@ravenlight said:
So your theory is that we get more broken-at-launch games for a little while until there's a significant public outcry, there will be more of an onus on devs/publishers to make sure consumers get a 100% playable experience from the start -OR- they'll be more lenient about refunds?
Why not the best of both worlds? I'd like to see devs/publishers held more accountable for the games they ship AND have digital rights policies that didn't treat the consumer like garbage.
We all want the best of both world's. However we are 7 years into digital store fronts and only GOG has taken the reigns on what is standard in store consumer rights. We have not seen a change and its about time it should if dev's and publishers are going to keep hanging us out to dry once our pockets are picked of money.
So my theory goes much like Xymox said.
@xymox said:
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Expanded rights means you have a way to deal with the problem, and it's also an incentive for developers to do better and not make broken games.
Us being able to refund hits the companies were it hurts, the bank. Allowing games to not be broken at launch or longer is the outcome.
Since we as much as I want to just snap my fingers and have them just be smart about it, they have not been at all this year. So they need a bigger kick in the ass.
@audiobusting said:
They're problems on different domains, one on the production side and one on the retail side. They're closely related to us consumers but they're really independent in terms of getting fixed. Stores don't really have the responsibility to give us the refunds, with digital rights being as fuzzy as they are now (although they might benefit from doing so anyway). Maybe Origin had to, considering that EA is the one publishing so many broken games, but... I mean, just look at all the broken-ass game alpha builds getting on Steam Early Access, and Steam still doesn't seem to have any plans for refunds. Also keep in mind that the broken games GOG is referring to are most likely those old-ass 90's PC games that don't work on modern PC's. I don't think getting newer broken games released will help anybody.
There are utterly legitimate issues that occur. Then there is the estimated risk dev's know about but throw it out due to deadlines. Alien Colonial Marines was a known fuck up, Sim City was a fuck up due to bad design Philosophies, BF4 surely they knew the risk when they pushed it out?
its the gambles, then there is just bad companies, I was eyeing up star drive on steam and saw the reviews below (a very good addition, does help in lower refund needs) to find it was not a early acess game but instead counted as a full game, despite missing promised features or even important features to the game. That is unacceptable.
While Steam Early access is a wild west and its supposed to be. It is not the place for complete games.
However games outside of that zone is supposed to be complete.
Except if we talk EA they control themselves and thus can be as refund free or stingy as they like. While Steam has a greater demand from customer and dev's on what to do.
Cmon we had a game never listed in Early access come to the half way point and then tell you through text end of the story and it was a failure. If refunds were more common that dev would rue that decision way quicker.
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