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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."
...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...
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.
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.
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
Sony did not develop No Man's Sky. It's also fairly accurate to say that if someone invests 50 hours into a game and then wants a refund...calling them a thief isn't too far off base. That's the same for any retail business out there. If you bought a game and want a refund after an hour or two of trying to get things to work right, that's perfectly fine. 50 hours? No way.
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.
SOME gamers are assholes who want to get everything for free, but the industry survives because they are not the majority.
This game got overwhelmingly negative reviews and significant numbers of gamers are all demanding a refund. These are the same gamers that usually don't demand a refund. They didn't suddenly become thieves, they felt lied-to and ripped off, and are asking for a refund.
No thievery here at all, neither legal nor social.
Bollocks.
1) If you buy a game you buy it for life (digital does not rot), so if at any time it seems to stop working properly - especially if it never works too well in the first few weeks after release - you should be entitled to a refund.
2) If you're a srs enthusiast, you'll be hammering the servers for a couple of weekends, which could easily add up to 50 hours of "play"time. That doesn't even mean you're getting a decent experience, just that you're putting up with it and waiting for an improvement that doesn't arrive.
3) A thief takes something away from the owner dishonestly without the owner's consent without the intention of returning it. Since any physical copy would have to be returned in order to process a refund, and nothing is being taken from the owner at all if the purchase was digital, there is no theft. Since there is no exchange of ANYTHING without consent when a refund is issued, there is no theft. Since there is nothing dishonest about asking for and getting a refund, there is no theft. A lesson in law or ethics might help u here.
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.
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.
50 hours is a weekend of play. Hoping they'll find the content they were promised. Playing it for a weekened then wanting a refund after lots of play that wasn't as advertised isn't theft. Wearing a dress once to a wedding and requesting a refund is theft. Not because you got use from it, but because it's diminished the value of the object to the owner, once returned.
That it's marginally more entertaining than solitaire doesn't mean it's theft to return a game that isn't as was described when sold. Hell, VW is taking cars back *years* after they were sold and well used, because they weren't as advertised.
Apparently fraud to sell is OK in your world, but returning something when it's discovered isn't.
Learn to love Alaska
50 hours? No way.
You could spend 50 hours in NMS just looking for any of the 100 missing promised features. Sure it's not all a lie? Surely it's there somewhere? Dammit.
The marketing for this product was likely illegal under most nations' consumer protection laws - heck, it was so blatant that even under US law they probably crossed the line. When a product is "not fit for purpose", playtime isn't a relevant factor. If Sony's giving refunds, it's only because their legal team told them to stay clear of fraud. I'll give Steam credit for actually caring about customer trust.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Experience isn't physical, yet it's something you can buy. When you purchase a game, beat it, and then return it after spending dozens or hundreds of hours playing the title, you've enriched yourself with that experience -- an experience you wouldn't have had otherwise.
You may not be returning something physical, but our concept of property isn't solely tied to physicality. That's why intellectual property is a thing. Now, I suppose if you're fundamentally against the existence of IP you can argue that theft doesn't exist -- but I find this a limited definition that doesn't really match reality. If playing a prerecorded song for hundreds of people at an event can count as infringement (and it does) despite the fact that nothing physical has been stolen or removed, then clearly property has more than a physical component.
No, the devs are thieves. They've lied about what they're selling customers then trying to get out of the refunds by victim blaming. If you sell me a shoddy bill of goods, then you're a fraud no matter how hard I try to make your garbage work. And I deserve a refund after seeing that I was lied to.
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
What matters is the intent, mens rea, the will to steal, and the intent to permanently deprave the rightful owner of his use of the item. This is critical. Without, you could become a thief without even wanting to steal anything, by mistake and accident, and I hope we can agree that this is not the intent of the law!
Allow me to show a counter example.
You are in a meeting and you have the habit of putting your cell phone on the table because it's uncomfortable in your pocket. After the meeting, you pick up your cell phone and go back, only to notice in your office that you forgot to take your cell phone along, it's on your office table, and you swiped the cell phone of someone else who just happened to have the same habit and the same phone model. Are you a thief?
According to your original statement a few postings up from this one,
"A thief takes something away from the owner dishonestly without the owner's consent, regardless of whether or not they plan on returning it."
you would be.
Maybe that's why they don't let you word laws.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.