HardOCP News
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How Do Game Publishers Continue To Get Away With Mistreating Customers?
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Most of what game publishers do with their games is in some way related to copyright, DRM, copy-protection, and trying to prevent piracy. And that has huge negative effects on the legitimate consumers who just want to play.
Actually, Steam for me has been massively positive.
Actually, Steam for me has been massively positive.
Darunion
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Agreed. How they do it is what is important. Steam is a massive form of DRM but it provides utility and ease of use to the end user so it starts to weigh in as a benefit instead of a hindrance. This is what I feel many companies don't do a decent job at.
The writer mentioned that and mentioned steam support sucks.
Personally I have never had to contact their support ever, but I have rarely had to deal with Comcast's either and their's sucks when I do.
Yeah its sad that when 75% of their product is sold through an almost unpirateable system like steam you would think they would be less worried. But just as the article said all customers are the enemy and they pretty much suck.
Steam proved you over a good service (game management and deploy) at decent prices (reduced after a while or sales) and people will be happy to buy.
I used to pirate games all the time, now with steam I don't bother. Part of that is that I make more money and have less times for PC games but another part is the service as well.
Master_shake_
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have to agree with this.
the battlefield series is an excellent example.
horrible game breaking bugs at first and then eventually they all get fixed. but people still but it in droves.
ea knows you are going to buy it and they don't care as long as they ship something even if its broken.
DRM aside, game companies have generally had horrible CS for at least 25 years. Origin was notorious for releasing buggy games and it peaked with Pacific Strike (Chris Roberts game) which was so hopelessly bugged, Origin eventually pulled the game and it's never been seen again, AFAIK. It also never gave refunds to all the people who bought an unplayable game.
Hence why EA exists. Look at all of the whining I see in the forums and yet many of them keep buying it. I gave up EA and continue to boycott them as money is the limiting resource and there are other more reputable game developers competing for these dollars.
D
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I've heard of people with bad experiences with Steam Support. I've only contacted them twice ever, but was responded to fairly quickly, and they resolved whatever it was for me without issue. You're dealing with people on the other end of whatever the support medium is. It's the same with any human interaction. You go in pleasant, and only escalate or change your tone when absolutely necessary, and 95% of the time things will turn out well. The other 5%? Well, people have bad days, some people are just stupid or dickish in the first place. That's when you try to get someone else to help you.
kbrickley
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This ... anyone who thinks games have just become buggy or that companies have just recently had lousy CS hasn't been playing games very long ... companies traditionally view any form of CS as necessary non-value added (in LEAN speak) ...
how necessary it is varies on the audience they are courting ... in Enterprise they are looking to establish long term direct relations with their customers so they generally have very strong CS (and the ones that don't aren't able to stay in business indefinitely) ... for consumer, as they noted, there can be many layers between them and the final purchaser (including parents or relatives who buy games as gifts) ... the cost of offering world class CS is usually offset by the limited benefit of doing so (the battles between Doom and Half Life and Crysis are fought on the front of graphics or gameplay and not on CS usually)
As to their notes on consumers not standing up to the companies, we tend to like games and it is sometimes hard to boycott something we love over a moral principle that most of us have never run into ... also, consumers can be just as brutal as shareholders over companies that slip release dates
CreepyUncleGoogle
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Q: How Do Game Publishers Continue To Get Away With Mistreating Customers?
A: Because sales.
A: Because sales.
DarkStar_WNY
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Exactly, we gamers are the cause of everything we hate about the current state of the industry.
Hate buggy releases? Stop pre-ordering and/or buying the games before you find out they are crap and eventually things will improve. Hate games getting chopped up and sold to you piecemeal as dlc? Stop buying those titles and the companies will learn.
But if we are going to constantly pre-order games, buy season passes and other dlc before the main game even releases, spend extra money on micro, and even macro, transactions and now even crowdfund to and even pay to alpha/beta test the games things are only going to get worse.
Ur_Mom
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If everyone on the forums (reddit, HardForum, NeoGaf or the many others) were to boycott EA games, they'd still sell a shit ton. Game enthusiasts like us are a minority. The common person that buys these games aren't the type to go on the forums or dig through reddit for gaming complaints. They use Mom's money, or are a college student just looking to play a game, or just some regular Joe coming home after work firing up a game.
It's like asking why our govt gets away with breaking laws and ignoring privacy, its because most people are stupid and have no clue, if they have some idea they don't care as long as they get some benefits, and are too selfish to care. Its why idiots get elected and why people continue to pay for and support crappy products.
Never underesitmate the stupidity and apathy of the masses.
Never underesitmate the stupidity and apathy of the masses.
Ur_Mom
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I try and remember that with some things, I am one of those stupid people with no clue. I try and stay knowledgeable about most things that I'm interested in, but there are just some things that I don't really care. So, I'm ignorant in those areas. They could be dosing me with cyanide and I wouldn't have a clue, yet there is some forum somewhere bitching and complaining and talking about the stupid sheep just going along with it. I'm that sheep.
You're also not a self absorbed jerk basically calling everyone else but yourself an idiot. Aka, one of those Internet genius's who thinks everyone should know what's important to what they care about.
Yakk
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Voting your wallets is they only thing you can do. Ubisoft has been the absolute worst lately, some will hate on EA...etc...
UPlay, origin...etc... All the same crap.
UPlay, origin...etc... All the same crap.
kbrickley
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Really ... THAT'S the analogy you want to make for this
First, it is quite likely that the vast majority of gamers have not experienced sufficient issues with more than a handful of companies (some of which are already defunct)
Second, games are about fun and not critical to your existence (like many of the government/industry services that have been compromised)
Third, people are more likely to care about insignificant things like gaming than they are about real things like the government so we come back to point 1
I might buy into government malfeasance being part of some nefarious cabal long before I buy into that argument about the game publishers (who are sometimes criticized for giving us exactly what we asked for)
No it won't. The people that "vote with their wallet" or actually boycott those things are in a small minority. What they do has a negligible impact. All companies have to do is not COMPLETELY screw people the initial timeframe and they're gold. You're powerless to affect it. I mean hell, look at the trend of online-only servers that companies will just shut off after a few years so you can never play your game again. We're going to have more and more games that are never playable again.
I don't even think Enterprise vendors are always great. My experience with enterprise billing software is the CS is pretty awful, and you pay a lot for annual maintenance contracts...and yet it's still not great. Getting them to fix something is like having your teeth pulled without a pain blocker.
We had one company (who we didn't think was great) so we switched to another company (a much bigger company) and it was even worse. We ended up going back to vendor 1...and it's just more pain.
I highly recommend watching Suite Mates on Youtube. It absolutely nails enterprise software and with Kevin Pollack and Ray Wise in the lead, you know it's gonna be decent....some eps are better than others (they're not all gold)
This. i'm always shocked that people preorder games. The only exception to this is those playing MMOs. For those, you probably know you're getting an expansion, so if you can get some extras for preordering, it may be worth it. That said, when I played EQ, I generally waited until SOE released an expansion with all the other expansions...I wasn't a power player, so I could wait 6 months or a year for the next expansion.
DarkStar_WNY
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Yes, people who actually vote with their wallets are small in number, which is exactly why companies continue to screw over their customers.
Sure, you alone not buying it wont have any effect, but bending it over and taking the abuse just incites more of the same. Until gamers, as a whole, stop financially supporting their own abuse it will not only continue but it will get worse.
Yeah, it's amazing so many people don't think throwing money at the companies who are doing all these shady practices doesn't encourage more of it.
kbrickley
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The one problem with this argument is that it presupposes that all gamers are unhappy with the state of games ... which they are not (although some folks seem willing to accuse the majority of gamers of some form of mass insanity or incompetence because they aren't unhappy)
There are certainly abuses where companies willfully take advantage of their consumers (cough cough Facebook game/FTP games cough cough) and there are companies that seem incapable of generating quality software ... however, there are also companies that are trying to offer a reasonable product to the market
Bethesda, for example, gets a lot of abuse for their quality control and the length of time they support their products but contrary to some folks opinions I think they do try and they generally produce very entertaining products across a range of genres ... Fallout 3 was notoriously buggy at launch and retained bugs after the company stopped patching the software but the game was fun (fun enough that thousands of modders continued to support it and provide patches to address the issues) ...
Bethesda also seems to have a good grasp of how to implement DLC ... their additions are all optional (although they do add nice game play additions sometimes) and they are usually independent of each other (allowing one to pick and choose the DLC, if any, that interests them)
I still see these generic complaints about gaming companies as meaningless (since it isn't practical to boycott all of them and not all are at the same level of evil) ... calls to avoid a specific company for a specific reason are more meaningful (although I and others may not agree with the Call to Arms or the issue)
DarkStar_WNY
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The one problem with this argument is that it presupposes that all gamers are unhappy with the state of games ... which they are not (although some folks seem willing to accuse the majority of gamers of some form of mass insanity or incompetence because they aren't unhappy)
There are certainly abuses where companies willfully take advantage of their consumers (cough cough Facebook game/FTP games cough cough) and there are companies that seem incapable of generating quality software ... however, there are also companies that are trying to offer a reasonable product to the market
Bethesda, for example, gets a lot of abuse for their quality control and the length of time they support their products but contrary to some folks opinions I think they do try and they generally produce very entertaining products across a range of genres ... Fallout 3 was notoriously buggy at launch and retained bugs after the company stopped patching the software but the game was fun (fun enough that thousands of modders continued to support it and provide patches to address the issues) ...
Bethesda also seems to have a good grasp of how to implement DLC ... their additions are all optional (although they do add nice game play additions sometimes) and they are usually independent of each other (allowing one to pick and choose the DLC, if any, that interests them)
I still see these generic complaints about gaming companies as meaningless (since it isn't practical to boycott all of them and not all are at the same level of evil) ... calls to avoid a specific company for a specific reason are more meaningful (although I and others may not agree with the Call to Arms or the issue)
Who says you have to stop buying for any or all companies? The point is not to reward them with money until they put forth a quality product?
Are you saying that people throwing money at say EA for dlc, for say BF4, before the game was even in a playable state isn't likely to result in EA caring more about getting more dlc to market then actually patching their games?
And yes there are many good developers out there, and I don't expect software as complex as current games to be perfect on every conceivable system configuring, but how often has EA, Ubisoft and others had public betas where the program was shown to be far from ready for prime time and yet they release the crapware virtually unchanged with the promise that it will be working properly eventually?
I'm a huge fan of CD Project Red, and others like them to which it's more important that a game run properly then putting it out on a specific date no matter how crappy it is. Those are the companies we need to support.
Sorry but rolling over and accepting companies screwing people over is the fastest way to get more of the same, be it from a company publishing games are a company making cars, beer, tvs or any other product or service.
Care to name anyone who is happy with 5+ collectors editions for a single game, or having chunks the core of games cut out and sold back to them for extra money? I know tons of people that tolerate it, but I don't think I've ever heard or read anyone say they are happy about it.
Since you mentioned modders, consider how often a modder, within a day or two, is able to correct major known issues with a game. Now if an individual can do this on a card table in their bedroom in a few hours for free, why exactly would you give a company making millions off the game a pass for not bothering to correct it before launch?
Yes and no. I think most of the things some people complain about are annoyances. I doubt anyone LIKES having DLC interrupt your game, where you can't do an in-game sidequest unless you fork up an extra $10. It rips you out of the immersion. Most people probably just find it slightly annoying and don't think about it very much. It's like spam mail. Nobody LIKES getting spam, but 1 message doesn't kill you. The spammers don't care about the 1000 people slightly annoyed by it, they care about that 1 person who will pay them some money. Similar principle at work.The one problem with this argument is that it presupposes that all gamers are unhappy with the state of games ... which they are not (although some folks seem willing to accuse the majority of gamers of some form of mass insanity or incompetence because they aren't unhappy)
There are certainly abuses where companies willfully take advantage of their consumers (cough cough Facebook game/FTP games cough cough) and there are companies that seem incapable of generating quality software ... however, there are also companies that are trying to offer a reasonable product to the market
Bethesda, for example, gets a lot of abuse for their quality control and the length of time they support their products but contrary to some folks opinions I think they do try and they generally produce very entertaining products across a range of genres ... Fallout 3 was notoriously buggy at launch and retained bugs after the company stopped patching the software but the game was fun (fun enough that thousands of modders continued to support it and provide patches to address the issues) ...
Bethesda also seems to have a good grasp of how to implement DLC ... their additions are all optional (although they do add nice game play additions sometimes) and they are usually independent of each other (allowing one to pick and choose the DLC, if any, that interests them)
I still see these generic complaints about gaming companies as meaningless (since it isn't practical to boycott all of them and not all are at the same level of evil) ... calls to avoid a specific company for a specific reason are more meaningful (although I and others may not agree with the Call to Arms or the issue)
The one area where I think this argument falls apart is when game companies cut off servers to games requiring online authentication. No gamer wants this, even though a lot of them may not realize it. Many gamers simply don't see the problem since they can play they game on launch, the end. If they ever find a few years down the line however, that they want to go back and enjoy it, or play a game that they missed the first time, and now they can't, because the game is dead forever, THEN they'll care, but by then, the company already has their money, so it doesn't matter.
Bethesda gets a lot of abuse because they have a history of releasing games that have not finished the QA process. For example I finally got around to installing Skyrim recently (at 10 bucks it was worth it at that price) and they totally didn't disappoint. The interface in that game is absolutely wretched... hell it's beyond horrible. It's the worst I've seen in quite a while and that's after thing released in 2011.
Just saw a demo of Madden 16, looks like Madden 15... Doesn't offer what players want just what they can make money off of.
A big contributing factor to the pre-order phenomenon is the disapearance of real game journalism and magazine. Youtube reviews and internet gaming websites who makes their money from advertisement instead of their readership just don't cut it.
DarkStar_WNY
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Not sure if you realize it but print magazines make their money off ads as well, which is why it used to be, I can't say it still is since I haven't bought a magazine in ages, that subscription often cost less then a 2-3 issues separately since their ad revenue is based largely on the number of subscribers, with issues sold in stores counting much less since they aren't guarantied.
Also gaming mags could be just as corrupt and biased as Youtubers, I mean once you add money to any situation a certain percentage of people will succumb to the temptation, and that percentage wont be any higher on decent YT channels then magazines, it's just that there are so many more YTer's the magazines.