Have you ever bought a game on PC and not been able to play it?

[Phantom Kat]

Once. When I got Oblivion, it turned out the computer I was using at the time didn't have the shaders required to run it. I managed to get around it by using a mod called Oldblivion though.

Other than that, never had a game I couldn't play.

 

[Sanunes]

I had issues with Oblivion when it was first released for I just met minimum requirements and after playing the game for several hours anytime I loaded a save the game would crash. It turns out that even though I met minimum requirements for the game the saves had ballooned to the point I would use up all my physical memory and crash the game. Now that I have a newer computer it works fine, but I can't be bothered to play it.

Currently I am having issues with Dragon Age: Origins, but that is because of the horrible DLC management system and using a new OS with it, most of the time the game works, but there are times I just want to throw my computer at the person that designed the system.

 

[nevarran]

No. If you look for it, there is always a solution.
I remember The Witcher 2, for example, after one of the patches/updates was crashing on my machine, the conflict was with my version of Kaspersky. There was also some problem with Fallout 3 and multi-core processors on Win 7, there is fix for this as well.

 

[The Lunatic]

Only when I was a lot younger and less aware of my computer's hardware.

But, I learnt pretty quickly after trying to play Black and White 2. Only to discover my Geforce MX440 lacked any form of pixel shader, and I don't think I made the mistake ever again.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I have a copy of the Lucasarts adventure 'The Dig' around somewhere.

Didn't work on my last PC, don't know why I haven't tried it again. Compatibility issues ah guess.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

300ish games and maybe 3 times I know of where that happened.

Iron Grip:Warlords was simply a weird little indie game that was janky and didn't work right for me.

RAGE was too much for my old PC to handle. Works fine on my current PC.

I just forgot the 3rd one...

Oh. Battlefield 2142. Because EA is a piece of shit and totally ruined my ability to run/play one of the coolest FPSs ever made.
My entire group of friends frequently goes "You know what I miss? BF2142."
None of us can get it to run. It just got glitchier and glitchier as time went on and EA just never bothered fixing it. Eventually it just stopped working. Assholes.

That's odd, I was literally just playing that a couple of minutes ago. They put it on sale through Origin and I bought it yesterday. You might want to try installing it again, if you've still got your discs lying around. It runs really well on my laptop, without so much as the weird glitchy textures I get with BF2.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Back in the day it was a chore to get video games to run right. Anyone who understands the term "boot disk" knows exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't, consider yourself lucky.

I remember those. I had one for X-Wing, one for MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries, one for Wing Commander 3, and the 'special' one that turned my floppy drive into the CD-ROM drive so I could play Dark Forces. Don't think I could make one now, it's been far too long.

I remember way back when the first Heavy Gear game was announced. I got the demo of it as soon as I could (off one of those demo discs PC mags used to have. Do they still do those?). Installed and discovered that it did not have a 3DFX compatible card. I was a broke arse kid back then, I couldn't afford anything like that, so I resigned myself to the fact that I may never play this game. Quite a few years and upgrades later, I see it in the bargain bin for $10, so I get it. I install the game.....and find out that nobody uses the 3DFX standard in their video cards anymore, so I still couldn't play the game. Fortunately I got Heavy Gear II to run, though I have yet to finish it.

I also remember when I bought one of those collection packs that had Syndicate Wars in it. this was before DOSbox, but I had gotten DOS games to work under win9x (win98 I think I was running at the time), but the sound just refused to work. I ended up giving up on that one.

more recently, I bought Deus Ex and System Shock 2 when they were on sale on Steam. Deus Ex just doesn't want to run right, unless I want to play it in windowed mode in 640x480. Any other setting just spazzes the system out. I don't thin System Shock has run at all either. I've heard the the GoG versions work, but I am deathly afraid to make an account there. I've looked through their catalogue, and I am certain I will buy the games. All of them.

Deus Ex has a modern renderer available, and I think System Shock 2 does as well, or a source port or something. Here's a link to two of the three or four updated renderers for Deus Ex[footnote]The modern Open GL and Direct X 9 renderers. There's also a DX 10 and I think a DX 11 renderer, but they're hosted elsewhere, because somebody else made them.[/footnote] (has renderers for most other UT 99 engine games, for that matter), not sure off hand what there is for SS2 but if you google around you'll find it.

300ish games and maybe 3 times I know of where that happened.

Iron Grip:Warlords was simply a weird little indie game that was janky and didn't work right for me.

RAGE was too much for my old PC to handle. Works fine on my current PC.

I just forgot the 3rd one...

Oh. Battlefield 2142. Because EA is a piece of shit and totally ruined my ability to run/play one of the coolest FPSs ever made.
My entire group of friends frequently goes "You know what I miss? BF2142."
None of us can get it to run. It just got glitchier and glitchier as time went on and EA just never bothered fixing it. Eventually it just stopped working. Assholes.

Sorry to quote you again on this, but I remembered something while skimming back over the thread: the last patch for that game came out in late 2010 or early 2011 (I keep finding two different release dates for it). Anyway, it's possible that, depending on the nature of your problems, it's not so much that it got buggier as the final patch broke compatibility for the servers with the version you were playing, and you just didn't realize a patch had come out that far after release. Which is a shame because in addition to bug fixes, it included the expansion for free.