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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."
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.
It doesn't take 50 hours to figure that out in NMS. Granted, it will take longer than the average game to figure out how misrepresented it is, but 50 hours? Not even close. I would have refunded at 5 hours, except I knew it was against Steam's official policy so I didn't bother to try until reports started to come out that Steam might be bending the rules.
Honestly I don't care too much about the money - I never spend money on games that I can't afford to write off. It's the principle of it.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
No Man's Sky is about pushing the boundaries of procedurally generated content and has always been advertised as such. It's basically an experimental indie game whose developers might have unfortunately gotten into bed with the wrong distributor and producers. Those gamers who discover later that space exploration is not their thing and demand a refund are not just whiners but are doing themselves a huge disfavor in the long run. They basically incentivize the AAA gaming industry to continue with their copy & paste schemes and endless sequels, using the same concepts over and over and avoiding to take any risks. That's exactly what many gamers complain about int he first place (and rightly so, for most genres).
That depends. If they find out at the end that a killer bug means you can't complete it, or if you try everything figuring that killer feature they advertised has to be unlocked only to find that it just isn't there., returning after 50 hours may be perfectly fair.
Here's where the 50 hours come from:
Sean Murray, the CEO of Hello Games (tarnished be his name), said that at the "center" there's a huge mystery waiting to be unraveled. It would take players many, many hours of gameplay to get there. Many players actually attempted this, only to find that there is literally nothing in the center. The only thing that's there is some cheesy music and a cutscene of stars and then you're thrown out into another galaxy to start from scratch. This is arguably the biggest Fuck You sent a player's way I've ever seen in a game.
People have't played 50 hours while gaining enjoyment, they played 50 hours hoping to gain enjoyment. It's like going to work for a week + overtime only to be told your salary is actually the chance to come back again Monday and work some more.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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.
Not in English law (and some legal systems derived from it), matey.
TWOCing ("taking without consent") is a separate offence in English law, often used for vehicles which are "borrowed" but then returned, because the Theft Act 1968 requires a lack of intention to return.
There is a blatant ethical and social difference between borrowing something without the owner's permission, and depriving the owner of something permanently without their permission. In the former case, if the item is returned in as-found condition while the owner is absent, it might not affect the owner at all.
If you want to drill down further, theft is from someone that property "belongs to" rather than "owns", which covers both possessors and those with a proprietary interest, who might never be anywhere near the thing concerned. Temporary appropriation (assumption of the rights of the owner) is then blatantly far from permanent deprivation.
Also IAAL etc bla bla.