Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[BallC420]

As for the whole Steam not offering refund thing, it's just bollocks. Any decent country with any decent consumer protection laws can easily get a refund.

So we can get refunds in the USA? Because USA is best country*, obviously, and we have this Better Business Bureau which... sends complaints to companies?

* Not actually my opinion, as it is patently obvious that it isn't true if you pay any attention to anything

Nope, I've heard of folks using EU consumer protection laws but I checked the FTC site and don't see anything about any kind of laws like that in the US. Of course, we're more "pro-business" (i.e. anti-consumer) here in the states. The BBB is just a voluntary organization and is "pro-business" not "pro-consumer". Example: I recently watched a video about Geek Squad getting caught by some undercover local news with trying to charge $500+ for a disconnected hard drive cable. At the end of the segment, the newswoman says that if you look them up on the BBB, they show up as an A- because Best Buy asked for all the locations in Oregon to have their reviews blended with their locations in Minnesota (where Best Buy's corporate HQ is located) so you don't see that the Oregon stores were getting F's due to the number of complaints. (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZq4UnkgZQI)

I would have just reversed the charge since I bought it on a credit card and that usually is a "last resort" protection against this kind of shit. But then I read that Steam will take away ALL the games you've ever purchased if you chargeback even a single game. Nice end-run around one of the only US consumer protection options there with their EULA. :-/ Although I wonder if I bought it direct from the devs/publisher and got a Steam key and then charged it back against the dev/publisher, if that would work without putting Steam into "RAGE! I STEAL ALL YOUR GAMES!" mode.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

It's buisness. I'm not one to leap to publishers defense, but you can't hold the devs blameless in all these situations. If a development studio enters into an agreement to produce a game by X date, and then don't budget their time and resources properly it's not entirely the publishers fault if they then have to release a poor product.

You're right on all counts, I left out a lot of my criticism towards the developers because I thought my rant was getting rather wordy for a forum post dedicated to a video game.
The reason why I focused on the publishers is mainly due to the "after release support" that is often offered by the smaller development teams. For example see that crazy thing going on with Paradox and Magna Mundi where some of the core team still devoted to it really want to work on it but can't get the green-light from Paradox.

However this is not to say devs are blameless. Sometimes they just have to cut gameplay features and move on. Feature Creep is a dangerous thing, luckily Toady One has the freedom not to worry about this too much.

[fenrif]

It's buisness. I'm not one to leap to publishers defense, but you can't hold the devs blameless in all these situations. If a development studio enters into an agreement to produce a game by X date, and then don't budget their time and resources properly it's not entirely the publishers fault if they then have to release a poor product.

You're right on all counts, I left out a lot of my criticism towards the developers because I thought my rant was getting rather wordy for a forum post dedicated to a video game.
The reason why I focused on the publishers is mainly due to the "after release support" that is often offered by the smaller development teams. For example see that crazy thing going on with Paradox and Magna Mundi where some of the core team still devoted to it really want to work on it but can't get the green-light from Paradox.

However this is not to say devs are blameless. Sometimes they just have to cut gameplay features and move on. Feature Creep is a dangerous thing, luckily Toady One has the freedom not to worry about this too much.

Interesting that you brought up Magna Mundi, because I'm sure I read somewhere that the reason that was cancelled was because the dev team was aboslutely terrible, and missed many of their milestones, made very very slow progress, and engendered a terrible and hostile relationship with their publisher, had a lack of internal leadership on the project. The last I heard about it Paradox were unwilling to release it because of critical problems with the build they'd been sent, but the devs wanted to push it out regardless. I'd cite that game as a perfect example of the developers being the main problem.

I think the problem there is that the core team are really devoted and want to work on it... but they need Paradox to pay for it? I've not really followed the game terribly closely, but I imagine Paradox not wanting to throw good money after bad is the reason why they can't finish it.

[10ebbor10]

I can't understand why they do this at all. Instead of releasing a broken game they should push back the release date 4 weeks and increase the price by then 10%. Then offer a preorder with a 10% discount and beta acces, and use that to check your bug.

More people are going to preorder, because they get exclusive things, you make more money and there's no backlash.

[fenrif]

The problem with that is kinad twofold:

1) You're spending more money on the game, not only for the extra month of dev time, which I imagine isn't a small amount... But you're also now delaying things like CD-pressing and distribution and the like for boxed copies, which isn't going to be cheap. Unless you know like very early on that the game is going to need more time there's probobly not an easy way to make this work.

2) If you have people pre-ordering and getting into beta for your game that is horribly buggy and unfinished, then you have really bad word of mouth surrounding it when it launches. Which can just flat out kill a game. I mean I don't think Legend of Pegasus sold particularily well anyway, but if they'd advertised it more agressively people would've bought it, and they couldve got a couple of days of decent sales numbers before everyone realised what a stinker it was on launch. Plus people can cancel pre-orders, so you'd be losing out doubly so.

Both of those would work if it was planned as a strategy from the get-go, and there was any confidence the game wouldn't be ass. But judging by the advertising and pre-release hype (or lack thereof) I think everyone involved knew in what state this game would release.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

It's buisness. I'm not one to leap to publishers defense, but you can't hold the devs blameless in all these situations. If a development studio enters into an agreement to produce a game by X date, and then don't budget their time and resources properly it's not entirely the publishers fault if they then have to release a poor product.

You're right on all counts, I left out a lot of my criticism towards the developers because I thought my rant was getting rather wordy for a forum post dedicated to a video game.
The reason why I focused on the publishers is mainly due to the "after release support" that is often offered by the smaller development teams. For example see that crazy thing going on with Paradox and Magna Mundi where some of the core team still devoted to it really want to work on it but can't get the green-light from Paradox.

However this is not to say devs are blameless. Sometimes they just have to cut gameplay features and move on. Feature Creep is a dangerous thing, luckily Toady One has the freedom not to worry about this too much.

Interesting that you brought up Magna Mundi, because I'm sure I read somewhere that the reason that was cancelled was because the dev team was aboslutely terrible, and missed many of their milestones, made very very slow progress, and engendered a terrible and hostile relationship with their publisher, had a lack of internal leadership on the project. The last I heard about it Paradox were unwilling to release it because of critical problems with the build they'd been sent, but the devs wanted to push it out regardless. I'd cite that game as a perfect example of the developers being the main problem.

I think the problem there is that the core team are really devoted and want to work on it... but they need Paradox to pay for it? I've not really followed the game terribly closely, but I imagine Paradox not wanting to throw good money after bad is the reason why they can't finish it.

Well I maybe shouldn't have said Magna Mundi reflecting on it. It seems that game has many conflicting stories and legends about it. The story I heard (which may or may not be correct) is that the development team failed mainly due to the "team leader" siphoning funds for his own personal benefit rather than the development team's.
It was him (more or less) alone that had the massive fall out with Paradox when they came a-knocking wondering where all their money into development went. It was also him who argued to sue Paradox over the licence of the game. The rest of the development team were asking Paradox politely whether they could finish their game small wages or not.

This is all of what I read of a month old forum thread and I really haven't kept up with the times. I'd bet there's more to it than just an "evil team leader".
I'm sure this rather terrible example aside you hopefully understood my argument. Mostly that consumer should be allowed to know what state they're buying their games in.