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

[SillySam]

Honestly, that hasn't happened to me for quite some time
Or the problems were easily fixed, so they didn't cause enough of a headache for me to remember

If you're having problems with PC games, PC Gaming Wiki [http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home] is good place to start looking for solutions

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

Jade Empire. First it wouldn't keep saves, now it doesn't launch at all.
Edit:

Honestly, that hasn't happened to me for quite some time
Or the problems were easily fixed, so they didn't cause enough of a headache for me to remember

If you're having problems with PC games, PC Gaming Wiki [http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home] is good place to start looking for solutions

You, sir, are a lifesaver.

 

[Vausch]

Dead Rising 2 and Off the Record will not work for me right now. Games for Windows Live has been completely unable to work since I had to reinstall my games.

I long await the day GFWL dies. 5 more months, my PC gaming bretheren.

 

[Snotnarok]

Call of Duty: Black Ops I got it because I figured my brother and friend would continue the trend of playing after MW2, well turns out the inital launch was so crap that core 2 duo processors were unplayable at any setting, and it took them a while to fix it. By the time I could play it I dicked around with some bot matches and nothing more as my brother and friend didn't wind up getting it, so in the end it was just not meant to be I guess.

Dirt 1 as well has compat issues with WIN7 so I couldn't play it, I'm sure there was something that could be done to fix it but I didn't make the effort, I got Win8 and it worked! ...Then I upgraded to Win8.1 and now it doesn't. Boo.

 

[cmac1]

I don't know if this helps anyone, but fallout 3 had some issues with quad core processors. If you open your fallout.ini file located in the user\my documents\my games\fallout 3 and find the line:

bUseThreadedAI=0
Change it to:
bUseThreadedAI=1
Add another line after that and insert:
iNumHWThreads=2

That will limit fallout to only two cores. This helped me when the game froze every few minutes.

 

[razer17]

On my PC, though, the only game I've come across so far is Dragon Age Origins, which first used to crash when trying to create a female character. Fixed that issue, but now it still crashes every few minutes, so I've kind of given up on it.

There are ways to keep DA:O from crashing quite so often, although it will still likely crash after a couple hours, and if not, a memory leak will eventually force the game to seize up and stop altogether. But even with these problems, the game's completely worth it if for no other reason than to see character interaction like when

Spoiler

you visit the dwarf city of Orzammar and if you stretch out the faction quests and play them against each other, Leliana eventually wisens up to your manipulations, which gains her approval.

[/quote]

I will look into fixing it at some point, but I have so many games in my backlog that I'm not going to do it just yet. However, I have played DA:O before, on my 360, so I'm not missing out on too much, just wanted to replay it, mostly for the characters and story.

 

[Karadalis]

Sword of the stars 2, some Lord of the rings battlefield alike (wouldnt even install... it would just crash at the install screen) Eventually i found a work around for the lord of the rings game and sword of the stars 2 got patched up.. but it took months so i still think it counts.

Other games where able to start... but basicly unplayable due to bugs, do these count as unplayable too if you crash all 10 minutes?

 

[Lunar Templar]

dose GFWL count? cause I had some games i could play cause of that. Still have one I can't play ...

Other then that, I bought the new Strider remake only to be greeted by a 'requires Direct X 11' message :/ I don't have a Direct X 11 compatible graphics card :/

 

[The]

Well, I bought Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and it doesn't seem to be running.

 

[Jeroenr]

i know that we give Microsoft a lot of flack every time they 'recommit' to PC gaming. But DirectX is/was probably the greatest gift that M$ could probably give the PC gaming community. I remember prior to directX the dance everyone played just trying to make sure that the new game we bought was compatible with our hardware. Competing graphic and audio standards made everything confusing. You're sound card (remember those??) wasn't a soundblaster? Good luck trying to get this new game to run. Hmm, this release only has GLIDE support. Well, that means only a voodoo card would be compatible.

Demos for games weren't just about seeing if the game was fun to play, but about testing if the game could run on your system. Even if it wasn't a power issue, having the wrong drivers could derail the entire experience. Making sure you had the right ini and dll files installed.. God, it was awful.

Ever since DirectX became the standard for video and audio, that worry has gone away. Now, i only need to check to see if my rig is powerful enough to run on my desired settings. I don't have to worry about compatibility.


Thank you Microsoft (i'm not joking)

Yeah, and every game you had to set the IRQ and DMA.
I knew them by heart back then.
I did own a 3DFX voodoo 2 card at some point, that did make things a little easier.
Things did indeed got beter when DirectX came, But it still remaint a bit fiddly until win 98.


nowaday i have plenty of pc power and memory, so if things don't run usually the game it self is at fault.

 

[raeior]

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.

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.

 

[Stu35]

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

Indeed.

It tends not to be as much of a problem these days, but I recall many, many an evening spent trying to get something new to work on my PC. Occasionally this would end with complete failure. Most recent one I can remember (I say 'recent') was Medal of Honor: Airborne. Simply couldn't make it go.

However, I did play it on the XBox and ultimately decided that I was better off.


Truth is, part of the thing I enjoy about PC gaming is the challenge of fucking around with hardware/software. That said, if I buy a game I want to play the fucking game.


Incidentally, off the back of this thread, I've decided to go find my copy of Operation Flashpoint (the original, with the Resistance add-on), and play the shit out of it again. I'd forgotten how much I missed 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.