GOG Offers Dark Matter Refunds

[Andy Chalk]

GOG Offers Dark Matter Refunds

Gamers who purchased Dark Matter from GOG prior to October 21 are being offered their money back, while Steam has stopped selling it outright.

The Dark Matter saga has been an ugly one so far. The crash course catch-up version, for those who haven't been paying attention: Indie developer InterWave Studios ran out of money and so released an abbreviated Dark Matter episodic series [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/128856-Dark-Matter-Developer-Blames-Lack-of-Money-For-Lack-of-Ending]," even though absolutely nothing about an episodic release had been mentioned by anyone prior to that moment.

The bottom line is that the game doesn't end properly and players aren't happy about it, and with InterWave seemingly unable to do much about it beyond clarifying that the end is the end, GOG has decided to handle things itself. "It's come to our attention that the gamecard for Dark Matter was not quite specific enough about the nature of the game and, as a result, it may be that some people bought the title with some misapprehensions as to how the game's story would end," GOG marketing guy Trevor "The Enigmatic T" Longino wrote.

"If you bought Dark Matter before 21 October 2013 at 15:00 GMT (when we updated the description to where we feel it adequately reflects the game) and you feel that the game wasn't as promised to you, please contact Support and they'll be happy to offer you full refund to your card or, if you'd prefer, games of equal or lesser value to the sale price of Dark Matter (which is $13.49)," he continued. "We're sorry if anyone who bought the game isn't happy with the way it was represented, and we hope this makes it right for you guys."

While the Steam [http://www.gog.com/game/dark_matter], meanwhile, has halted sales of the game outright, replacing the purchase link with a message stating, "Currently there is a known issue at the end of the game. The developer is aware of the issue and they are working on a patch as a solution."

Source: GOG [http://www.gog.com/forum/general/release_dark_matter/post121]


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[Erttheking]

So, GOG.com is basically taking bad PR for the company that made Dark Matter and turning it into good PR for them. Well, good on them to be perfectly honest.

 

[slacker09]

It seems like everyday I find new reasons to love GOG.

 

[The Random One]

It's pretty bad when Steam is treating your ending the same way it'd treat a game-halting glitch.

It's also pretty bad when Steam, sellers of The War Z, refuse to sell your game.

 

[CriticalMiss]

Out of interest, who absorbs the cost of the refunds? Are GOG taking a hit to their profits or will they just deduct the amount of the refunds from the amount they send to the developers (I'm assuming that they send a lump sum rather than one for each sale).

Also it seems that Valve are giving people swift refunds for the game too, they just aren't advertising it as well as GOG.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/251410/discussions/0/810938810953587889/

 

[ChristopherT]

aww, I love GOG. Now I just need money to give them, in exchange for digital goods.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

Nice to see that gamers are getting reimbursed for a developer's mistakes, and that the people providing the games aren't, in fact, assholes.

 

[RicoADF]

So, GOG.com is basically taking bad PR for the company that made Dark Matter and turning it into good PR for them. Well, good on them to be perfectly honest.

That my friends is how you run a business, turning a bad situation around to a good one for your business. There are lots of companies/publishers out there that could learn from this and other examples

Captcha: Gold Medal - I couldn't agree more captcha, although your sentience level is starting to concern me..... >.>

 

[sid]

I'm a little out of the loop here, was it THAT big a deal? It's an indie that really, really fucked up at the ending, shit happens. It's just that looking from the outside into this situation, it feels like we're having EA withdrawal syndrome and need to moshpit the closest industry flop we can find.

Captcha was "lo and behold"

 

[Vivi22]

It's also pretty bad when Steam, sellers of The War Z, refuse to sell your game.

Steam doesn't sell The War Z. They did initially until it became clear that the description the company gave of the game was utter bullshit, and it hasn't been back on Steam since as far as I know.

 

[Tanis]

Brohoof to GOG, yet again.

I don't know who's running the whole 'lets not be jerks' part of GOG...
But it's clear they need to be the new CEO of EA, Ubisoft, and Blizzard/Activision

 

[Battenberg]

I'm a little out of the loop here, was it THAT big a deal? It's an indie that really, really fucked up at the ending, shit happens. It's just that looking from the outside into this situation, it feels like we're having EA withdrawal syndrome and need to moshpit the closest industry flop we can find.

Captcha was "lo and behold"

The game was marketed as a complete game and had a price set accordingly which people paid based on the information they were given. They didn't just screw up the ending like, for example, Mass Effect 3, there simply wasn't a proper ending in place to rate as good or bad. It would be like buying a movie only to find that the DVD didn't contain the last couple of scenes and at best it amounts to false advertising.

Not to mention the way they're trying to weasel out of what they did by outright lying/ constantly changing their story as decribed in this article ("we couldn't afford to finish it" became "it IS a finished and complete game" which is now "actually this is just the first episode in a series of games"). I don't really see how the size of the developer makes a difference here, just because they're indie devs doesn't entitle them to any get out of jail free cards (if anything it should make them more cautious i.e. the recent Wild Wire vs. Total Biscuit debacle), if they are the sort of company that is comfortable lying to customers like this then I see no reason to support them and potentially giving them the chance to do it on a larger scale in the future.

 

[CriticalMiss]

I'm a little out of the loop here, was it THAT big a deal? It's an indie that really, really fucked up at the ending, shit happens. It's just that looking from the outside into this situation, it feels like we're having EA withdrawal syndrome and need to moshpit the closest industry flop we can find.

Captcha was "lo and behold"

It's not that they fucked up the ending, it's that the ending didn't exist. Just walk through a door and fade-to-black, here have a wall of text to read. And the developers defended themselves by saying the game was complete and the game description pages were accurate, followed a day later by the publisher saying that it was the start of an episodic game and was always going to be that way despite them not telling any customers that.

I've also looked at the Steam forums for the game and apparently the game, as of release, is nearly identical to the alpha version of the game from four months ago. Including the non-ending.

It's also pretty bad when Steam, sellers of The War Z, refuse to sell your game.

Steam doesn't sell The War Z. They did initially until it became clear that the description the company gave of the game was utter bullshit, and it hasn't been back on Steam since as far as I know.

They changed the name and are now selling it as Infestation: Survivor Stories.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/226700/?snr=1_7_15__13

 

[shintakie10]

It's also pretty bad when Steam, sellers of The War Z, refuse to sell your game.

Steam doesn't sell The War Z. They did initially until it became clear that the description the company gave of the game was utter bullshit, and it hasn't been back on Steam since as far as I know.

They changed the name and are now selling it as Infestation: Survivor Stories.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/226700/?snr=1_7_15__13

Wait wait wait. Steam is still allowin sales of that game after everythin that happened? Shouldn't quality control be all over that?

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

Wow. Bad week for the indie scene. First that Total Biscuit thing with Day One: Garry's Incident and now this issue with Dark Matter.
Shame really. I like it a lot better when independent devs are coming up with interesting games rather than trying to screw over their audience.

 

[shial]

It's also pretty bad when Steam, sellers of The War Z, refuse to sell your game.

Steam doesn't sell The War Z. They did initially until it became clear that the description the company gave of the game was utter bullshit, and it hasn't been back on Steam since as far as I know.

They changed the name and are now selling it as Infestation: Survivor Stories.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/226700/?snr=1_7_15__13

Wait wait wait. Steam is still allowin sales of that game after everythin that happened? Shouldn't quality control be all over that?

Big problem with War Z is it advertised features that did not have. You can still sell a turd, you just can't try to pass it off as a diamond that can cure cancer and gives you +2 to charisma.
They had things listed like skill system, massive multiple maps, private servers, max players per server at 100 (it was 50). Screenshots they used for advertising showed things like cars, locations, animations and graphical effects that didn't exist. Some of them are still up but not sure if Steam polices those since those are usually taken during development and with large world games it could be nearly impossible to find the actual screenshot location.

 

[Doom-Slayer]

[

Wait wait wait. Steam is still allowin sales of that game after everythin that happened? Shouldn't quality control be all over that?

Big problem with War Z is it advertised features that did not have. You can still sell a turd, you just can't try to pass it off as a diamond that can cure cancer and gives you +2 to charisma.
They had things listed like skill system, massive multiple maps, private servers, max players per server at 100 (it was 50). Screenshots they used for advertising showed things like cars, locations, animations and graphical effects that didn't exist. Some of them are still up but not sure if Steam polices those since those are usually taken during development and with large world games it could be nearly impossible to find the actual screenshot location.

This. As long as they dont falsely advertise it, it can be the worst game every made and well obviosuly you are still allowed to sell it. So thats basically what they did, they renamed it, made it actually advertise its features properly, and its still just as shit, but now they are just doing something ethically questionable, rather than straight up illegal.

 

[wulf3n]

Im conflicted.

While I believe the developers in this case acted immoral, and I'm glad they're being called on it, I also look at other games that, to me, feel kind of similar.

Take the Half Life Episodes, I bought the first two on the belief that they would be part of a trilogy. 5 years later I still haven't gotten an ending to that arc. Can I get a refund there?

Then you have Azuras Wrath, which pulled out the "ending" into a DLC, but AFAIK there was no offer for refund or forcing the developers to clarify anything.

 

[Skeleon]

It's also pretty bad when Steam, sellers of The War Z, refuse to sell your game.

Steam doesn't sell The War Z. They did initially until it became clear that the description the company gave of the game was utter bullshit, and it hasn't been back on Steam since as far as I know.

They do, except it's now called Infestation: Survivor Stories. 15 ?, woo.
EDIT: Whoops, too late.