Slashdot Mirror
Players Seek 'No Man's Sky' Refunds, Sony's Content Director Calls Them Thieves (tweaktown.com)
thegarbz writes: As was covered previously on Slashdot the very hyped up game No Man's Sky was released to a lot of negative reviews about game-crashing bugs and poor interface choices. Now that players have had more time to play the game it has become clear that many of the features hyped by developers are not present in the game, and users quickly started describing the game as "boring".
Now, likely due to misleading advertising, Steam has begun allowing refunds for No Man's Sky regardless of playtime, and there are reports of players getting refunds on the Play Station Network as well despite Sony's strict no refund policy. Besides Sony, Amazon is also issuing refunds, according to game sites. In response, Sony's former Strategic Content Director, Shahid Kamal Ahmad, wrote on Twitter, "If you're getting a refund after playing a game for 50 hours you're a thief." He later added "Here's the good news: Most players are not thieves. Most players are decent, honest people without whose support there could be no industry."
In a follow-up he acknowledged it was fair to consider a few hours lost to game-breaking crashes, adding "Each case should be considered on its own merits and perhaps I shouldn't be so unequivocal."
Now, likely due to misleading advertising, Steam has begun allowing refunds for No Man's Sky regardless of playtime, and there are reports of players getting refunds on the Play Station Network as well despite Sony's strict no refund policy. Besides Sony, Amazon is also issuing refunds, according to game sites. In response, Sony's former Strategic Content Director, Shahid Kamal Ahmad, wrote on Twitter, "If you're getting a refund after playing a game for 50 hours you're a thief." He later added "Here's the good news: Most players are not thieves. Most players are decent, honest people without whose support there could be no industry."
In a follow-up he acknowledged it was fair to consider a few hours lost to game-breaking crashes, adding "Each case should be considered on its own merits and perhaps I shouldn't be so unequivocal."
Who would ever buy from Sony again, they've bungled many a product. BetaMax, MemoryCard, UMD, MiniDisc, BMG Rootkit, PS3 OtherOS, PS Vita, PSN hacks and pretty much all of their products are more expensive and have less features than competitors.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
...are Hello Games and Sony. They both knew they had a steaming turd of a game, they released it for full price anyway and expected people to just put up with it.
At least Valve has the integrity to do the right thing, refund players their money for a game that is broken, has none of the features its now-secluded big mouth Sean Murray claimed and if it were fixed, if it were bug free, it would still be a title that would normally go for free-to-play for PSN subscribers.
Really starting to re-think whether or not I'll be buying a console for gaming in the future...
If a game has crashed I doubt the timers still running. If you've got 50 hours in it I highly doubt it's due to troubleshooting as such those people are "thieves". I don't think I've ever troubleshooted something non critical for longer than an hour before writing it off as a lost cause.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/...
A walking simulator on 18 million planets.
It's not surprising anyone wants their money back. It's also kind of hard to see how anyone "Stole" the content unless it was the same planet 18 million times.
n/t
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There are some scam games on Steam that are designed to last two hours to get past the refund limit.
No Man's Sky is one of these.
I've gotten huge playtimes on some games because I honestly fell asleep while it was running, so it racked up a ton of hours even though I wasn't actually doing anything in the game.
I know siding with big business is not the popular motif around here, but I would tend to agree with Sony on the 50 hours of play bit. If you got 50 hours of game time out of something you don't deserve a refund.
Additionally: HAVE ANY OF YOU ACTUALLY ASKED FOR A FUCKING STATEMENT FROM STEAM REGARDING THEIR REFUND POLICY ON NMS? IS REAL JOURNALISM DEAD? ARE WE DOOMED TO REPEAT RANDOM NOBODIES WITH ZERO VERIFICATION?
I have 12 hours of playtime on NMS, and my steam refund was rejected. Reddit is full of attention whores looking to get their 15 seconds of fame.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Thanks for reminding us all why we should never buy Sony products.
If you don't want customers demanding a refund, maybe you should consider making better products instead of the half baked shite you seem to produce.
It takes about 50 hours to realize the features they promised aren't there. The "universe" is so big you continue to give it a chance, thinking you'll come across the things they promised later.
I haven't been a gamer for well over a decade (except whenever a new Civ comes out - when you lose me for a couple of weeks - a tradition since the first Civ) so I don't know if things have changed significantly, but is 50 hours of play time currently considered a lot? Especially with a game described as giving you an infinite procedural universe to explore? But in any case, if he is the *former* Sony director why would this guy's quotes be part of the news story?
Also, if the other post I read where two people tried to meet and found out the game "universe" is not common/simultaneous among players, which was what was promised, I'd think that makes a huge enough difference to warrant a refund... I mean, the developers themselves had said it would take quite some time for you to meet someone due to the size of the game universe, so if after 1000 hours of trying you find out they were lying and you couldn't meet players, not only should you get a refund but also perhaps some compensation for the time lost in the futile attempt?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
It only gives his full quote towards the end of the summary, which is: "If you're getting a refund after playing a game for 50 hours you're a thief." The headline implies that he calls everyone who gets a refund a thief, while his quote says something different.
If you bought the game, played it for an hour, found it to be broken and requested a refund, that would be a legitimate request. However, if you played the game for 50 hours it clearly indicates that you were happy with the product and gained a lot of enjoyment from it. To request a refund after extracting full enjoyment from the game is at best immoral, and is quite possibly fraudulent.
This guy left Sony in december 2015. Why lie and say "Sony's Content Director Calls Them Thieves" ?
I don't particularly care for Sony (read: I think they're miserable bastards), but come on!
Given a properly configured computer, etc. if you lose more time to crashes than it would take you to earn the money to pay for the game, you're sure as hell not a thief regardless of how many hours you may have played.
If you're refusing a refund to a player who hates your game after playing it for 50 hours...
You're the wrong person to be a decision maker.
- You made a game that someone hates after only two days
- After giving your game every chance in the world to live up to what the player expects, after 50 hours of play they can't stand it anymore and never want to play it again
- You defrauded (in the legal sense) consumers who bought your product expecting to get what they were told only to find they weren't.
This is not unusual for Sony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... but it is just another example of a company that HATES ITS CUSTOMERS and wishes they would just SPEND MONEY AND SHUT UP.
I'm sorry, Sony. This is why I gave my PS3 away. This is why I will never ever buy your products.
Those players you've upset... they're not like me. They're fans of your products. They looked forward to this game.
Oops. Not any more.
Public corporations exist to improve shareholder value. Typically this is done with growth and sales. Good luck alienating all your customers and seeing those chickens come home to roost.
Ehud "Sony can kiss my arstechnica" Gavron
Tucson, AZ US
Hahaha
[...]is 50 hours of play time currently considered a lot?
It depends on the kind of game. It's enough time to finish some decent games twice over. In other games, like Civ, you'd have a hard time convincing other players you're competent at the game without hundreds of hours under your belt. Multiplayer co-op games with progression (Payday 2 and the Killing Floor series, for example) seem to be expected to give hundreds of hours.
Most of the time, people DON'T get a refund after 50 hours. The major vendors are making an exception in this case, because the game has been so overwhelmingly reviled. It is in their best interest to grant these refunds, because that ensures that their customers will still buy games from them in the future, trusting that if it turns out to be a turd, they can get their money back.
Overall, gamers keep their games, so granting the occasional out-of-policy refund when a game is a huge flop is still the most profitable move.
Customers aren't forcing the issue here. They can't. They are requesting the refund...saying "please"...and the venders are choosing to say yes. Which is good business.
Shahid Kamal Ahmad, you are a thief. False advertising and buggy products should never be allowed to be sold. Fuck you Shahid Kamal Ahmad.
This is another reminder on why one should not buy new games as they come out.
Things like:
Missing features
Huge bugs
A lot of the content moved to DLCs for separate price.
I stopped buying new titles quite many years ago and instead I just wait until they hit the bargain bin, preferably in an all inclusive version that includes all the DLCs maybe two years later. Also the biggest bugs should have been fixed by that time and so on.
In some cases it is hard to wait, but so far I have held fast. Fallout 4 was the recent "difficult to not buy" thing, but since they are almost done with the DLCs for it, I can likely get it some time next year for a more reasonable price for the all DLCs included version.
My game computer is almost always on playing something even when nobody is actually playing. Nobody cares to shut it down.
If I have 50h into a game doesn't neccesarily mean that I was playing continuosly all the time, it may well be that I started it on friday to take a look, got sidetracked and then stopped it on monday. That is over 2 days of run time for maybe 15 minutes of actual play.
Pulling out of his ass any number like 200h instead of 50h won't make any difference since the raw playtime is not meaningful.
I *do not* want a refund for games that I like whatever number of hours played. Why would anyone?
...playing a game for 50 hours and then returning it is much like buying an outfit for a special occasion, wearing it to it, and then returning it.
The sleaze fact is pretty much the same, and the only fact that would mitigate the game playing (and no one has alleged this) is at that point the game then becomes unplayable.
Teenagers whine about getting their money back more frequently than they masturbate. If the server goes down for a few hours, money back. If their character dies, money back. If someone griefs them, money back. If Joe has green armor and John can't get some too, money back. If they're bored with playing this game after a month, money back. I'm not even joking here. If you've ever frequented any MMO forum all the way back to Ultima Online (literally just pick any MMO) they're loaded with these kids whining about refunds.
I wonder if hes this passionate about the SecuRom debacle.
either give a refund or don't. why would you "call" gamers anything? he deserves all the grief he gets over this.
You would think he would know the distinction. You can safely ignore anything he says on this subject.
Good-bye
Apparently steam is also offering refunds, no matter how long your playtime is. I think this is a bright move on their part, as this really feels like a bait-and-switch more than any other high profile game in recent memory.
http://gametyrant.com/news/steam-and-psn-still-offering-refunds-on-no-mans-sky-regardless-of-playtime
Given the blatantly false hype on the game right up to the day before the launch, I'd say the refunds are preventing a much more expensive class action lawsuit that could very easily be won by the players by just running the trailer footage alongside the actual gameplay footage. What was promised was not delivered, and the only reason you had as many preorders as you did was due to the promises of the developers. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it and pissed off again, maybe I'll pen a letter to the FTC asking them to look into it!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Internet fanboys buy into hype, then cry when their childlike foolishness leads them to disappointment and regret. Childlike entitlement kicks in and tantrums follow. It happens over and over, year after year.
It's a game about exploration and discovery. Were they supposed to give you a comprehensive list of everything that could possibly happen in the game before you bought it? A grownup would either wait and buy the game after reading enough reviews to make a wise decision, or take a gamble and pre-order and accept that gambles sometimes pay off and sometimes don't.
Don't you people get tired of acting like children? Why not just grow up and stop making things worse for yourself and the people around you?
And don't the rest of you get tired of these people who are old enough to be grownups demanding to be indulged in their foolishness like 10-year-olds? Why not tell them to grow up instead of indulging their ongoing foolishness?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Really, nobody comes out of this one looking particularly well.
No Man's Sky is a mediocre, so-so-ish game. If it had been a $25 indie title that slipped out quietly, it would probably have had a pretty decent reception. But it was hyped, by a developer who appears to want to be the second coming of late-career Peter Molyneux, to be a game that was both fundamentally different to and better than the game that was actually released.
But the people asking for refunds after putting a serious amount of time into the game are also kinda jerks. Digital-purchase refunds have come on a long way in the last couple of years. Weirdly, we have EA to thank for this, as they were the first major party to take the plunge on it, via Origin (hey, credit where it's due). But refund policies set sensible limits. If you've put double-digit hours into a game before deciding you want a refund, you are probably doing something wrong. What's more, the gap between expectations and reality with No Man's Sky was widely known within 24 hours of release. If you got stung because you pre-ordered... then for the love of all that is holy, stop pre-ordering.
And a special de-merit here for much of the gaming media. Quite a few outlets have put more time into defending Hello Games, because gamers are angry with them (boo! hiss! angry gamers! they must all be sexists!) than they have taking them to task for some seriously deceptive marketing.
I did buy it myself. A week or so after launch (so I knew full well what it was like), I managed to get a fairly cheap PC code via cdkeys.com. At the greatly discounted price I paid, the game is more or less worth the money. I put 12 hours or so into it before I got bored and moved on. Mods might add some value to it in time. But I don't feel the need for a refund.
I didn't buy this game and I stopped buying Sony stuff years ago, but this is yet more dirt on the grave.
Someone who demands a refund after 50 hours isn't a "paying customer".
and people watch the movie and in the end, the ship doesn't sink, they are entitled to refunds. They are not thieves. They sat through the whole movie and didn't get what was promised. You are the thief. You stole their time by luring them with false advertising to sit through your shitty movie which didn't have the sinking ship that they came to see. You don't get to say they should still pay because the movie was good up til the minute the ship got rescued.
Someone who spent 50 hours in anything for sure that is a paying customer for many other similar things
Try Starbound. It's in 2D, it's pixel art and it's fun.
And it actually has a story.
I didn't read much about this game before it came out, but it seemed interesting since exploring landscapes is some of my favorite stuff to do in games. So far it seems a lot like Starflight by Electronic Arts which I loved as a kid, and I'm happy with that.
Sounds like a lot of people were promised something that was not well defined, and was partially defined by just the aspirations developers had, and then the potential buyers filled in the gaps with their own ideas of what could be. The first pre-release live streams of the game were interesting for these people because it was the first time the moment to moment gameplay was conveyed. For the last 3 years before nobody really knew.
Twinstiq, game news
The reason they're so eager to give refunds is likely to avoid false advertising lawsuits. Even on release, many of the collector's edition boxes had a sticker over the ESRB/CERO rating. Why? Because even after the game went gold, the ESRB and CERO both believed that the game had online multiplayer. The sticker had a replacement ESRB/CERO rating that was different because the ESRB and CERO now understood that there was no online content whatsoever.
At the same time, there are also "online features" in the game which don't appear to actually do anything. People were reporting earlier this week that the game doesn't save any of the names you give to planets or creatures - once you've named enough stuff, the older stuff starts getting deleted. I don't know if anyone's been over the game with a network mapper to see if it's sending out packets of any sort, but I'd guess not.
The companies are probably giving refunds so late because they don't want a class-action lawsuit on their hands. I'm sure a class-action attorney could find plenty of people who bought the game on the reasonable belief (given the interviews the lead developer did with various media outlets) that the game had multiplayer.
When I read about the game, it sounded like a LOT of fun, so I checked into Steam to see if it was one of the ever-growing number of titles that run on Linux.. Alas, I was to find it was not.. Since I don't/won't run Windows on any of my computers, and use the Linux Steam client, I found that I was not going to be able to play *this* game.. After reading this article, It seems I dodged a bullet, both due to the lies AND the fact that Sony is behind this... Microsoft and Sony are on the "dead_to_me" list.... Large caliber bullet successfully dodged...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Art - in any form - should always be experienced, and then the audience should decide whether and how much to pay.
It's the WAHHHHHHHHHHHmbulance to bring Sony's Content Director (wtf?) a teddy bear and some soft fluffy tissues to help with his pain and sorrow
I'm not a gamer, but the thing that interests me that no one is talking about is the fact that they apparently know how long you have played the game. Why is anyone OK with that?
Every Windows 10 story on Slashdot is filled with vitriol over Microsoft's tracking, but here's a story about a company that apparently knows exactly how long (and presumably that implies they know exactly when) you've played the game and nobody seems to even mention what a grotesque invasion of privacy that is.
Why does Microsoft get chastised but apparently tracking by Sony doesn't even warrant a mention? Bizarre.
When I first watched a video titled "GamingSins *SPECIAL*: Everything Wrong with E3 2015" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4pGWV1cna0&feature=youtu.be&t=20m43s , I instantly knew that they were lying about the game.
Because the guy presenting it... doesn't even sound excited or optimistic about it.
No, dipshit. When they want a refund, they cease to be a paying customer. They become a leech and a thief.
I canceled my pre-order 2 days before launch, because it was very clear at that time that the game was massively over-hyped and could not really deliver and was over-priced in addition.
That said, if Steam now refunds regardless of playtime, it must be a lot worse than I thought. They would not do that unless they have a lot of really angry customers. I think what was stolen here was primarily player time by promising the universe and delivering very little.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I have heard costco has a legendary refund policy. That they will take back things after years of use.
Those are physical things that use real resources. No mans sky can be copied and deleted a billion times effortlessly, but only a 2 hour refund window? Why can't we have refunds whenever the hell we want on intangible property?
-
OK, regardless of whether or not people had incorrect expectations, I'm very happy to see that finally, after decades of being able to release any kind of buggy shit they wish, the software industry in-general being held responsible for the products they release. I have worked in the technology industry since the late 80's, and the sheer amount of complete shit I've seen released during that time is downright staggering. How can companies get away with releasing products that are fundamentally broken, flawed, or grossly mis-represented? Sure, we sometimes see it in companies producing physical goods; but that often gets addressed, in some way (product recalls, extended repair programs, etc.). It's often not just "the buyer is fucked! Hahahaha!" without recourse. Software is a product. Products need to function, as advertised. If you can't make your software function, then don't sell it. I would be perfectly happy if the world had 10%, or even 5%, or hell, maybe even 1% the software products it has, if that products actually functioned properly, reliably, and well.
SPOILERS! Hype delays the suckage finding. After all the hype and *PROMISES* it takes a while to find out it's broken. You have to complete the Atlas quest before you find out it sucks. It takes a while to visit all five planets to find out they are all so similar. It takes a while to discover flying to the center of the galaxy just boots you to the next one. It also takes a while before you find out multplayer IS MISSING! If they had said "sorry guys but we had to take it out" but the developers have been tight-lipped about that. It takes more than a couple of hours to realize it doesn't deliver what was promised.
> A thief takes something away from the owner dishonestly
Yes! These customers paid cold hard cash for No Mans Sky and and now realize they have been duped. It takes a while to discover that they have been duped but when they do instead of apologizing for this public relations debacle and violation of consumer law Shahid Kamal Ahmad calls them thieves. He deserves to be sacked.
And if everybody played the game without paying for it, Sony wouldn't have lost anything at all. Everybody's happy and Sony starts working hard on its next game.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
this is why you never preorder anything sit back a bit after launch to see if its shit and today thats the case with most stuff. but like good sheep whatever is next on the hype train everyone will be smashing that preorder button.
you cant steal a videogame, and be a thief, if you dont steal a physical copy from a store
what you are refering to isnt even piracy, you silly goose
but let me add something else, all those people that are returning the game are your fucking clients, you fucking wanker, and if you want to be mad at someone at least dont be a cunt and be mad at ME, i PIRATED THE GAME (and havent tried it because it doesnt run on my ancient pc, my spidey sense tells me my copy has a bitcoing miner, and more importantly THE GAME IS SHIIIIIITE, but i pirate out of principle, so fuck you mr sony, and fuck that kevin love looking motherfucker who ripped off everyone who bought no mans sky KEKEKEKEKEKKE)
to the people who bought the game: when you buy a game by some kevin love looking dude, it shouldn be a surprise when IT DOESNT DO WHAT IT SAYS IT DOES
"ohhhh my game does not play defense" NO SHIT, OF COURSE IT DOES NOT PLAY DEFENSE, its kevin love biaaaaaaaatch!
I chalk it up to youth not knowing their history—Sony (multiple divisions) has treated their customers badly for years. This is merely the latest chapter of this ongoing saga of mistreatment. The Sony fake film critic David Manning, the audio CDs that came with Windows Digital Restrictions Management, and related Windows rootkit (including apparent infringement of copyright) should have been enough to simply decide not to do business with Sony (again, I see no reason to distinguish between divisions; let them suffer the consequences of their "branding" choices and bad behavior).
It's time to add this episode to the list for the next time people forget the lesson.
Digital Citizen
Assuming that this is referring strictly to the PlayStation players, they are playing the game on Sony hardware and they purchased it through the PlayStation Network or whatever the PlayStation online storefront is called. It can safely be assumed they are a paying customer, or at least that they were in the past, and you want them to be a paying customer in the future as well.
>Sony starts working hard on its next game.
I think we all lose if sony makes another game.
I've played the game for 20 hours and am glad I got it. I don't understand all the hate. I guess its not call of duty so its bad.
This is a Hello Games developed, and Hello Games published game. Sony does not have anything on the retail box, no Sony splash screen in the game, it has no link to Sony except that they gave it additional promotion in their presentations, as they do with many other third party games.
Twinstiq, game news
The Sony rep is absolutely, 100% correct. It's abuse like this that is going to eventually see the no questions asked refunds system go away.
I'm sorry to be the one to point it out, but you are wrong.
Someoen spends 50 hours on Peggle or Tetris and asks for a refund? I would agree that's a suspicious request.
But 50 hours is an arbitrary number. There are games for which 50 hours is a trivial drop in the bucket of the overall playtime value of the game. I'm sure you could fill a phone book with players of WoW that have a thousand plus hours in it. NMS was promising a universe so vast that it sets a far higher expectation of playtime where 50 hours is trivial.
What justifies "giving a game every change to live up to it's promise"? Seems to me that the people with 50 hours (which can be done in just a couple of days) have given the game every possible opportunity to shine and the game has failed. They were coming at this with expectations set by the developers of a universe so vast that they could spend thousands of hours in the game world. After 50 hours they have had enough and found the vast array of missing features and at that point are actually UNIQUELY QUALIFIED to call BS on the game and ask for a refund.
To me, the bottom line is that the developer failed to deliver what was promised. Users paid for what was promised. Therefore it's fraud and asking for a refund is the least that the developer be worried about.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
Shahid Ahmad doesn't work for Sony anymore though. Your not his customers.
I never played No Man's Sky, nor did I follow advertising and trailers much, but I'll say this:
If No Man's Sky indeed promised a bunch of features that never made it to the game, then he'll only have the right to call costumers returning the game thieves once the studio responds criminally for false advertising.
It is that simple. Take the return and shut the fuck up, or explain why you promised stuff on the game that isn't there, and what you are willing to do about it. I don't care if it's a small studio, if there wasn't enough time, or whatever excuse. Size of company does not matter when it comes to false advertisement.
Sorry, but that's the concession I'm willing to make. If the studio promised features in the game that never made it, it does not matter how much someone played it... in fact, gamers who played the game a whole lot only to find out that the stuff the studio promised wasn't there, should be even more entitled for a refund.
Now, if No Man's Sky promised NOTHING about the game beforehand, and people bought it without expectations, I'd give him the right to be outraged. Even though I'm fully aware that playing a set number of hours isn't always enough to make a proper evaluation of certain games, it'd still be a steal to play a game this many hours only to return it afterwards.
But of course there's a reason why Steam is taking the request for refunds in the first place.
But hey, I guess there's a reason this idiot is a FORMER Strategic Content Director after all. No company would like a narrowminded asshole in such a position anyways. He isn't doing any favors for Sony or the studio by writting crap like that too.
in my mind when you lie about your game to get sales thats theft by deception so the real thieves are the company that lied to get everyones money...
I have not played this game, and I'm unlikely ever to do so. In fact, I didn't even know about it until I followed the links from this article. Yes, my rock is very big.
However, looking at the videos of all the concepts this game tried to create, randomly generated worlds to explore, gather resourses, aliens and factions, I was hit with a great thought, born of nostalgia. If you were to take this game engine, and add the plot, aliens, etc from Starflight (1 & 2.) this would probably be the most awesome game ever.
Sadly, it seems that is unlikely to happen.
Not sure I trust this guy. First he promised dozens of Vita games and not delivering on most and then he sides with radical clerics in UK to call my sect non Muslims and we should be sidelined after we promote peaceful ideology in UK
I bought the game, and while I'm disappointed, I understand this is essentially the tuition for the life lesson: don't buy into hype. Never buy a game when it's brand new. Wait and see how it will turn out. To be perfectly fair, I can understand why certain features are missing. When the game came out, there were performance issues that even top-of-the-line gaming systems were struggling to deal with. Those other promised features may have been in the prototype, but cut until it could be determined how to add them without causing massive slowdown. For my part, I'll just accept that I lost my money, and wait to see what happens next. If nothing, I'll still get another $60 on my next payday, so while it stings, it's no great loss.
The Penguin Producer
for exposing all their customer data?
You see, it's not unlike keeping a girl around you that you have all intentions of breaking up with. I mean, she serves a purpose for now - but doesn't really make you happy. She's not what you thought she was...when you first met her she enticed you acting like she was a good cook, had a good job, no drama, etc. LIES ALL LIES! But I mean... she's there in front of you now. Maybe she even brings you a sammich now and then (but not often enough). You want to get more value out of her, you keep HOPING she'll get better or that her initial claims that trapped you in the first place might materialize... but nah... she's just one continual let down after another.
Anyway, there's also this review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTTPlqK8AnY
that big company with the rootkit scandal, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
Maybe if Shahid "content director" doth protested less about people getting refunds because of missing content...
... because if you bought it without going through the reviews first, and that includes not preordering and waiting for the reviews to show up, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
This title had Molyneux or Spore levels of hype, it was 99.5% guaranteed to disappoint.
Right now the only company I'd preorder from is CD Projekt Red. For the others, I'll wait for the reviews thank you very much.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Yeah, 50 pounds for a game, now THAT is theft.
After being told by developers there's something in the center u wanna get too and that "you'll want to have friends with you when you reach the center" (Sean Murray) just to find out there's absolutely nothing being flat out lied to to trick me into buying the game and trying to get me to waste 100+ hours to get to a point they know I'll be disappointed nobody should be considered a "theif" other than Sean Murray who has lied countless times to boost sales
Bottom line... Call me a thief all u want I beat the fuck out the game and got my money back after because Sony knows how bad and false advertised the game is
"If you're getting a refund after playing a game for 50 hours you're a thief."
I have not played the game but its basically marketed as expansive. Could it take 50 hours to be sure that content you were lead to believe is include isn't, that features you were anticipating and paid your money on the expectation you'd get them are missing?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The thieves are, and have been for a long time, the developers who release a game before it's ready.
Especially in this case where they relied heavily on false advertising ( see any of the " gameplay " trailers that got everyone excited ) to sell a product that didn't come anywhere close to what they promised it would be. Blatant misrepresentation of a product in my opinion.
Then again, I don't pre-order* games anymore because I know better. Even those I really want to play. I force myself to wait, and I've never been disappointed.
* Of course I have to spit the usual stuff out in saying ANYONE who pre-orders a game these days knows the damn thing will be fubar for at least 2-3 patch cycles. Yet, it amazes me when they still get angry about it. Some people just don't make any fucking sense. You know the quote: " Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results . . . . . "
Us old farts know that games are never up to their full potential until a year or so after release. At which time all the bugs have been worked out and patched up. All the DLC will be bundled together and the whole thing will actually be a reasonable price in the Game of the Year Edition. Not to mention you'll be playing it on stronger hardware than what it was developed for. Win-Win-Win all the way around.
For those of you who just gotta have it on launch day, enjoy your frustrations. Try to learn from them if you can.
So let me get this straight.
A company makes crappy software. Didn't bother to fix bugs. It crashes. Features that were hyped are not there.
They cheaped out on QA and didn't bother to hire sufficient staff to get the project done.
THEY FAILED TO DELIVER A GOOD PRODUCT.
But, the end user is to blame. We're the thieves.
They didn't do their job, but we are to blame.
They didn't do their job, but they must still better be paid by the end user. Or else they call the end user names.
What a bunch of entitled spoiled brats the company is made up of.
Of corse he would. This was a ps4 (console)exclusive. Do guys really think Sony didnt already know the game was incomplete(benafit of the doubt) but it was hyped big time. Might even sway people to chose a ps4 over others. Gota hit that release date. That's what exclusives do for systems. They are in damage control witch is always multi pronged. Refunds, pointing the finger (at everyone) apologies, and then promises of a fix. That should seperate everyone into different camps and then they will all arguing with each other instead of looking to who is really responsible. Just my 2 cents.
Why do we continue to allow companies to get away with releasing buggy games that take months if not years to fix? We pay for this stuff to be beta testers for them and get nothing out of it but headaches. Then if/when you want to return the game because it is crap they call you a thief? I think we should start calling the companies thieves because they produce this buggy crap and don't pay us for beta testing for them.
Some people like breaking rocks...I don't even usually blast them in Minecraft, I have removed whole mountains, one block at a time.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Since I don't have the points, I'm modding you up in words. Someone clearly made a very poor decision with this game, but as an actual game programmer who has experienced a situation like you described, I can fully agree it wasn't the devs themselves. Incidentally, as a secondary programmer in an independent (but marketed like AAA) game project, I also got the great joys of sending repeated major bug reports. Reports that were never addressed, let alone fixed, until the last 24 hours of development when I was finally handed a full copy of the source code. Not that it mattered, since the project manager added his own features at the end that doubled the final game's bugs.
What happens if you hibernate the machine during that time, does anyone know if steam will count that too? (which would be even worse)
I've been playing this...I went into it unaware of the hype, except for the sheer scale of the Galaxy, so I can't speak to that. I am well aware that developers and games media should be held accountable for promises that prove to be false, however.
For my own purposes, I've been enjoying No Man's Sky. I find it relaxing, and I've yet to experience any of the game breaking bugs that are mentioned. The game hasn't crashed on me, either, and the interface hasn't been hard to learn at all (PC player).
Minus a couple small things (like every planet has lots of upload points instead of having to find an upload point on just some planets) this is _exactly_ the game Hello Games was hawking. I just don't think the audience was paying attention.
Procedurally generated universe: Check. Of _course_ the universe is therefore limited by the number of procedures and skins available in the download, duh...
Rich Story: Check. You of course have to farm the sources (like monoliths) to extract the story.
Completely customizable personal tool, suit, and ship: Check.
Peace versus War is your choice: Check.
Basically the game was marketed as the opposite of Destiny et al. It's survival and exploration instead of "closet full of boomstick!" : Check.
So I went online and found guides on how to quickly max out your ship, suit, and multitool. In other words guides on how to skip the game content. Skipping game content is boring. Check.
I've seen screenshots of people who've advanced further and faster, including people surrounded by sentinel walkers and whatnot.
I got a great sense of accomplishment when I finally figured out how to properly kit out my ship to take on a swarm of fighters (hint, the cannon is dumb fire but the burst beam is on a tracking turret).
And with a low-slot multi-tool, built poorly, I was _everything's_ bitch. But now I've built up a tool that I barely have to aim to take down large creature in moments. (hint, wide-shot bolt thrower and rail-gun mod then build up all the mining beam distance and focus, then never switch to bolt mode, the mining beam gets an invisible halo of destruction).
I did a free-flight (no pathing) and found myself in a world of hurt, and got back on path.
There are six or eight pathing pips and I've only unlocked one (you get two for free) so I'm assming eventually those other pips mean something.
I've had only one group of crashes on my PS/4 (version 1.4 had a tendency to crash if you opened your inventory in space). Other's have had more crashes. I've hat that same experience on other games, and when it's happened I've done a "rebuild database" on the PS/4 and then reinstalled and the problem went away, so that's more of a platform issue than a stability issue IMHO.
So I've seen a lot of bitching by power gamers and power levelers who then discovered (or didn't figure out) that they should be reading the text in a story game, and no, you _won't_ end up in a one-man super fortress because _duh_, that's not this game.
Quite frankly some times it is boring, which is the nature of exploration, but I've managed to sit down and play for eight hours straight... completely engrossed in the game.
So a bunch of whiners want their money back because they didn't pay attention to the advertisements. Ha Ha, sucks to be stupid. But in terms of being a "bad game"... not so much.
What I regret is that this means that the money won't keep floating in so the company probably won't be able to roll out the next chunk.
TL;DR :: Everything promised has, so far, been present in the game. But if you are a stupid munchkin power gamer, who wants every room to have one monster and one treasure, then you will be sadly disappointed. If you were looking for world of warcraft in space, this is not your game, and its developers never pretended it would be. The people who want their money back are essentially guilty of bad decision making and failure to pay attention to plain-spoken promises.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Hello
We have reviewed your refund request.
We are unable to refund this purchase to your Steam Wallet at this time. Your playtime of an included product exceeds 2 hours (our refund policy maximum).
Since the game plays _just_ _fine_ without a connection to "the servers" (at least on PS/4) because it's not WoW in space, the presence of item 2 on this list tells me that you've never actually played this game. "The Servers" in No Man's Sky are just data repositories for the discoveries you upload, and the chance to download other peoples discoveries if you find anybody else's planet. There's no "instancing" because your machine is the instance.
Meanwhile, I have not seen a single broken promise in the game. I don't know what the munchkin power-gamer types _thought_ they were buying... but what I got was pretty much exactly what I was sold: An exploration and survival sandbox game with a rich story that you have to "discover" (by reading the texts you farm out of ancient monoliths and ruins).
Now I know the people who didn't pay attention to what was being sold are quite disappointed because they were thinking they were getting Destiny "life full of boomstick!" redux. But go find me a single video from the makers that tried to sell that at all. They talked about exploring worlds, mining, crafting, and dodging sentinels.
Is the game flawless? Fuck no. It's essentially impossible to find your way back along your flight path to that one planet that had that one resource that you desperately need, and ibid for finding your way back to an on-planet trade hub. So the mapping and waypointing needs some work. And I can see signs of bigger things that got waylaid (like observatories that talk about locations in distant space that, instead, direct you to far-away points on the planet you are on), but I suspect that that became a question of things simplified in play-testing.
So I agree with the parts of your sentiment that "you pay your money and you take your chance", but I disagree with any part of anybody's complaint if they are bitching about "the servers" and the lack of WoW-in-space behaviors.
I've yet to see a single complaint that really boils down to a broken promise. I've seen a lot of complaining about things that were fully disclosed in the advanced coverage where the complainer took great liberties with their imagination, insisting that what they were promised was not delivered. But those undelivered promises seem to be entirely in their heads.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
But in any case, if he is the *former* Sony director why would this guy's quotes be part of the news story?
Because they know what grinds people's gears. It's purely to enflame the consumers who were tricked by Hello Games' marketing BS.
They promised that your discoveries would last forever in the universe: Lie, they have been wiping them.
They said that it was multiplayer, and it would be possible to see other players: Also a lie.
They promised:
1. sand dune planets
2. landing on asteroids
3. meeting other players (Sean Murray literally said yes when asked if you could see other players and many people bought the game because he said that we could find each other)
4. large scale space combat with two fighting factions, moving freighters.
5. A giant sand worm that is nonexistent.
6. Very detailed animal ecology, that showed a large rhino charge in and roar and scare the smaller wildlife off which is also not present.
If you think all of those are just small things, that's fine. But if you advertise those things and show those things, people will expect those things. When you release your game and none of those things are there, then you should expect a pretty huge backlash for lying. If you had issues, couldn't develop those features in time, tell the consumer. Don't mislead them and let them buy it to find out those things are missing and then never say anything to address it and ignore it and hope the problem goes away.
I wonder how long it took from the first post calling players thieves, before the Sony PR squad burst through his front door, held him down, and jammed his foot in his mouth with extreme prejudice. It doesn't matter how much money your companies losing fuckstick the customer is always right and the customer thinks your game is BORING.
You would be called a thief for not giving the game a chance to show itself. Anything below 5 hours would have done that, and been outside the official limit for refunds for Steam, and anything above 10 hours would have accrued this "if you played that long, you got value from it!", and the time between would generate both, depending on what seemed most useful at the time.
No, dipshit. When they want a refund, they cease to be a paying customer. They become a leech and a thief.
50 hours. That works out to be a grand total of TWO DAYS and TWO HOURS. Now I don't know about you, but with physical products there has always been this thing called a 30-day trial; if a product does not work to your standards within 30 days (or one full average *month*), you can return it for a refund, no questions asked. Spread it out to eight hours of gameplay per day, and you're still at just over six days, which is not even a full week. Now, you will probably argue, "well this is a game... with games and movies, you play through or watch it once or twice, then you're done with it." Okay, fine, that's true (well, to an extent...), and generally many games can be beaten in far fewer hours, so in the end maybe this can be considered a "free rental" and worst. But, with all the blatant lies given about the game that were later confirmed after release, honestly, they had it coming to them.
I pre-ordered the game, because I thought it seemed amazing in its size. It is. I've put 6 hours into it, and I decided that I'll wait to play any more until the fucking game is, you know, actually PLAYABLE. I have to run it with all graphical settings down and at a shitty-ass, piss-poor, absolutely fucking RIDICULOUS resolution, and it STILL runs like complete shit. Simply put, the game should NOT have been released in its current state. However, the game *was* actually everything I expected it to be, and the parts they talked out their ass on didn't really interest me, so I originally planned on just keeping it. I have to say, though, that after the initial "wow" factor from how huge the world felt, and then how massive the universe was when I finally left my home planet (5-6 hours), I came to the conclusion that the game is fucking boring as all hell and is showing no signs of improving.
At this point, since Steam is offering refunds, as a pre-orderer whose money was forked over to these sleazy companies many months ago, I am honestly considering taking the opporutunity to get my 60 bucks back. Honestly, this game is an absolute joke at that price. Everything from the lies, to the total lack of optimization, to the obnoxious comments by a shitty company calling their own customers "thieves." I honestly am trying to justify my purchase at this point, and I'm having a difficult time doing so.
In general, when gamers buy a game, and like it, they don't request a refund. Even if it is a short game and they beat it within 8 hours...if that was their expectation and they liked the game, they usually put it aside and forget it. http://www.xiaomiinsider.com/indepth-comparison-review-deepoon-m2-vs-pico-neo-one-buy/
So chin up everyone!