UK Gamers Can Now Get Their Money Back For Publishers' Broken Promises

An anonymous reader writes: An amendment to the UK Consumer Rights Act regarding digital-only purchases seems to give British videogamers redress towards publishing houses which deliver buggy code or inveigle consumers to pre-order games based on trailers or betas that demonstrate features, characters or quality not delivered in the RTM release. But the legislation is so loosely worded as to be an invitation to litigation and interpretation, and does not address mis-delivery issues for consumer models such as cloud subscriptions.

Comments

Why does *anyone* pre-order in 2015?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I really don't understand why anyone pre-orders games that are delivered via digital download. A few years ago, it made sense, because maybe you wanted to make sure there was a physical box waiting for you at the game store on launch day. How many games are still bought that way today, though? It's not as if the download server is going to run out of copies.

Game companies want everyone to pre-order, of course, because it guarantees them income no matter how much of a turkey the game turns out to be. But usually they offer at best some token DLC to go with the pre-ordered version, and often different token DLC for people getting the game in different ways so no-one can have everything, and in any case if that DLC is worth anything it will unbalance the game (which is bad) and if it's not then it's no incentive to pre-order anyway.

Don't pre-order on-line games, kids. There is no way it ends positively for you, and it gives the game companies every incentive to ship unfinished junk instead of polished products you'll enjoy.