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

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Very few games haven't worked on my various PCs over the years, some because I was young and didn't read the required hardware label, others later because of the game's age and my hardware far exceeding the recommended. Funniest one was trying to run Scarface: The World is Yours on a PC with a multi-core CPU. Something about the game's programming does not mesh well with multi-core processors and the game goes absolutely batshit crazy.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Dragon Age: Origins didn't work on my computer even though I fitted all of the requirements. I had to reinstall it several times, but it still didn't work. Has to do with a single file that tends not to get installed when the game begins, and the only way to find it is to rummage through the game's code.

Worked onmy laptop, though, that I got about a year later. I was too lazy to get a refund, and there was nothing wrong with the game itself.

 

[deth2munkies]

I've had a ton of games that I just can't get to run till I spend a bunch of time on Google with unofficial patches and the like, but I've never had a game I couldn't run at all.

The most inconvenient of these was me buying Magicka specifically to play on my laptop over summer when I didn't have access to my desktop, only to find it didn't run on integrated graphics cards.

 

[Crayven]

Farcry 3, something about it makes stealth crappy. I think it might be my pc, cause i had a friend try to do it, and he has it and nothing worked. So i have farcry 3 and not even been past the first act.

Also fallout 3 really annoys me, it used to work and now it doesn't and nothing i do fixes it.

 

[EvilMaggot]

Always been a PC gamer, im also pretty okay at figuring out if a game wont run and if all else fells.. Google and forum hunting but its very very very very rare a game doesnt work on my machine...well the old games dont always but theres an explanation to that ^^

 

[Zacharious-khan]

Yes all of the Fallout games I got the collection on steam and although i have a good computer i can't play 1,2,tactics,3,NV. ALTHOUGH i did get 1,2,tactics on GoG and those work just fine... for some reason. still no vats

 

[Wakey87]

F.E.A.R

Can't remember why I couldn't play it but I tried it when I bought it and when I got a new PC a year or two ago and for what ever reason it was still unplayable.

 

[144_v1legacy]

Humble Indie Bundle, twice.

Shows the power of charity. On the other hand, I'd never have played Bastion or Limbo if not for it, both of which I don't stop recommending.

 

[RariShyZealot]

Got Crysis 2 in a humble bundle. Can't play it due to graphics.

I was also unable to play my Paraworld Copy for a while due to it not supporting Windows 7, but I found a fix for it.


Now I just have to find a way past those filthy lying dinosaur-riding ninja pirates...

 

[hermes]

All the time. Nearly 90% of my steam library are games that won't work on my current PC due to requirements or compatibility issues, and I promise to get back to them "when I get a better computer"...

 

[mirage202]

Only once. Stormrise.

I bought it on a Steam sale when I had a Vista machine yet never got around to playing until after upgrading to Win7. Didn't work at all. Tried a couple more times over a week or so then gave up and haven't tried since.

 

[Jeroenr]

Yeah, and every game you had to set the IRQ and DMA.

Ugh! Yeah that was a greaaat fun every time. Also editing your config.sys to get the last few bits of free RAM you needed to get that new game running. Or fun error messages like not enough HIMEM...good times.
There were several DOS games I couldn't run due to various problems. Mainly ones from the Dark Eye Northland Trilogy and one game called The Druid Circle (or something like that). Later on I was never able to get Orion Burger to work which was on Win95 I think.
But in the times of DOSBOX all of this has gotten much much better so I'm now replaying some of those games.

Like i said in my first post in this topic, MEMmaker did help a lot.

Later on the main source of problems were various copy protection systems, mostly Starforce and to a lesser degree Securom. The Fall - Last Days of Gaia used Starforce and produced a bluescreen while booting Windows every single time after I installed the game. That was really awesome, especially because the game was cracked shortly after release. You really feel valued as a customer this way! At some point they released a patch for Starforce that fixed this, but if you weren't able to get back to a working system...tough luck. X3 Reunion had the same problems with Starforce and only started working after they released a official patch that removed it (could also have been X3 Terran Conflict, I'm not sure which of the two). Overlord 2 also had some problems due to Securom which were fixed with a Securom patch afaik.

Fallout 3 was slow as hell until I installed a user generated patch that removed GFWL. The mouse was barely usable in the main menu and the game itself crashed and generally ran extremely sluggish.

Dark Souls was already mentioned which was practically unplayable on PC before dsfix and mousefix.

Oh well, I still love PC gaming and most of the problems I had in the post DOS era were due to copy protection (which never kept anyone from copying the games in question) or additional software like GFWL.

owh..., forgot about the copy protections.
Wasn't Starforce a full blown rootkit?

But honestly, i didn't buy much of the games i played back then, ironically you had (have) far less copy protection problems on pirated games.

Now a days i use Steam mostly, and that has a really user friendly DRM.

 

[raeior]

owh..., forgot about the copy protections.
Wasn't Starforce a full blown rootkit?

Well most of the copy protection systems are rootkits to avoid detection by tools used to pirate stuff but Starforce was really nasty. Also their developer (some russion company) spread links to torrent sites for one game after their developer said "Well we don't need no copy protection (especially Starforce) we just make good games and that will be enough" but I'm not sure which game it was. Galactic Civilizations 2 maybe. Was quite a PR desaster with the Starforce company going "Oh it was just to show you what happens if you don't use our stuff we obviously didn't mean to encourage anyone to pirate the game from this link we prominently posted!".

There was also this really good PR move where they offered you some money if you were willing to travel to Russia and could prove that their copy protection caused damage to hard- or software provided by them and only by them. Of course you had to come to them first and pay the money for the flight or whatever yourself. Obviously nobody was willing to do this so they used this as a proof that their system was obviously perfectly fine and all those complaints about it where by evil pirates. There were even reports of Starforce destroying hardware like CD or DVD drives by tampering with the firmware or something I can't quite remember.

But honestly, i didn't buy much of the games i played back then, ironically you had (have) far less copy protection problems on pirated games.

This! After that I boycotted any game using Starforce which luckily were becoming fewer by the time.

 

[Robert Marrs]

Yes but its rare. I work with computers so I can usually figure it out but not always. The first Max Payne will not launch on my pc even with compatibility modes. Dark Forces 2 I can't even get working in a virtual Windows 98. Those are both older games though so its excusable. I have had other problems getting newer games to work but eventually they get figured out.

 

[Amir Kondori]

I cannot remember ever having a game not work, but I always look up what OS the game requires and other system requirements. I have had a couple games require a little googling to overcome known issues, but never, to the best of my memory, had a game that I just couldn't play.

 

[Robert Marrs]

Yes, well, sort of. I redownloaded Crysis and Crysis Warhead again because I upgraded my rig to have a better graphics card, more RAM and a better CPU since I first played it on my first build, but when I tried to play it, it had a black screen and eventually crashed. I'm sure that there is a fix somewhere but I couldn't be bothered, so I just deleted it and moved on. Hell, there are probably a load of games that I own that don't work, but none in my recent memory.

Probably the same problem I was having with those. They don't like 64-bit operating systems. http://help.ea.com/en/article/crysis-warhead-black-screen-error-fix/

That should help for warhead there is a similar update for the other crysis but I am too lazy to look for the link right now. Just follow the directions and you should be up an running. Just make sure you always launch from that 64-bit shortcut in the future.

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

Most PC gamers have done this at least once in their life, and if not then they haven't been a PC gamer for long.

OT: I bought Doom 3: BFG and found out the hard way that the game doesn't play very well with ATI GPUs. When I had my Radeon HD:5870 it flat out refused to run. Would crash at the splash screen right before it started. When I upgraded to my 7950, I was able to get to the main menu but I would have to load a multiplayer game in order for the campaign to move past the beginning cutscene. Such an arbitrary fix but it worked.

I have a few other games with similar stories attached to them. They reside in a category in my Steam library labelled "Broken." Every time I update my GPU drivers I will go through them and see if they work.

Maybe it's a sign that I should start going for Nvidia cards, but they really can't beat ATI's bang/buck ratio...

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I've got some steam games that won't run on my current computer, but I bought anyway because they were cheap, or part of a bundle, or what have you. I figure I'll be getting a new gaming desktop at some point in the next few years, and the games won't be going anywhere in the meantime. The trick is getting a job that pays well enough for me to move out of my parents house and support myself. Once I pull that off, well, let's just say I'm pretty good at saving up for something I want.

Also the first time I bought Morrowind, it absolutely would not run on my computer. I managed to talk the clerk at EB games into taking it back, since it was used to begin with and I really couldn't do anything with it. My (family's) computer at the time was theoretically within the minimum requirements, but for whatever reason I got a black screen when I tried to play it. I think it may have been a driver issue, but I couldn't figure it out at the time. I wound up getting it again years later, on a more powerful computer capable of doing quite a bit more with it than that one could have even if I could have coaxed it into running on it.

 

[putowtin]

Civ V is currently crashing a bit, but apart from that... nope!