EU Commission proposal wants two-year guarantee for games

This is a get-rich-quick scheme for PS3 owners and their dodgy ports.

What? They would have to actually TEST the software themselves instead of getting us to do it? THE SKY IS FALLING!

man, the EU is f'n stupid

Does this mean better games? I sure hope so.

Quote from article
Business Software Alliance director Francisco Mingorance argues digital content isn't tangible

Quote from 1976 Copyright Act (in the US)
...copyright subsists in original works of authorship upon fixation in any tangible medium of expression...


So in other words this guy doesn't think digital content is copyrighten....what a moron.

As a player and unhired member of the development team for Neverwinter Nights 2, I am very happy to hear this and would like to see this happen in the US.

The line about patches ending the days of game-breaking glitches is absolutely false. After 3 years, Neverwinter Nights 2 was still broken to the point where I had to spend 3 weeks modding in a fix that would allow me to continue to progress through the game, and it was fully patched. The customers shouldn't be required to finish the work they paid the developer to do. It may not fit the legal definition, but I still feel that releasing a game that broken qualifies as theft. Obsidian clearly didn't care about the quality of the game, and because they already have my money, they don't have to care.

Apparently Spider Man 3 was the same way. Millions of people bought it only to find out that it was crap. But, by the time the poor quality of the game was known, it was too late, the game had made a profit. For one-shot games, all you need to make money is a good marketing department. In examples like these, a bad game is pretty similar to a scam, since scams too are little more than good marketing.

The idea that you will avoid that developer in the future is pretty weak as well, since those of us who pay attention to the developers of games are a pretty small minority.

I am happy to see that any accountability at all is finally being placed on the game industry for the quality of their products, and I hope this becomes the norm for all software, not just games. If we had demanded quality in the first place instead of accepting mediocrity, there would have been fewer successful companies, but their products would have been worth the price.

I'm all for the idea that if you produce crap, you and the rest of your company are punished through bankruptcy. Better developers are going through the same these days anyway.

i dont speak corporate/legalize, is this basically a two year return policy if your game has bugs?

I wonder how many people lost their saves with the Far Cry 2 game-destroying bugs, thousands probably.
The recent patch won't even recover their saves. Those people should get their money back for sure.

"Joystiq's Law of the Game writer (and radical lawyer) Mark Methenitis threw in his two cents, explaining that patches and updates have ended the age of game-ruining glitches, and that a potentially exploitable two-year guarantee on games is unnecessary. He adds, "if you're unsatisfied with an ongoing pattern of bugs you encounter from a developer's product, you should probably consider whether you want to continue purchasing that developer's products, thereby letting the market correct the problem.""

I think this would suffer a similar fate to the 'boycott' of Spore. In the end it was only a couple of thousand negative amazon reviews compared to the 2 million or so that the game sold. Gamers in the know probably already boycott products from bad developers by simply having the knowledge that the games are badly made and awful.

But rallying the mainstream around to that idea is simply going to be impossible.

I think people should be able to return a product they buy if it's defective, but I hesitate to make a law on the subject, especially one so broad as this.

First, I think that's a ridiculous amount of time they're providing. The games industry, like any other entertainment media, is constantly updating, releasing new titles, etc. If there'e a game-destroying glitch in your game, chances are it won't take you two years to figure out it's there, and if it does, you probably wouldn't normally care enough to do anything about it, being that the game's already two years old. But now, once you realize there's a glitch in your two-year-old game you're going to go turn it in to the store, not because you think you actually deserve your money back after two years' worth of playtime, but because you think it'll be a quick way to make some money and go buy a new game (As a side note, this would likely have a crippling effect on the buisiness made off store tade-ins).

Secondly, what is included in the terms of this "guarantee"? What exactly does it say is an acceptable reason to return a game? Does it have to be "defective" or have a "glitch"? If so, how does this law define those words? If it's something like "does not operate as it should", then that law needs some serious rewriting to even apply to toasters, let alone games.

And if you still want this law passed, fine, pass it, but make sure it's accountable. As it looks now--- and granted I haven't read the whole thing--- but from the way the article describes things, it seems like, as has been said above, any random person could just say there's a bug in the game that doesn't actually exist, and use that as grounds to return a game after they've finished it. If this law is implemented for games, something has to be added to require that the customer prove there is in fact a problem, before the game can be returned, or something toa similar effect.

Wouldn't a better law be to force developers to 6 months additional testing of their video games? They would have to pass certain checks that proves they did their testing and not that the game is bug free. That would be far better.

Government,

Please let businesses run themselves and allow the market determine success.

Thanks.

USA! USA! USA!

I always suspected but rarely realized the true method by which 99% of consumers that purchase video games (hence referred 'gamers') are ripped off (to exclude more colorful and meaningful terms).

I participated in the 'Closed Beta Test' of the game we all know as 'FarCry 1', the first FarCry released for the PC. I do still have the original game content on my computer and saw no reason to delete what I figured was a piece of history (as obsolete as it is, find it on any filesharing site, or betas for many games at that). But its a highly limited part of the game. It was a test of the multiplayer component of the game that required an internet connection to specific beta servers (which are long since offline of course) and the input of a special 'CD KEY' which would be authenticated to provide access.

Ok, so no invasive spyware (to my knowledge) but they did run 'diagnostics' on their end to monitor memory usage and other stuff, that's fine.

I downloaded 'Beta 1' and proceeded to play. Horribly laggy...players moved so sluggishly that it felt like your legs were made from molassas (really, take the current speed in the 'final' fully patched product and cut it to 1/8th, that's how it used to be). The guns were horribly inaccurate (a headshot on a target standing still from a direct Line of Sight hit to the head with a scope would either always miss or randomly hit) from our perspective as gamers, and numerous other issues.

After 2 months, they released 'Beta 2' and I was unable to actually test this out since they only tested it for ONE WEEK. After that they threw in a hotfix or two and released the 'gold' version to manufacturing. I played it on a friend's computer and I noticed that most of the glaring bugs/flaws were still in place.

The fact is that NOTHING was fixed after 'Beta 2'. The game was a BETA game, released in an unfinished and buggy state for 'mass beta testing' as has become the norm of the gaming industry. I'm sure you all can look up news on the flaws prior to the subsequent 'patches' released.

A movie doesn't need a 'patch' or 'update'. If you buy a DVD and pop it into a DVD player, then it will work 99.99999999% of the time, and it will work flawlessly. Can you say the same about any software?

Very few software is released with little to no bugs, but denying consumers the right to return the software they've purchased has merely created laziness and ripped people off for too long.

If I buy a 'tangible' product such as a pair of computer speakers, I may use them, abuse them, even break them, and still return them to the local Target or 'Hellmart' for a full refund of the purchase price within 90 days, no questions asked. If they ask for a reason I just make up something about it being defective and I get my full money back.
Do people abuse that system? Some do..yes they do. They pay with cash and never keep anything they buy, repurchasing it every 3 months.

Are retail chains or any other stores going out of business since implementing such broad and consumer-friendly refund policies? Last I checked, both Target and 'Hellmart' are alive and kicking. They handle business as they should.

I fully support a full 30 day return policy on all digital media, be it in digital form itself via downloads or imprinted on physical media such as DVDs. Will it happen? Hardly...movies have made millions ripping people off and they can never get their time or money back after a bad movie. But a movie is a one-time experience (more often then not) and allowing refunds for bad movies would quite possibly harm the established MPAA-run industry and they MUST have their lush lifestyles, right?

But software and games are used on a regular basis and usually for more then a few hours, so if they can be copyrighted then they should be able to be returned.