Digital Delivery Allows Companies To Ship Broken Products Without Refunds Or Returns

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Alright, I'm posting a link to this story because I know you guys are going to have something to say about this. Is this guy onto something or just on something? :D

Not so long ago, if you bought a book with missing pages — or a DVD that skipped, or a CD or video game that wouldn’t play — you took it back to the store and got an exchange or a refund because obviously the manufacturer did not intend to provide you with an incomplete or broken product. The relatively new era of digital media delivery has improved upon this by allowing content providers to patch files and fix errors, but it’s also allowing companies to knowingly release inferior and/or broken products, often without giving the consumer any way to seek redress.
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Yea it also saves these companies quite a bit of money not having to ever have physical copies of their products.

I dunno I don't like paying for digital....I'd rather get a physical copy.
 
People couldn't play Diablo 3 for ages and were refused refunds, same with Sim Cities.
 
Is this old news or new news? Cause companies have been doing this for a long time. The oldest I can think of is the Promise ata 66 controllers that were thrown into motherboards. Those things had huge problems and incompatibilities that driver update after another wouldn't fully fix the product.

Anyone remember the VIA KT266a days? That was in damn near every motherboard, but people would experience sound skipping and huge slow downs. So there were always someone hunting down driver updates to fix this issue.

It's nothing new.

kt266_chipsets.jpg
 
“We should not be expected to buy broken software and wait for weeks to see if the developer can fix it,” writes the Redditor. “At some point you have to wonder when a publisher is being fraudulent by releasing games they know do not properly work.”

The post calls for people to push for state-level consumer protection laws specifically for digital media products, or at least to extend the current protections for physical goods to the digital world.

“There is no difference between a game sold on a disc and one sold through an online store, except the delivery method,” reads the post.
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Absolute agreement. I'd not push for further laws but maybe apply protections for physical to digital. I have to admit, I've been very gun shy about buying new games because of these issues. I haven't bought BF4 yet. Never did buy Diablo 3 or Sim City mostly because of all the horror stories. Without any kind of a hope for refund, I just don't want to risk it.
 
I don't really blame EA for this, because it really is a industry wide pandemic, and not just EA. Unfortunately, we as users are partly to blame also, because we keep shelling out money time and time again for faulty products, and are constantly surprised as the quality keeps dropping every year.

Software isn't like any physical medium that people are use too. The complexity increases faster than the learning curve. Even if technology in a car increases over time, the internals are designed by people who have the time to complete it. To be similar to the software industry, it would be like saying that our shareholders demand that all upcoming cars sold after 3 months today need to be able to get 400 mpg.

What I do find amusing though is the response of console gamers towards console games in respect to PC games. Go back to any thread 15 years ago about console vs pc games, and how console games just work, and how they don't need patches, etc.
 
Well, to point out the elephant in the room, this has been a factor with every version of Windows that MS has produced.
 
Umm Origin allows refunds on some games.
Battlefield 4 was part of the "GGG" so you could play it for 23 hours and then request a refund if you did not like it
 
gathagan said:
Well, to point out the elephant in the room, this has been a factor with every version of Windows that MS has produced.
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Apple
Sun
EA
Oracle
Activision
Sony
Dell
Lenovo
IBM
Adobe
ID

Shall I go on? They all do it because we all buy it anyways.
 
schizrade said:
Shall I go on? They all do it because we all buy it anyways.
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Pretty much every small enterprise software firm will make a product "as is" and sell a support contract (read: bugfix team) then sell 1-2 years worth of customer specific bug fixes as a group release for the same initial fee. Once they got a company locked down to their incredibly-niche-and-incredibly-hard-to-migrate-from system, they have you by the balls.
 
All this did was cause a huge increase in chargebacks. Either way, you and your lender get their money back.
 
shad0w4life said:
Umm Origin allows refunds on some games.
Battlefield 4 was part of the "GGG" so you could play it for 23 hours and then request a refund if you did not like it
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This is a new policy.

Initially it was no returns, no exceptions.

I think SimCity had something to do with the new policy.
 
WinSomeLoseNone said:
This is a new policy.

Initially it was no returns, no exceptions.

I think SimCity had something to do with the new policy.
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Yup, EA gave away a free game for their screw up. I still dont play SimCity because how bad it still is.
 
Ashbringer said:
Is this old news or new news? Cause companies have been doing this for a long time. The oldest I can think of is the Promise ata 66 controllers that were thrown into motherboards. Those things had huge problems and incompatibilities that driver update after another wouldn't fully fix the product.

Anyone remember the VIA KT266a days? That was in damn near every motherboard, but people would experience sound skipping and huge slow downs. So there were always someone hunting down driver updates to fix this issue.

It's nothing new.

kt266_chipsets.jpg
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Those are physical products with digital defects.
 
I would have to say it was far worse with physical media. You could NEVER take an opened game back. Not ever.

You have a far better chance of getting a digital distro refund or exchange or credit for another game or SOMETHING.

But it all sucks. Why do you think PC gamers have become so leery of paying without proof the game doesn't suck first?

Frankly, I don't consider the system broken at all. If you are going to have a big open development marketplace you are going to get what we have, tons of games... some suck... some rock.

What's wrong with that?
 
I think that subscriptions are one of those things that can help this cause. If you buy a product a company is not forced to fix it. If you have a subscription and you cancel the subscription they are going to know right away.

Sometimes what people call broken is not that unusual to accept in life, it's just not working very well. Lots of people buy cars, homes, apartments, and so on and later find out that some part is messed up or broken and they don't go back and say they want a refund. But the core function of the product does its main job, IE in a car getting you from point A to point B, its just not as enjoyable as you thought it would be.
 
Advil said:
I would have to say it was far worse with physical media. You could NEVER take an opened game back. Not ever.<snip>
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That wasn't common practice until cd burners and disk emulators became readily available and I've even returned games after that, I just had to convince the managers that the game was broken to the point of being unplayable. I admit that I haven't tried in the last few years but that's just because I've managed to avoid getting any broken games by doing some research before buying anything.
 
Ebernanut said:
That wasn't common practice until cd burners and disk emulators became readily available and I've even returned games after that, I just had to convince the managers that the game was broken to the point of being unplayable. I admit that I haven't tried in the last few years but that's just because I've managed to avoid getting any broken games by doing some research before buying anything.
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Or you mean till walmart employees learned about CD keys? lol
 
Doesn't Steam have a program where you can pay for a halfassed broken product and let the producer fix the game at his/her whim? Oh wait they call it an "early beta" so it's not really broken it's supposed to be garbage :D

People willingly pay money for it too.
 
BryanSTG said:
Those are physical products with digital defects.
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But solved with patched drivers. Games are shipped broken with patches released later. Same method, new medium.

The reason this shit even happens is because of internet. With a connection, developers know they can always release a patch.
 
Ashbringer said:
Is this old news or new news? Cause companies have been doing this for a long time. The oldest I can think of is the Promise ata 66 controllers that were thrown into motherboards. Those things had huge problems and incompatibilities that driver update after another wouldn't fully fix the product.

Anyone remember the VIA KT266a days? That was in damn near every motherboard, but people would experience sound skipping and huge slow downs. So there were always someone hunting down driver updates to fix this issue.

It's nothing new.

kt266_chipsets.jpg
Click to expand...
I never had a problem with Promise ATA66.
You go it wrong it the VIA Junk South Bridge is where that problem was at more so with 686b I have seem everything from Sound to Video Capture Card have problem.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Doesn't Steam have a program where you can pay for a halfassed broken product and let the producer fix the game at his/her whim? Oh wait they call it an "early beta" so it's not really broken it's supposed to be garbage :D

People willingly pay money for it too.
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Yes.
The difference is you KNOW you're paying for an Alpha expecting improvements down the road where you buy a PC game from EA its supposed to be finished, but never is, and you wind up spending the next 10 years hopeful that it'll eventually become playable, but it never does....
 
Ideally, no one should ever pre-order a game until these dev starts taking the quality of their product seriously. If they want the consumer to spend on pre-order or day-1, they have to earn it by having a good record of releasing stable games. If they fail, then no one should trust them.

Unfortunately that will never happen. We just keep pre-ordering digital copies of games which are unlimited anyway, even if the company messed up previous titles.
 
I've been singing this tune for years now. The quality of software from developers (this goes for games as well as other applications) will just keep dropping untill they can aactually be held accountable for their actions. They can do what they please in the current climate. Its their golden ticket to much cash.

We need REAL warranty's on software. Whether they are delivered on a disc or via download. If there was at least some kind of grace period whereby within the first 3 months... if you're not happy with the software and find bugs that render it annoying/none functional/infuriatingly frustrating to use/hugely counterproductive, then you get to return it at full refund. These developers want to always tell us that pirating 0's and 1's is a real crime... then its high time they be accountable for giving us something OTHER then what was signed for.
 
Hornet said:
Ideally, no one should ever pre-order a game until these dev starts taking the quality of their product seriously. If they want the consumer to spend on pre-order or day-1, they have to earn it by having a good record of releasing stable games. If they fail, then no one should trust them.

Unfortunately that will never happen. We just keep pre-ordering digital copies of games which are unlimited anyway, even if the company messed up previous titles.
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No one should ever pre order a game period, ever. Simply no reason for it. Have the patience to wait for reviews. Hell its not like you need to be that patient anyway. Most reviews are done before release on an NDA product. Meaning the review will release the day of the game release. Then you have 24-48 hours to watch the news sites and forums to see what kind of bugs crop up. Then you buy a digital download in infinite supply. All told you are talking a max of 5 days waiting if you are really impatient.

I am no hardline extremist free market capatilist but video games are one of those things you just have no need for government intervention in. You people constantly bitch about the game producers, but ultimately the consumers and their I want it now attitude is what drives these trends. This is not gas, or food where you have few reasonable options to avoid it. This is a freaking video game.
 
ANY examples of denial of customer service involving refunds on funds due to lack of items or services are anecdotal at best and freakishly rare at worst. There is no such thing as a LEGITIMATE company basically telling its customers to essentially "go fuck yourself"

Note I said LEGITIMATE.. I'm sure there have been some EXTREMELY conditional situations that were not handled in the way the purchaser may have wanted.. but I also know the kind of jack-asses that frequent these boards, and lord knows they don't make being Customer Service easy
 
I think the articles point of additional protection from deliberately releasing faulty product is valid. In simplest of terms, it is deceptive practice, releasing a known flawed product. No different than buying a used car that wont pass an emissions//safety check.

In reality, how do you draw a legal line delineating 'known defective' and the scale of impact? A faulty image = still usable game even if the gun barrel has a kink but shoots straight. A specific scene/scenario that freezes and prevents you from continuing = unacceptable.

Being in the software industry, this spooks me as to how intense the QA process would have to be to avoid this sort of liability.
 
The big difference here is that often, if one copy is broken, they're ALL broken. If you got a book with some pages missing or (topicaly) a bricked PS4 usualy it was just the one you had, and you could exchange it at the store for a functional copy. If a game is unplayable either because it needs a patch or the servers are down, exchange isn't an option, only return.

rudy said:
No one should ever pre order a game period, ever. Simply no reason for it.
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Pre-ordering is a gamble no doubt, but I wouldn't say there is no reason for it, but only if pre-ordering offers something that buying afterward doesn't such as a large discount.

That said the only game I've ever pre-ordered was Saints Row 4, and that was basicaly a full game's worth of new content on top of the existing engine, so I was reasonably confident they wouldn't be able to fuck it up too badly.
 
Raxiel said:
The big difference here is that often, if one copy is broken, they're ALL broken. If you got a book with some pages missing or (topicaly) a bricked PS4 usualy it was just the one you had, and you could exchange it at the store for a functional copy. If a game is unplayable either because it needs a patch or the servers are down, exchange isn't an option, only return.



Pre-ordering is a gamble no doubt, but I wouldn't say there is no reason for it, but only if pre-ordering offers something that buying afterward doesn't such as a large discount.

That said the only game I've ever pre-ordered was Saints Row 4, and that was basicaly a full game's worth of new content on top of the existing engine, so I was reasonably confident they wouldn't be able to fuck it up too badly.
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I pre-ordered Fallout 3 at Best Buy, but that was just to get the Nuka Cola bottle opener, which I still use. There was a point to pre-orders in the PS1 days, when it might take a week or two to find a store that had a popular game in stock. I can't remember any game shortages in the last 10 years. Consoles are hard to come by on launch day, but only idiots buy consoles at launch. They ALWAYS have problems which are corrected a few months later in a hardware revision.

Now, paying for alphas can be fun. Kerbal Space Program, for example, has gotten better and better, and bugs have just made the game more humorous. There is a certain charm to playing early, glitchy games. But at the same time, of all of the early alphas I've purchased (Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program, Rust, and 7 Days to Die), only Minecraft is close to being "finished". As much as I like the model, it tends to create long, drawn-out development phases.
 
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