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:
Should refunds for buggy games be a legal right?
(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
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
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).
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.
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
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.
@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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
@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
@LionsPhil: Linus Torvalds didn’t copy Minix to make Linux. Linux is not based on Minix at all. Their architecture is completely different.
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…
@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.
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.
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?
Heh, I just learned of this: IGN – Stormrise Support Dropped
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 :/
we didnt want/dont need all the different cars, tvs or toasters either but we got them, also polls rule.
now it looks like im crazy :s
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.
While refunds wouldn’t hit them in their wallets?
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!
@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)
oh, i forgot, i’d like to point out that Stormrise was the latest Vista-only stupidity and it bombed, what a surprise
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)
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.
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.
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!
“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. ;)
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…
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
“-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.
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
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
@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.
What would happen to mmos there never free of bugs, would i be able to get a refund on my subscription?
@psyk: i don’t even know if they are considered games, they are more like services they might not be affected by the law
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.
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