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

[Scarim Coral]

I guess Command and Conquer The First Decade (it contain all C&C, expansions and that spin off FPs game before C&C 3 came out) count since I couldn't played C&C Red Alert 2 and the expansion Yuri Revenge cos of some error.

The error turn out that it was missing a file to run the game which it didn't install it and the only solution was to get someone to install that game, copy that file into a USB and transfer it to the one who has that error. I didn't had anyone nearby (as in who is into video games and own a pc capable of playing games on it) to install and copy that file so me so I had to missed out on that game which is a shame since I did wanted to played it.

 

[solemnwar]

Hmm the only one I can think off hand atm is Portal 2 (I think it was 2, I'm pretty sure the first one worked fine). Trying to run it would cause my computer to blue screen then restart. A patch at the time had broken it for certain graphics cards and there really wasn't a fix for it other than "get a new graphics card" or "wait until we fix that shit". There's been some patches since then... but I've been too wary to try and see if it's working again. Making your PC crash isn't very good for it, y'know?

 

[Zakarath]

Got Riven over steam, Didn't want to work because it's quicktime videos were too outdated to work right with modern QT. Or something.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

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With that said I like some PC gaming but at the same time totally despise having a broken game and not knowing how to fix it and then having to drag myself from forum to forum to look for a suitable fix, I dislike having to need help for something that shouldn't be broken and something I shouldn't need to fix in the first place.

and you always get some douche bag on them forums saying "post your specs" and then not posting again for the whole thread

 

[DanielBrown]

Yeah, but I was unable to figure it out. Bought The Sims 2 when it was new(played a lot of Sims with my sister, so I figured it could be fun) but got a weird error message during the installation. Some .dll file missing or something. Went with it back to the store, they tried installing it there and it worked just fine so I got no refund or new copy. Don't remember if I checked Google or not, but I got some memories of unsuccessfully trying to find an answer.
Weird thing is that I've tried installing the fucking game on at least two other computers since then and I still got the same error... So that was a lot of money wasted. I assume the disc is actually broken and the guy in the store fucked me over.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

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With that said I like some PC gaming but at the same time totally despise having a broken game and not knowing how to fix it and then having to drag myself from forum to forum to look for a suitable fix, I dislike having to need help for something that shouldn't be broken and something I shouldn't need to fix in the first place.

and you always get some douche bag on them forums saying "post your specs" and then not posting again for the whole thread

Oh I say hell no to that, everytime and if not most the answer is always going to be "well ya see you dun goofed and didn't buy the x6t91 model of hardware etc" rather than oh it's the games fault.

Star Wars Battlefront II doesn't work for me even though a friend who has at least 5-6 year older hardware can run it and a friend with at least 2 years old hardware can run it and all I get is a boot back to the desktop after trying to start a match online, LAN or offline =/ and there doesn't seem to even be a logical conclusion let alone fix for that type of problem, it drives me up the wall that I can play that game on PS2 with nada problemos but on PC it is the problem and frustrating as it is I'm having none of it and will leave it uninstalled until my next eventual build comes by.

But yeah usual "post your specs" replies will either put me fof completely or annoy me since it heavily implies the "it's all your fault for buying shit tier hardware" vibe, even if they aren't trying to imply it still feels the same.

 

[Rastrelly]

Not a single time. There always is a workaround, if, of course, the game is not completely broken, but this is usually spotted by reading reviews before buying

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

snip

probably hoping that they'll know some little heard of information that means your hardware is awful lol, or like the sound of there voice.

OFF TOPIC: my post counts the highest this week than its been for a while. damn we were quiet in work

 

[Varrdy]

To this day, if I want to play Mass Effect 2 (a game I LOVE, by the way!) I have to use a 3rd party, "No-DVD" hack to make it run. Despite purchasing the game brand-new with actual money that I earned and didn't steal, the much-lambasted "CD-Key Error" glitch refused to let me run the game. Not once have I managed to make the game run with the disc and codes provided.

My emails to EA ranged from polite to disparaging but, apart from asking me to send proof of purchase, the responses were all the same - "We are aware of this problem and are looking into it." Roughly translated into English it goes: "We got your money you grotty little poor person - go away and stop interfering with our artistic license!"

Having to re-apply the patch, made by someone who was very much un-attached to BioWare or EA, every time I paid for and downloaded the DLC was a real ball-ache although Zaeed and Lair of the Shadow Broker made it worth it!

There seems to be an issue with Fallout 3 here...maybe I'm just lucky but it runs pretty good for me. Sure it suffers the usual bugs and glitches that one comes to expect from a Bethesda game but it's nowhere near unplayable...that's why I played it quite a lot!


Back in the very early days I can remember having to play around with my PC's config.sys file to free up EMS memory so I could play certain games like Nomad and X-Wing with sound...

Did anyone else play Nomad? I only know of one other person who has...I miss that game sometimes!

 

[gorfias]

My Bioshock 2 Windows Live stopped working. I found out a patch killed it on Windows 7 64 Bit. Nuts. I replaced it for $5 for the PS3 version. I'll never by a Windows Live game ever again.

 

[Wyes]

Most recently, Battlefield 4. However, that is not really the fault of BF4 - my card is powerful enough to play it, on low-mid settings (a GTX550 Ti), but it does require the latest drivers... just unfortunately nvidia has not released a stable driver for the 550 in about 9 months now, and until that happens I'm stuck unless I buy a new card which I can't afford.

 

[Amaror]

hmmm ...
never, no never in my whole life and i have always been a pc gamer.
The game that i had the most problems with was Gothic 2, a pretty old game, which would have severe graphic issues with nvidia graphic cards on Windows 7 64 bit, but an nvidia driver fixed the issue months ago, so i don't think it counts.
I beat the game another time since then, still such an awesome game.

 

[Bad Jim]

My newish PC has Windows 8 and all my old DirectX 7 games run at no more than 30 fps unless I run them in a window. And for earlier DirectX versions games run at 30 fps even in a window.

Also, the Sonic Mega Collection will only run if you have enough RAM, but if you have more than 2GB, it thinks you have no RAM at all, and you can only run it by messing with Windows so it only recognises 2GB.

I've also bought a fair number of games where I could not get close to a satisfactor frame rate.

 

[ivarsa15]

The only game I have never gotten to work on PC was the port of Metal Gear Solid 2. None of the graphics in the game showed up correctly and when I upgraded to Windows 7(from XP) I couldn't even get it to run.

 

[Flammablezeus]

The Force Unleashed 2 comes to mind. I wasn't able to play that for a while, until it randomly worked one day. It still freezes during a certain cutscene though, so that's annoying. Assassin's Creed 3 also crashes all of the time and has many bugs that force me to ctrl+alt+delete. In the end I wasn't too bummed out since those games were both considerably worse than the previous games in their series' for the most part.

 

[Savo]

Yup, you just have to live with it with PC gaming. It happens more often with older games, but it happens with newer ones too. I've given up hope of ever getting Bioshock 2 Minerva's Den to work, because it's just not worth spending hours trying to fix a game I'll beat in several hours.

 

[MrDumpkins]

I wasn't able to play the witcher 2 or darksiders 2 on my old machine, both of them would stutter horrendously, but it wasn't an FPS problem. I eventually found a fix for darksiders 2 on that PC and the witcher 2 worked fine on my new pc (old pc was probably just too old cpu wise).

Everyone has problems with games on PC, most of it can be fixed by googling the error you get. But sometimes you can't fix it and it really sucks. If you're really worried about it in the future, only buy games on sale for very cheap so you're not out much if it doesn't work.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I almost never have problems because of how savvy I am, but I do get stuck helping friends fix their problems. The other day, I was wrestling with an issue of getting Supreme Commander to run on a friend's computer. Turns out, there was a .prefs file that never was created in the appdata folder and without it, the game would only tell me that it "couldn't create Direct3D." The error had NOTHING to do with the problem, but I was able to give him my .prefs file and it worked instantly.

I think the last time I remember having a real issue with a game was Bioshock 1, and that was because my video card's shader model was 2.0 instead of the minimum of 3.0. I ended up getting a far better card so that I could play it, but then I found later that someone modded BS to allow SM2.0. Damn.

I've had something stupid like that happen before, I can't remember the game but there was a patch that came through for it and it didn't delete a certain file in the main games directory (it was an old file, but the exe kept trying to go to the backup old file rather than the new one) and the game's error on startup WOULD NOT describe anything like that, so it took me hours to figure it out after being on google and random forums, a simple delete of that file made everything run flawlessly.

Also, the only game to date that I can't run is syndicate, it would crash(not even open really) after trying to run the game, I googled shit tons of forums and whatnot but the answers I kept finding were everyone having the same issue, and EA not giving a shit to fix it. Fortunately I spent 5 bucks on the game so wasn't too big of a deal, but I'd at least like to be able to give the campaign a run through.

 

[Zipa]

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With that said I like some PC gaming but at the same time totally despise having a broken game and not knowing how to fix it and then having to drag myself from forum to forum to look for a suitable fix, I dislike having to need help for something that shouldn't be broken and something I shouldn't need to fix in the first place.

and you always get some douche bag on them forums saying "post your specs" and then not posting again for the whole thread

Oh I say hell no to that, everytime and if not most the answer is always going to be "well ya see you dun goofed and didn't buy the x6t91 model of hardware etc" rather than oh it's the games fault.

Star Wars Battlefront II doesn't work for me even though a friend who has at least 5-6 year older hardware can run it and a friend with at least 2 years old hardware can run it and all I get is a boot back to the desktop after trying to start a match online, LAN or offline =/ and there doesn't seem to even be a logical conclusion let alone fix for that type of problem, it drives me up the wall that I can play that game on PS2 with nada problemos but on PC it is the problem and frustrating as it is I'm having none of it and will leave it uninstalled until my next eventual build comes by.

But yeah usual "post your specs" replies will either put me fof completely or annoy me since it heavily implies the "it's all your fault for buying shit tier hardware" vibe, even if they aren't trying to imply it still feels the same.

Specs can sometimes be useful, in the case of Battlefront II it might be a hardware combination that is causing it to not run for example as I can run it fine on my newish PC. It is not that you bought the wrong thing or anything you could predict, just sometimes certain games go apeshit when they encounter a hardware combination they don't like.

 

[Sellon88]

I got Farcry 3 on steam but couldn't play it due to DRM by Ubisoft and their Uplay. Irronic because of Uplay I can't play me game.