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

Publishers respond

[willworkforbeer]

"Those features were't exactly promised, think of them more as 'Volkswagen-Promised.'"

# IVWP ("I VW-Promise" The corollary to 'fingers-crossed promises' for the 21st century. )

Only about 4 years late, US needs this too.

[xenotransplant]

One of the worst debacles in unfinished games, the one that opened my eyes to the "new model" of game and software delivery, was the release of battlefield 3. Absolutely broken game. Then they started releasing dlc/shorcut packs/premium subscription models, BEFORE the game was even patched. After that, I made an oath to NEVER buy a game on release day. No more preorders. I will wait, sometimes over a year, until a game is finally playable before I buy it. Gaming masses were marked as suckers.

Re:Only about 4 years late, US needs this too.

[__aaclcg7560]

I typically wait five years to get a game for less than five bucks on Steam. By the time I get the game, my Windows PC should have exceeded the minimum hardware specs and sometimes the recommended hardware specs to play the game without fuss. I can buy a dozen games for the price of a single brand new title.

Re:Only about 4 years late, US needs this too.

[orlanz]

Gaming masses are still suckers and have been for quite some years. Just look at all the "best selling" titles each year.

what about game consoles

[Lead Butthead]

... like when Sony unilaterally removed features...

Can steam, EA, ubisoft , etc black list you

[Joe_Dragon]

Can steam, EA, ubisoft , etc black list you from your full account if you use this on one game?

Re:Can steam, EA, ubisoft , etc black list you

[Coren22]

Steam allows refunds within a certain amount of time, no questions asked.

Re:Can steam, EA, ubisoft , etc black list you

[sexconker]

Legally, no. Actually, yes.

Steam was recently forced to change their policy of completely black holing accounts that dared to issue a charge back.
They now prevent future purchases and lock away certain features like the friends list. Various games will work/not work based on how tightly they are integrated with those features. But games you have already purchased and downloaded are still accessible to you. The consoles have more of a death grip, however.

MS is notorious for nuking accounts that dare to issue a charge back (even at the recommendation of XBOX support staff) when their accounts get hacked and people make unauthorized purchases with them. Sony does this too, but it's not as prevalent. MS also likes to nuke your account if you dare to let your credit card expire when your subscription is set to auto renew. You can't get your account back until you pay the "balance due", even if you haven't used the service, even if you turned off auto renew and it magically got turned back on, and even if you removed your credit card info but it magically was still there.

You can't turn off auto renew easily, and many times it just ignores your preference. Last I checked, it was impossible to truly remove your credit card info, so that when your account got hacked, you were fucked. Some countries and states require that turning off auto renewal be possible / different degrees of easy. MS has it rigged such that you only get the options required in your jurisdiction. A couple of years ago when this shit was erupting, people on video game forums were scrambling to remove their credit card info and turn off auto renewal, and everyone had a different "THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT!!!" post with screenshots of pages that exist for some members but not others because MS intentionally made a maze of it.

Since then, the mantra for people who use XBOX Live! has been "use subscription/point cards". You can often get the subscription cards at a discount, and sometimes the points cards, too. People just stock up on those and add them to the account when they want to buy shit, never giving their CC info to MS and always leaving a minimal point balance on the account.

I'm a proponent of one account per purchase at this point. I don't give a finkle fuck about the social bullshit attached to the accounts.

However, account switching can get you banned on consoles (and isn't even possible on the Nintendo consoles) if you reach some arbitrary, unknown threshold that gets you flagged. My solution to this is not to buy digital shit. Physical shit is cheaper anyway. For things that are digital-only, I wait until they're $10 or less. And by that time I'll probably not even care about buying it.

Re:inveigle

[newcastlejon]

What sort of antiquated browser are you using that doesn't let you right-click a word and google it? Just think, if you'd done that you might have learnt a new word already. Here, give it a try now.

Indolent.

See how easy that was?

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.