after release, but we can’t afford to refund every buggy copy”.
Caveat emptor.
Also a car is extremely simple compared to most modern computer games. Games have to be designed to work with thousands of combinations of software and hardware.
If a program plain refuses to load on any system, then its broken, but if it just crashes when you equip the rocket launcher while crouched while using the invincibility power up, tough nuts, thats game development for ya.
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A large problem with agreeing with refunds is this gives companies right to complain and make up insane arguments like the “licensed content” one previously mentioned. This could easily make the ESRB-equivalent into the next RIAA. I’m unfamiliar with European views, but if they’re already making accusing the buyer of breaking laws it’s a red flag.
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Reply to Rei Onryou
You’re talking about an idustry in which 90% of the products do not make a profit. You except them to pay even more money hiring a fleet, you’ll need a whole team of maybe 50-60 for every region, of engineers?
Again the problem is that the only source of income for devs/pubs is for their games to sell. A startup company receiving no royalties is simply not able to spend an additional 6-9 months (maybe even a year for the most ambitious games) beta testing. This is why patches are used, it allows the company to start making back the money it invested while continuing to work on the game. If games cost more than £30 I might start caring about consumer rights but unless that happens then it’s what is best for the industry.
The law won’t just apply to EA. It will apply to all your favourite Indies who can’t afford a recall.
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Whatever they do I can see an obvious loophole for the publishers. That is that since most bugs that make it into the wild are the result of the wide array of PC hardware and software configs they could just make the product rock solid on one or two particular hardware and software configs then list them as the required specs on the back of the box (ok they perhaps couldn’t fit it all on the back of the box but some sort of standard system could be established for the purpose). Then if anyone buys the game who doesn’t have that exact system then they’ve got no right to return the product because then any problems aren’t bugs because the game never claimed to run on that system making it customer error for buying the product in the first place.
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@Sagan:
“Imagine if JoWood had known beforehand, that releasing Gothic 3 in it’s state would mean, that it would have to refund each and every copy of the game. There is no way the game would have been released in that state.”
That’s true. However, that doesn’t mean that Gothic 3 would have been released in a more stable state – it’s very likely that JoWood would have just chosen to cut their losses early and cancel the project, if it wasn’t stabilized early enough.
Nobody WANTS to release a buggy game. Typically, it just happens because the budget runs dry. Imposing this sort of regulation will not magically make games less buggy, or encourage publishers to dump more money into the project. It’s just going to make them much more conservative about what projects they choose to fund.
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Working in the industry, I’d say this was a horrid idea – for PC. For consoles I could see this working as the consumer has less control over the hardware, so its easy to say that the software is at fault – test it on one and it will work on others. Wheras on PC there are billions of combinations of hardware/software.
People that generalise saying that windows & directX abstract away the hardware from the software are forgetting that even with this abstraction things can go wrong. Different drivers / hardware in combination can produce unexpected problems that developers simply cannot test.
You might be lucky and get some compatibility testing if you are with a big publisher but the little fish won’t have the chance to do this. Even commercial compatibility testing can only test a few hundred configurations.
Unlike a lot of business applications PC games push the hardware and software drivers to their maxiumum limit. Like anything thats pushed, things will fail if stressed enough. I doubt many other applications other than games stress the memory, hard drive, input, audio, graphics, networking to the limit.
Think of a car … run it at 20mph all the time and im sure it will run fine for miles and miles and you might not get any problems. Start running it at 100mph everywhere changing gears and constantly accelerating & braking and you will soon have to stop with a problem. Ok so the comparison isn’t perfect but you get the idea.
-wolfman
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If this were law all over then JoWood wouldn’t even exist. I have yet to buy a game from them that didn’t have game crashing bugs all up in it. Which is sad because I love the games they normally publish :(
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It’ll be tough, but it’s the only way the games industry ever grows up.
What confuses me though, is can’t we do this already? At least in the UK? Under our statutory rights if a purchase isn’t fit for purpose, you can get a refund.
Same as I always tell everyone moaning about DRM when they supposedly re-installed Windows 3 times the day they bought it so it won’t work any more. Just take it back to the shop and get a new one.
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Seems fairly straightforward to me. Of course the people who put out such products should be libel for whether or not they work, like, y’know, every other industry (and they all bitched and moaned about having to change their ways when they got hit with standards too, by the way. Collapse of civilisation still pending.)
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For all those saying “caveat emptor” – that would be a fair comment if the publishers listed on the box every bug in the game so that consumers could make an educated decision.
But they don’t. They represent software as working, finished products that will perform according to normal expectations for that product. If the game is broken, they’re lying. And if they don’t live up to your expectations, or reasonably warn you of what to expect, why shouldn’t you expect a refund?
Products should be fit for the purpose they are sold for. A game which crashes to desktop every 20 minutes is not.
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You make it sound like the only way JoWood can possibly survive is by leeching off a trail of disappointed customers who regret their purchase and desperately want refunds but currently can’t get them.
I seriously doubt that’s the case, but if so, good riddance.
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In principle, yes – borked games can be a flat-out insult and should definately be punished with loss of revenue. If you aren’t going to beta test your game then I’m not going to pay for it (… by the use of a refund, not buccaneering). I know that bugs can be hard to find and squash, but this is a very important part of releasing any product; look at the Ford Explorer (or should I say Exploder?). Fuel tank heating problem leads to total recall. Broken releases will be punished, both financially and reputationally.
In practice, no – it’s far too hard to implement. The logistical difficulties outweigh any gain. You’d need some central agency to determine which games are broken and by how much, and they’d need to be impartial and extremely fast to act; you’d need some recognised method of getting a refund; and you’d need to extend it to digital downloads, which will shortly be the only sales vector for PC games. Consoles, on the other hand, might have more of an argument…
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Reply to drewski
Most bugs only get noticed after release. Otherwise the publisher would need a bank of some 60,000 computers to identify all the bugs. What about if those bugs *do* get fixed after release but the box still says they are there? What about misrepresenting the bugs for better or worse?
Reply to Muzman
But it isn’t like any other industry.
Creatives in Hollywood and the music industry get most money from live performances or selling the publicity which the studios take a percentage of. The actual product is really just a form of advertisement to increase demand. The games industry on the other hand make no money from such things and I believe sometimes even have to pay to be interviewed.
Most consumer electronics are high cost but low in number. As such recalls are easy as theres a limited number of suppliers and any issue can be quickly fixed by replacing a part during construction. However, games are low cost but high quantity meaning recalling would cost much more and given that the cause is buried within a million lines of code harder to fix.
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Yes, obviously not your standard HID-compliant mouse, but the kind of specialist gaming mice that have extra functions on their own drivers that devs can choose to support.
Say something like a G15 keyboard, or maybe something like Nvidia’s 120Hz 3D technology.
I’m not saying that they have to code for all that hardware I mentioned specifically, but to ensure a perfect “bug free” game as people seem to be demanding they need to TEST the game on ALL of those set-ups – as without it they’re going to face bugs, incompatibilities and errors.
Yes DirectX and such things act as a layer between the game and the hardware, but that doesn’t mean the Devs can ignore hardware utterly when it comes to game design. There is no where near enough standardization for that on the PC.
Hell it’s not like basic mouse support itself is a no brainer, with sensitivity, mouse lag, and such hell some games don’t even support using it at all.
Yeah something like world of goo can let you just use windows settings, but any FPS worth playing will have custom settings within the game itself.
Hell one of the biggest benefits of DirectX 10 was the requirement to meet the specifications in order to call your hardware Direct X 10 compliant (where all previous direct X versions had lots of optional stuff). Devs had to take into account all that optional stuff, and design around it.
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Whilst I agree with the basic principle of what the proposed law is wanting to acheive, as several people before me have already pointed out there are simply too many problems for it to be feasible on PC’s.
That said, I know I’ve certainly had an issue in recent months that saw me fight for a refund and lose anyway. Like many other people, I bought the PC version of GTA4 on the day of release at my local Gamestop (Arlington, TX woo!) and brought it home only to discover that the game had a whole pile of issues. It turns out these issues only related to a particular series of graphics card, the Radeon X19xx cards. I took the game back to the same store a couple of days later and as luck would have it, got the same assistant manager who had sold me the game. I hadn’t even taken the box out of the bag when he cut me off in mid sentance to say “PC game? No refunds, you might have pirated it.” I tried to explain the situation to him but he wouldn’t listen, was highly rude and suggested that I shop elsewhere in the future as they didn’t cater to pirates. Taking it up with their corporate offices didn’t do much better either, I wasn’t treated as badly as I was by the manager but the same basic gist was “sorry, we won’t do refunds on PC games for any reason, unless the actual disc is defective”. This was at least an improvement on what I’d been told earlier, but I still wasn’t happy.
Eventually after much back and forth, I gave up fighting and haven’t returned to Gamestop since that day. Rockstar eventually fixed the issue, but it took them the thick end of 4 months to do it. I still haven’t really tried it just on general principle due to my level of annoyance about the whole affair. In the meantime, I had a hell of a lot more fun playing Saints Row 2 which worked first time out of the box without any major issues.
So yeah, getting back to my original point. Whilst I’d love to see something allowing PC gamers to get refunds due to showstopping bugs, I believe it will be a cold day in hell before such a thing happens. I don’t believe in pirating software myself, but when faced with retailer problems like I had (and this wasn’t the first instance, just the most recent) I can certainly understand why a lot of people pirate games first to see if they’ll work before handing over their hard-earned cash. Doesn’t mean I agree with it, but I can see where they are coming from at least.
Oh, and that store manager? He’s still working at the same store *rolls eyes*.
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I don’t know, seems like this would be very difficult to implement with the insane number of possible PC configurations, both hardware and software. There are so many things that can go wrong, from outdated drivers and conflicting software to broken/inadequate hardware.
If it can be verified that the problem isn’t caused by the customer, i.e. if your system meets the hardware and software requirements of the game and tech support can’t solve the problem, then by all means you should get your money back. Tech support should be able to reduce the number of people trying to cheat the system by granting these refunds only after verifying the system specs and whatnot.
Implementing this seems awfully unpractical though, a lot of trouble for relatively little gain. Then again I’ve never been burned by seriously buggy games before.
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Bhazor: I don’t know what that Hollywood reference has to do with anything.
I’m not sure what the recall part is in reference to either. Product recalls are only done if an entire batch deemed to faulty or dangerous. If it’s not crashing on everyone’s computer why would recalls even come up? This is all about returns. I also don’t see why it can’t be up to the consumer what they are willing to endure. As mentioned, a lot of retailers have no questions asked returns on games already.
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As a savvy gamer I tend to wait a couple months after a game’s release to buy it (unless I have considerable faith in the developer). The plus is most bugs have been patched and the game is cheaper. I also get to read reviews instead of previews which makes for better choices.
Early adopters should feel more secure in their purchase. If this were so, people like me might be more willing to pay full price knowing they are getting a quality product.
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@Sagan
“Maybe Bloodlines…would have been good, because the publisher simply wouldn’t have had another option than to delay the title.”
Or maybe the publisher would have decided it was to much of a money sink, and canceled it.
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Reply to Sagan
Vampire *was* delayed because of stupid reasons. Troika were just terrible for picking a holy unsuitable engine that wasn’t even finished at the time. Really its still glitchy even so the state it was a year earlier would of meant the publisher probably scrapping it all together. Personally I think it only survived because the publisher was hoping it would get a huge boost from being the first Source game.
Reply to Muzman
Well games are more like movies than toasters for a start. Certainly the industry behind them is very similar, same system of funding, same distribution (DVD sales at least) and same markets. The big difference being no alternate sources of income. If one person gets a refund then everyone could. Unless the refund policy includes handing over your entire hard drive then the person you talk to would only be able to take your word for it. No seller would want to go near a game they know they’ll have to refund which means the publisher would have to take them all back (perhaps paying for shipping). Furthermore they could not sell the game for at least a month (to fix and reprint the games) in which time it loses all momentum from publicity and reviews and could see a huge drop in total income.
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Without putting strict definitions on what constitutes refund-worthy problems for a game, this is unworkable as a policy and could potentially harm EU consumers by causing retailers/distributors to stop selling certain classes of games (i.e. PC Games).
What would stop a user from playing through a game in a weekend, then trying to return it saying it’s broken, when in reality they’ve just played through the game?
How do you verify that the problem is with the game itself, and not a software or hardware bug on the consumer’s machine?
With such a policy, why on earth would any non-EU based digital distrib platform sell to those countries?
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Some of these comments read like the Daily Mail – as if allowing people to return a game will create some kind of mass run on stores, huge numbers of customers throwing their games back at retailers after sneakily making a copy..
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It might work if there were publisher forums run by independant mods-with-tenure (or something). Enough complaints about a particular game/aspect of game and after a set period of time for patching to (not) take place, publisher should be forced to ok a game for returns. Other hoops might be: A piece of software packaged/downloaded with the game might inspect the hardware of the computer and if a part matches known “problem parts” then a serial number could be generated. If the game is Spore type DRMed a website could be set up to verify serial numbers and revoke them in-store at point of refund.
As time passes in Britain at least the “I’ve no internet” excuse will hopefully be countered by cheap mobile internet and tethering or whatever the word is (in my mind!) Robust right of return systems would also counteract the pirates “need” to “try before you buy”.
It seems to me that because we’ve only got licenses to play these things that if we willingly relinquish said licence after a short time we should also get a refund. Steam for instance knows how long I’ve play a game for. If it’s less than an hour in the first month then refund time, irrespective of whether there’s a bug or not. For this feature maybe make off line mod in accessible but for most of the connected world that would be a happy sacrifice. (I see “this will invalidate any possible return” conformation boxes when off-line mode is turned on). Users willing to experiment can only be good for the industry as a whole. More games will be sold to the nervous buyer, more variety to gameing gannets imagine how well Psychonauts would have done if people could have experimented with it.
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Reply to qrter
It doesn’t have to happen to do serious damage to the industry. It just to have the potential to happen to do serious damage to the industry.
No one will want any part in selling PC games if they have to face mass recalls. Just the idea that the game could be returned after being copied would probably see EA or Capcom abandon the PC overnight.
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Adding a bit to what Jetsetlimming said.
People always seem to want to make the range of pc hardware appear much more challenging than it really is…Most of the trouble is abstracted away by libraries, drivers and the OS.
OS: XP/Vista, 32/64 bit, when done properly the os change is a non-issue. 32/64 bit should not be more complicated than (worst case) of providing two executables…
CPU: number of cores is not an issue for having code work, its just a case of a single thread only being capable of using one core(performance limit). One core can run plenty of threads so a properly multithreaded app will work just fine on any decent cpu. SSE and the likes can be left to the compiler to figure out, but will generally have to go with the lowest common denominator.
Display: Aspect ratio a problem?? Getting a game to support any resolution in windowed mode is an issue of a couple of lines of code and with fullscreen its just a case of limiting to the resolutions that monitors actually support (reason for those lists)
Audio: Afaik this can be quite a mess, but thats why games tend to use audio libraries to abstract most of the trouble away. (DirectSound)
Graphics Cards: Assuming decent drivers this should be a case of testing for availability of features and disabling them from the program if not present. dx9 / dx10 does add some complexity if you want to use both.
Other possible factors: Drivers, drivers, drivers….most of this again abstracted away, but this is probably the biggest breaking point outside configuration-independent stuff, since there are plenty of buggy ones around.
So yes, hardware can produce issues, but a pretty solid base is not that hard to achieve…Jetsetlemming listed the windows only variants pretty nicely, but if you are happy with OpenGL instead of dx something as simple as SDL + OpenAL + the running OS will deal with pretty much everything mentioned as well. (you can even get stuff like font rendering in that mix)
And as to the input: try to distinguish between multiple attached mice/keyboards, its pretty painful compared to just taking abstracted input from the OS.
As for the proposal itself, it wont make much of a difference unless the threshold for “buggy” is extremely low. A guaranteed return for those few cases of bad PC configs is more of a symbolic thing than an actual cost, since all the cheap people will be pirates anyway. And the catastrophic cases will probably fail anyway.
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also different background software.
a good 10 different anti virus (norton, Mc affety, Kapersky, AVG ect)
mesaging programs al least 2 (yahoo messenger, windows live) all different versions.
WiFi software, windows standard, netgear ect.
all this can cause crash bugs and is on the background of most PCs
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@Ionkero
If resolution and aspect ratio is such an easy thing, how come so many games fail to properly support it?
Not just allow it to display at 16:10, or 4:3, but provide the proper in game FoV, and such.
So many games just use a lazy arse -vert, which defeats the entire point of widescreen.
Some recent games still stretch the screen/UI (such as the dark sector port) a crime much worse than even the hated -vert.
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About the hardware discussion:
If you have got a case of unforeseeable hardware-conflicts, where there is nothing the publisher could have done, because there are millions of possible combinations that can’t all be tested: Obviously the customer should get a refund in that case. Why should he have to pay for something that he can’t play?
If a game doesn’t work on the consumer’s PC, and it isn’t his fault, he gets his money back. Because otherwise he paid for nothing.
I didn’t think that this was what this topic is about. I thought this was about buggy games, like Gothic 3 or Sacred 2 or Demigod. I think if you purchased any of those games and had problems you should get your money back. The publishers should get maybe half a month to resolve any issues. If you still have problems after that, I say you get a refund.
Because if that were the case, we wouldn’t get a lot of those buggy releases that we get now. Maybe that would mean that we don’t get some releases at all, as SteveHatesYou and Psychopomp have pointed out, but I think that that would still be a better world.
Because maybe the publisher would have said close to the end of Bloodlines’ development “Alright forget this, we aren’t releasing it because we would have to take all copies back anyways.” But maybe both the developer and publisher would have planned different in that world to begin with. Maybe they wouldn’t have used an unfinished engine, because in that world you couldn’t take those risks. And that would probably have been the better decision for Bloodlines.
And maybe Demigod wouldn’t have used a new netcode solution that ended up not working, because in that world you simply don’t take those risks, if there is already a proven solution. And that would probably have been the better decision for Demigod.
Maybe that would curb technological advancement a little, but I ask “who cares anymore?” Isn’t the time where we need new technology to advance gameplay over?
So yeah I say give the consumer the power to punish publishers of buggy games.
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the rights for buyers are already crap as is, atleast let us pay only for working products. About the how, lets think for Solutions.
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If, for whatever reason, I am not getting what was advertised and what I paid for, then whoever is responsible for it owes me my money back. And this is at the very least.
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Online distributors have the best power to solve this problem. Make all Steam games log crash bugs to Valve, for example. That way they’d also have statistics of people who ‘game’ the system (i.e. if every game I download is reported as being buggy, I’m scamming them).
Additionally, they’d have statistics of which games cause the most problems across a wide variety of users, and if it reaches a certain threshold they could issue a recall and stop doing future business with the developer (massive incentive for developers not to f— it up).
Valve are already fairly well-celebrated as being awesome, imagine how popular they’d be if they guaranteed looking after consumers like that.
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Yea, that’s double extra awesome… until you consider the fact that when Valve goes out of business, the games you bought on Steam are gone. Same for any other centralized distribution system.
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Reply to Sagan
We also wouldn’t get as large or ambitious games as Gothic 3, Vampire or Boiling Point. The publisher would get the developer to slash anything still remotely wobbly a small glitch after all could be worse when it reaches one of the many rigs they were unable to test. The publisher will not sink more money into a game that may have already cost millions. They might just cut their losses and drop the developer altogether whilst retaining all the assets from the game. Again it is the small teams who will struggle to test the game and it will the cross format games which will go first.
To take the example of Vampire you gave, do you assume that the developer knows everything they will need for their engine? That no one adds or removes an element or feature? That they can predict the computer of the future? It’s possible Vampire would not have gotten the budget it had if it wasn’t for being able to boast “Half Life 2″ on the cover. In summary I’d rather have the version where the back of my coat clips through my chest than the one without the haunted hotel or multiple endings.
As Cliffski said the damage to reputation and customer confidence is enough to keep publishers and developers in line.
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i’m all for refunding rights, and i wouldn’t even ask for a reason, it will not only stop the “free-ride” approach publishers use these days as “beta-testing” but it will also force them give games actual length and replay value (since games that can be finished in 3 hours will be returned in the same day) and it will kick online activation right in the nuts (since it would turn the returned copy into garbage impossible to resale)
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No it would make them make games even shorter so they don’t have so much to test not the other way round.
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@psyk: they would get returned, the return period sets a “virtual” minimum playing time, if the game is shorter than that chances that it would get returned would be very high
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Firstly a short game is not a bug its a short game, secondly if refunds for buggy games becomes a legal right then we will see shorter games with less stuff in due to the increased risk of bugs in a longer game with more stuff in.
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This seems particularly apt right now. As per the title: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8PhzrmBgMI
And relevant too. Alot of those quips are slight changes in meaning, location, etc. It’s the little details that change it all. Same with this EU proposal – improved consumer rights for those ourside this lovely ol’ UK is an amicable cause, but the approach seems a little short sighted at the moment, based on the limited amount of information I know of this. Could do with more clarification and less speculation on this, to be honest.
But 2 years doesn’t make sense for alot of games. Only MMOs have a +2 year lifespan, feasibly (Eve just passed its 6th birthday). As they are on release, SP games might last 40 hours at most, and MP games tend to survive a year at most unless they’re very popular. Mods can’t be factored in too well since once the user starts modifying the product, issues should be expected, unless the purpose of the product is to modify it.
And then there’s the other thing: physical products wear over time, but software doesn’t. Software’s also dependant on hardware, and other software: hardware faults and buggy drivers with a small percentage of programs make it look like the program’s fault. Software conflicts with other software in strange ways to make things like running Steam along MSNIM impossible for a few people, and things as simple as images can cause hardware failures. Some people can change an odd setting on their computer and forget about it, or happy to run a program that doesn’t run well with everything else. You can’t test for everything.
Not to be too defensive on our little games though. Certain software that comes in combination with certain software that has a reputation, though not necessarily deserved, for causing users problems for no legitimate reason could get a bit of a kick in the pants, if certain parties decide it would be too risky, such as that move that threatens the immediate capture of one or more stones.
¬_¬
I can’t really see the EU wanting to suicide the software industry though, and I don’t think it makes sense to do this to the games industry when US dominance is increasing (apparently). Here’s to hoping they clear up what kind of problems are covered by this proposal, or if it’s simply a lost cause hope enough of them spot the problems to vote it out (it’s happened before)
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you could always find some “bug” to return it, a quick trip to the support forums of any game, even the heavily patched ones will net you several good reasons to take it back, the only way short games would be able to live is in a steam like environment (where, btw, you cant return it, i wonder if the law will reach steam or not) with a very low price
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It’s a lovely thought in principle, but it’d be a disaster in practice. You can always find/feign a bug in a game, so you’re basically talking about legally stipulated free unlimited game rentals.
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so its either the end of gaming or letting them have their way with us without any lube ?
i rather the end of gaming, at least there is a chance something better will be reborn from the ashes
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It’s either the end of gaming or doing a little research before you buy a game (like you presumably do now). That’s an easy choice for me (and I’d think most other gamers).
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Yeah, I think my major concern with making such an offer is the fact that the PC is such an open system that lots of games can have “bugs” that are completely out of control of the company making the game. Even when tons of people experience the same “bug”, it sometimes turns out to be a weird driver issue with legacy hardware or something that no amount of programming or testing could have fixed.
You already see PC games that clearly have had tons of work into them, and ones where I felt the game was nearly flawless, that I find online have the same “lousy port” reputation that some horrible cash-in title does, simply because of some strange issue with certain setups that the developer didn’t even expect, or could even reproduce, and thus it takes a while to patch. PC game development is already prohibitive sales wise due to declining sales of hardcore games, and the fact that so much more QA needs to go into them from the get go, as well as other factors. If publishers had to also give out refunds because they failed to find every single possible issue on every single possible setup, most probably wouldn’t even bother making them at all.
And yeah, it would definitely be abused. When I worked in a head office for a video rental store where they offered a free exchange for non-new releases if you didn’t like the movie. It almost bankrupted the company due to how much people took advantage of it. Whenever I hear people talk about how big corporations always bilk the customer, I laugh, because I’ve been in so many situations where the company tries to respect them and ends up being screwed over for it.
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easy research ? like what ?
biased reviews ? do they even mention gamebreaking bugs if the reviewer didn’t get affected ?
demos that come out weeks or months after the game and show nothing ?
oh, well, i tend to be a little pessimistic
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You’ve either got a very funny idea about how this all works or I do. We shall see. I have no idea why you think one product showstopper constitutes a complete batch or product recall. That’d just be silly. One item of badly made or damaged stock of anything doesn’t mean the whole line comes back. There are plenty of established conventions for dealing with all the variables of existing product faults. I can’t think of any reason at all that computer games would end up with such death knell absolute consumer protection. Any program that fails across the board would fall foul of existing legislation already, as well as be open to class action if it did any damage to people’s equipment.
It’s within people’s rights in a few countries (Australia for one) to walk out of the cinema most of the way through a film and be given a full refund, simply because you did not like the film. No faulty sound or broken projector necessary. The cinema business has not collapsed becaue of this.
You can find on manufactured foods with enough space on the label: “If this product in any way does not meet your satisfaction, return it to the manufacturer for a complete refund” (emphasis mine) or words to that effect. That’s over and above laws regarding damage, spoilage and health concerns.
Any game publisher and any game retailer is already assuming all risks regarding possible manufacturing faults in the disks they sell. It’s what they do. This kind of thing (the EU stuff) is actually quite timely given the trend away from physical media.
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@SomeGuy, Starky
Ah, AV, forgot about those little buggers. They like to tamper with low level OS stuff so they are definitely a point of failure. IM programs and pretty much everything else that doesn’t tamper with the OS should be nothing more than a bit of system resources lost.
If using SDL (I don’t remember the windows specific version of the top of my head, its a bit more complicated) getting an arbitary screen resolution is a case of calling
SDL_SetVideoMode( xres, yres, 32, SDL_OPENGL );A proper aspect ratio (again OpenGL, I don’t know the equivalent function for DirectDraw ) is also pretty simple
glFrustum( -aspect, aspect, -1.0, 1.0, 1, 2000.0 );Aspect is of course xres/yres, the last two numbers are the near and far clip planes. The above gets you a view of 90deg up/down combined, and 112deg to the sides on 4:3 screens. You might want to use smaller values since the image gets distorted if you set those numbers too high (or the near clip plane too close). Stretching a UI is also dead easy, doing it properly is just boring to code.
So yeah, I wish I knew why games don’t do this properly…
Anyway the point wasn’t that there are no differences in PC configs and that they don’t cause the occasional issue, just that people make it sound like the end of the (pc gaming) world when it’s more of a little nuisance.
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I don’t think that consumers returning games based on a feigned bug is a problem. Because that would be the same kind of people who pirate games with a clean conscience. So no sales are lost on those people.
And if you make the return process at least somewhat elaborate, (like describing the bug, providing driver versions etc.) they would still simply pirate games, because pirating is easier than buying and returning a copy.
And I would like to argue again, that for those bugs which are completely outside the control of the company and the consumer, the consumer should get a refund. Because if he can’t play the game, what is he paying for? I’m pretty sure you already get a refund for this kind of problem though. I was hoping this would expand that policy to regular bugs. Like an important quest NPC not appearing, meaning that you can’t finish the game.
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Of course you should be able to get a refund if a game is unplayable through matters out of your control. GTA IV: I’ve still not been able to play it for longer than 1-2 minutes. One of the biggest games of the last 12-18 months and it’s unplayable, for me and countless others, and it’s not good enough.
If you bought a toaster and it didn’t work you’d take it back. Same with a vacuum cleaner, TV, DVD player, car. You take it back. You’re protected and you should get your money back if you want it.
However most game’s retailers won’t give you your money back because, technically, it IS working, it’s just not working on my particular spec. I consider that out of my control; why the hell should I pay another grand or so on a different machine or on improvements to my rig just so see if the game works or works better?
You should get your money back plain and simple, I can’t even see the other side of the argument to be honest.
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If a product doesn’t work, it should be my right to return it and get my money refunded in full. No industry has a right to “be creative” with the product quality and expect people to just cough up the money and be content when the product doesn’t work.
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what do you call a bug?
a random crash bug that may happen once a month with no obvious cause?
a graphical glich?
a mistranslation?
or say if one unit out of 100s is used in a battle map option?
or say in multi player an invulnerable unit bug?
or a pop cap bug?
would one of these be justification for a retern
show me one game with no bugs on release
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When is a toaster broken?
When it sometimes pops out the bread before it should have, with no obvious cause?
When the plastic in the handle is a bit cracked?
When the manual is just a poorly done machine translation?
When one side of the toaster toasts the bread more than the other?
When increasing the toasting time above 4 doesn’t seem to do anything?
Would any of these be a justification for a return of the toaster?
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@H: the argument is actually pretty simple even if they just wont say it
-they want to spend as little money as possible on testing and support
-they want to get away with releasing crap (either in quality or in functionality, half the games released these days qualify as lemons)
-they want to be able to abandon support for games whenever they want to (in atari’s case, that is the next day after release)
-they want to own your copy of the game and only “allow” you to use it so that you cant borrow, rent, trade or return without paying them
-also, they suck
they have been doing this for a long long time but since the big publishers bought most of the devs these points became an industry standard, imagine if someone just told them one day “hell, you need to work like other industries, you know, quality, support, no lemons, etc”, it would BREAK them!!, they whine about pirates but they are just as dirty
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@LionsPhil: Linus Torvalds didn’t copy Minix to make Linux. Linux is not based on Minix at all. Their architecture is completely different.
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Adding to the noise. I want to repeat something that’s already been said by a few people.
The way I see this turning out, if it is made law, is for customers to be able to return to a store and ask for a refund if they are not entirely happy with the form of the product. As is their right for almost all other commercial products.
I’m probably not the only person who knows shops which sell PC games who refuse to take games back if they do not run on your computer, even if you’ve gone by the back of the box specifications. Retailers are well aware at how varied the PC market can be in terms of operability.
I see this law at a more simple level – it allows me to return that PC game to the retailer for a refund when it just refuses to run on my PC for whatever driver, hardware, software, game-or-not-game reason.
It’s a different issue with console games, where a standardised hardware means consumers should expect a good level of QA. Sure, it’s annoying when PC games don’t work, but I know it’s not always the developer’s fault. This allows me to return a game which would otherwise become an expensive coaster…
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@panik:Imagine the returns on E:TW! 90%+ i bet.
You could put me down for one for sure, not the game the hype or the reviews had me hoping for. Apart from not trusting reviews so much (I’m looking at you PCG) I learnt not to pre-order unless I’m 100% certain.
But I think the problem is here that most games that prove unsatisfactory fall into a big grey zone. If it doesn’t run at all or crashes within 30 seconds that’s pretty clear cut, but most games run and crash from time to time. Proving that’s down to the game code and not a buggy driver (the usual suspect) would be tricky. And as for games like E:TW that run (with the occasional lockup in my case) but are just pretty rubbish at delivering a good experience then you’re going to be stuck. The UK Sale of Goods act mentioned by Wulf covers things that aren’t what you wanted in the first place or aren’t ‘fit for purpose’. But in this context you wanted a game and you got one, and it works as a game but it’s just not very good, so tough.
Perhaps digital distribution will help more than any EU legislation. As that’s really pretty cheap for the vendor in terms of delivering the stuff to you and even cheaper to ‘return’ since all they do is cancel a license then perhaps folks like Steam will start offering refunds/credits if you say you weren’t happy with the game you got within a given time.
Which reminds me of something else that UK consumers should remember. If you bought the game from Amazon or the like that’s ‘distance selling’ and under the regulations for that you’ve got 7 days from taking delivery to cancel the order and get your money back. So far as I can see that works for Steam too as it covers services which is pretty much what Steam is.
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So the game stopping bugs that the user can make happen see jagged alliance and i think fallout 2 has been awhile since I played them had a bug where if you put to many items on the same screen the game would break would that be covered as a bug that would get a refund? still not fixed.
“I was hoping this would expand that policy to regular bugs. Like an important quest NPC not appearing, meaning that you can’t finish the game.” so you will return a game due to a bug that will be patched, Nice. Half of you people will kill pc gaming the games will get shorter with less stuff in due to bug testing being easier and cheaper to do on a short basicly empty game. I wonder if the people who think console gaming ruined pc gaming support this or if its the people who dont.
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I would say refunding is ok if the buyer can testify in some way that he have not copied or finished such game.
You should gather information about the game prior the purchase – if it’s buggy, you don’t buy at all.
I think users should be defended against crappy games, but what’s about developers?
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Heh, I just learned of this: IGN – Stormrise Support Dropped
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I think this proposal shows a lack of understanding regarding the software development process. There is just no way of producing a 100% perfect piece of software today, or at least it rarely happens. There are just so many variables and conditions that could lead to a fault or error in complex software, which videogames most certainly are… it’s just silly :/
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we didnt want/dont need all the different cars, tvs or toasters either but we got them, also polls rule.
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now it looks like im crazy :s
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Voted ‘NO’ reluctantly.
Every Thomas, Richard and Harold would be getting refunds for tiny ambiguous things.
I say dont buy games new – wait 6 weeks. You get a chance to find out any bugs from the forums (cant rely on reviews anymore) and the companies gets hit in the wallet for releasing a buggy game, which might make them change their behavior.
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While refunds wouldn’t hit them in their wallets?
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In any other industry it would be 100% unnaceptable for a company to deliver an unfinished or non-working product. If a car company shipped a new car model without steering wheels, they would likely go out of business, but it’s ok to ship games without “steering wheels” as long as the developers let the consumers download a “steering wheel” later?
You can argue the petty stuff all day, but the fact remains that selling unfinished products and patching them later is commonplace. So commonplace that companies are now relabeling patches as “DLC” and charging us money for them!
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@Taill4f4r: i’ll tell you another one, Dark Sector for PC, support was dropped on release (ppl whining on non official forums, since there were no official ones on release date, were told, “the publisher wont put the money for a patch”), and the game’s resolution selection is absolutely broken, for most it just crashes if you want to change it, widescreen squishes the image and so on (you can edit an ini file but doesn’t work for everyone and it doesnt fix the widescreen squish)
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oh, i forgot, i’d like to point out that Stormrise was the latest Vista-only stupidity and it bombed, what a surprise
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Somehow we need to find that line which changes the current mentality at various companies (Microsoft of course being the most obvious) to release a product that’s only half ready and “see what happens”, spending the next months and years actually completing it with patches.
At the same time, there is a huge difference in making say safety-critical systems, which cannot be allowed to fail even once, due the dire consequences, and making various other software, including games. The important part here is in the process. Safety-critical is made with an enormously difficult, long and expensive process and most commonly for a closed system with a pre-known spec.
General software and games of course have to take into account an incredible number of different system specs, where any tiny change is liable to break something in the software – even if it shouldn’t.
Personally I don’t think it’s possible, let alone commercially viable, for a software company to build an application that will always work the same, no matter what the configuration. If it doesn’t work the same, then you already have a potential issue that might break it.
The issue should really be – in my opinion – about the following points:
1- company being able to show that it really put a proper effort into making sure that every single thing they promise/advertise will work as intended on a large number of commonly available configs/set-ups.
2- the company making sure that as soon as issues arise they are dealt with rapidly and efficiently and eliminated.
3- in the rare scenario that you buy something that should work but doesn’t, in the sense of “I cannot run this game at all” or “this game has a major mailfunction on my system compared to what is promised on the box, despite me having a system passing the minimum requirements” and you return it within a few days, a refund should without hesitation be provided, in all cases. The problem of course being the burden of proof mentioned before.
Also, there was a comment mentioning the complex process in pharmaceutical production. There you have a case effectively comparable to the “safety-critical” cases and it’s dealing with the complex environment of humans of all kinds. They are expected to do a lot of work to make sure things are reasonably safe (hence the big price tags) but even so you usually still need to speak to a doctor (or in some cases a prescribing pharmacist) to make sure your particular system is one of the ones likely to be OK.
What happens if the medicine doesn’t work for you?
In almost all cases, you don’t buy any more.
You don’t get to return the one’s you bought for a refund, do you?
Please don’t compare pharmaceuticals to software applications ;o)
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you guys need to go and make a 100% working game no bugs at all then come back and start comparing it to cars etc.
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Reply to Hyper
“In any other industry it would be 100% unnaceptable for a company to deliver an unfinished or non-working product. If a car company shipped a new car model without steering wheels, they would likely go out of business, but it’s ok to ship games without “steering wheels” as long as the developers let the consumers download a “steering wheel” later?”
Wow, just wow.
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H says:
“…
If you bought a toaster and it didn’t work you’d take it back. Same with a vacuum cleaner, TV, DVD player, car. You take it back. You’re protected and you should get your money back if you want it.”
Can we drop the ridiculous toaster analogy by now? Is there any compatibility issue with toasters remotely similar to PC software? Are there any health and safety considerations with software? Can a toaster be copied and returned for a refund?
“However most game’s retailers won’t give you your money back because, technically, it IS working, it’s just not working on my particular spec. I consider that out of my control; why the hell should I pay another grand or so on a different machine or on improvements to my rig just so see if the game works or works better?”
First it doesn’t cost a grand to upgrade a machine. If your system is out of spec, then that is darn well within your control. Part of PC gaming is using a machine meeting or exceeding the specifications required by the software; this is a responsibility of the gamer. Console gamers reliquish this responsibility in return for reduced freedom with the hardware.
“You should get your money back plain and simple, I can’t even see the other side of the argument to be honest.”
Clearly!
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“Helen Kearns, spokesperson for Meglena Kuneva, said the commissioners wanted to kick start a dialogue with the software industry.
‘The current status quo, where licensed products are exempt from EU law, is unsatisfactory,’ she said.
At present, retailers are not obliged to give a refund on a video game that has a bug or glitch that prevents a user completing a game. If the proposals become law, this could change as users would have the right ‘to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions’.
Ms Kearns accepted that this assumes honesty on the part of users and that the system could be abused by people playing the game for a few weeks and then taking it back with a fraudulent fault.
‘On the one hand there is the risk of abuse, but on the other it’s not a good enough reason to say basic consumer protection should not apply.’ ”
So she wants a dialogue with the industry? It sounds like the decision has been made and she wants developers to monologue their agreement with the new proposal.
The problem with this is that there’s no way of knowing how much this will increase the cost of game development, particularly when a lot of PC publishers are on the financial brink. If you’ve noticed, the MSRP of PC games has fallen below that of console games by 20% or more. This despite the fact that it’s more costly to develop for the PC and all its variations. There’s no doubt that PC game purchases have declined steadily, especially compared to the explosive growth of console games. Raising the cost of the games will stunt sales even further, and could lead to the abandonment or cancellation of risky projects (as many others have mentioned). And that’s not taking into account the effect of physical returns, which are actually more expensive and troublesome than simple non-sales, by either fraudulent or incompetent consumers. (It only takes a small percentage of miscreants to screw it up for everyone).
As a PC gamer, I voluntarily trade off the security of console gaming for the increased compatibility and customization, and unusual off-beat games by small developers that wouldn’t make the console cut. This often requires more time and patience with developer mistakes, but that is a choice that I voluntarily make. I’m considering the terrible irony that these laws, under the guise of increased protection, will actually restrict my choices of gameplay. Or in other words, I’m willing to sacrifice a little security for a little liberty.
“(Excuse that floating ‘n’ – a bug in our polling plugin)”
I demand a refund. ;)
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you know, things evolve when they are forced to
it might look impossibly expensive to develop games with this law now, but give it some time solutions to these problems will appear pretty quickly, for example:
-a DirectX like thing that properly handles hardware making it transparent to the software (why doesnt this exist now ? probably because of DirectX’s monopoly and lack of incentive)
-companies that specialize in testing games in different rigs, efficiently and with properly studied and optimized methods (every other industry has found the need to outsource tasks to groups that specialize in a specific part of development, why not gaming ?)
-etc…
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TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT THE NATION TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT THE NATION
BTU WAHT IF I DON’t WANT TOO!?!
TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT THE NATION
BUT I’M USING EMAIL – IS THAT A PROBLEM>?!?!
TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT THE NATION
IT DOESN’T MATTER:
TEXT!
do doo dodo, doo doo dodoo doo
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“-companies that specialize in testing games in different rigs, efficiently and with properly studied and optimized methods (every other industry has found the need to outsource tasks to groups that specialize in a specific part of development, why not gaming ?)”
erm joker those companies already exist. I cant see how anyone who has played pc games for a while can think this is a good idea.
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i doubt they have the size and experience they need to actually do their job right now, again, lack of incentive, “set standards and they will come”
i think the industry is big enough to start using ISO style standards that probably exist but nobody uses, you don’t even need to get forced to use them, just like any other industry, products from companies complying with several standards can ask for higher prices and have access to bigger and better markets than those that don’t
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oh yeah of course there outsourcing the testing to two man business that are set up in there mums basement why didnt i see that :s
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@OJ
You can’t trust the hyperbolic masses either.
“Here’s some screenshots of Deus Ex three, an-”
OMG ITS NUDDING LIEK DX1 ITS GON DA BE TURRBLE.
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What would happen to mmos there never free of bugs, would i be able to get a refund on my subscription?
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@psyk: i don’t even know if they are considered games, they are more like services they might not be affected by the law
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I like the idea. It happens to me before , I buy a game and it’s just not working. Publisher will be more careful when releasing a game.
CEO of Shop Carefully
http://www.shopcarefully.com
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