Broken games could be good in the long run.

So I was catching up on GOTY stuff and one of the things is "best trend" and it was Expanded Digital rights.

Which as the clip of GOG rolls and the man says "If it dosnt work, we will refund you the money....ALL of it." which of course had me think "Wish I got a refund for Sword of the Stars 2." then rolled down broken Digital games I have gotten or heard of. With most being just this year!!

So my hopes are that we have this rough patch of companies being idiots and releasing broken games only allows us to triumph with more solid Digital rights.

If companies stop releasing such broken games (Indie people have a little more slack, EA and the likes dont have that slack.) then we win. If they dont and it becomes more routine then WE WILL HAVE TO have our digital rights expanded.

So I kind of hope this epidemic of broken released games only gets worse so that we can have more security.

What do people think of my theory. I think my theory is fine....just will it come true?

Whats better not broken game's? or expanded digital right's?

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.

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. But yeah. It would be nice to put some pressure on developers, and not give them free passes, even for "minor" issues. I'm so tired of terrible frame rates/bad frame rate being an acceptable "thing" in console/hand held games. At least on PC you can buy a better PC and shit's fixed, unless it's a terrible port to begin with... and even then there's sometimes a way to deal with the brokenness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's kind of sad that games are being praised for not having massive game ruining bugs at launch. It should just be this way. Games should be expected to get discovered after a while. But not to this extent where its just broken day one. For example if post-launch someone finds a way to game the system by going through an obscure process that's fine, but game breaking bugs at launch is just sad.

The issue is and always will be that entertainment like video games have to make a solid first impression or the player moves on. Suggesting they have patients and wait to discover the diamond in the rough is probably going to be impossible due real world constraints.

That said, EA and the like are going to be fine selling busted games for certain class of games. Nothing will stop them from releasing broken games because they know they can make money on even the most busted game.

While I agree with this, I really hope that the class action suit against EA (lying about BF4 to inflate stock prices) puts the fear of god into them, and that results in this "trend" stopping.

I never said for potential or idea. I said about it being such a bad trend that our Digital rights must be expanded to compensate for companies knowingly throwing out broken games. So if we refund out games then the companies will make sure to give us less reason to refund E.G broken on launch.

@akyho: Yeah I know I was just making a general statement. Just saying we shouldn't have to go through a rough patch at all.

oh well yeah, just currently everything is just crazy. Whats normal standard for in shop sales. Its completely alien to digital and no one is making a change. So with 7 years of Digital games and coming up to 10 years of digital sales. It has not changed....so maybe something bad needs to happen before it will.