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The Gamer's Bill of Rights
Edge Magazine is running a piece by Brad Wardell, CEO of game developer Stardock, in which he presents a "Gamer's Bill of Rights." Stardock teamed up with Gas Powered Games to develop a list of ideals they think all game publishers should follow. Some are rather basic operational guidelines (not requiring a disc to play, minimum requirements that make sense), and some are aimed at repairing the damaged relationship between game companies and customers ("Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers"). Wishful thinking or not, it will be interesting to see if they manage to get other publishers to sign on.
Gamers shall have the right to modify their games to alter their singleplayer experience.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
"#9 Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play."
I don't want to EVER have to connect to the Internet to play a game after I buy it. Product activation, DRM, Steam - these are all the reasons why I have stopped buying games. And I used to buy a lot of them.
I'm still curious as hell over whether Half Life 2 is as good as Half Life 1. But I'll never know, because Valve doesn't want to allow me to buy it.
Well that's crazy. I have, sitting on my desk, a purchased copy of Rainbow 6 Vegas 2. I uninstalled it about 30 minutes after installing it. My computer far exceeds (as in 400% or more) the minimum specifications. The game still ran like crap. So I took it off and will never buy a game from that publisher again. I am not going to go through the hassle of trying for a refund. I am not going to go through the hassle of telling them I will never buy one of their games again. They won't listen anyway. So, it will sit here on my desk with my beer on top of it. Expensive coaster? Yeah, but I don't care :-)
Actually, I hate not being able to go directly to the menu and choosing to play the movie or going to a scene or even seeing the extras. After the second or third time that you have put the movie in, it gets VERY annoying that I can't skip all of that crap. The first time is fine when I want to see the trailers and such but after that, they are just annoying. Let me watch what I PAID for and stop bugging me you jerks.