Jimquisition: Buyer Beware

jthwilliams

New member
Sep 10, 2009
423
0
0
To me the major problem with the game/software industry as a whole is that is almost all sales are final. What was once a reasonable policy to prevent piracy has been become a highly anti-consumer weapon wielded by the industry. In particular steam and similar services which track consumption have no excuse for an all sales are final policy. Steam could easily institute a policy of full return within 24 hours if you?ve played the game for less than X hour(s). or even return for in store credit. Heck they could even charge a reasonable restocking fee. (Yeah I know that restocking of digital content doesn?t conceptually make sense, but there are costs associated with a failed sale and keeping the service running, etc.)
I admit it might not be reasonable for a system gog.com which doesn?t include any type of DRM or usage monitoring to be able offer returns ( Lets be frank, far too man people would abuse it) but Audible by Amazon permits people to return audio books if they?ve found them not to their taste with only a few restrictions and it has only caused me to be more willing to check something out. Heck, I can say that Amazon has done well by me by being more consumer friendly, I have bought books that I might not otherwise have been willing to try and then bought 3-4 more books from the same author, and I have only ever returned 2.

My point being, if the stores themselves, Steam, Gog, Amazon, were better consumer advocates, it would really be hard for the industry to get away with it and the first of these major store fronts to go that route will probably get any costs paid back in full many times over from increased business from customers happy to finally get a fair deal.
 

NaramSuen

New member
Jun 8, 2010
261
0
0
I recently bought a PS3 and have been catching up on some exclusives and other older titles I had previously missed. Here is my routine before making a purchase - watch a couple of reviews from trusted reviewers (if I have never heard of the game before), check to see if all the trophies are still available, are there any game breaking bugs I need to worry about and finally, if there is multiplayer, are the servers still up and running. I can only imagine how intimidating a game store looks to someone who is new to the hobby. Curiously buyer beware doesn't sound all that fair or sustainable if we want to grow and be more inclusive to newcomers.
 

Amir Kondori

New member
Apr 11, 2013
932
0
0
If you buy a movie, a car, an appliance, you might get a lemon or you might get a passable product or you might get something awesome. You don't really know unless you do the research.

Games are so cheap that personally I don't really mind throwing some money away on a game I didn't like as much as I thought I might.

Broken games deserve refunds, and that is an area that could see big improvements in the digital age, but I don't want Steam or Origin deciding which games are good enough to sell, because they have shown that they will not make good decisions in that space.

This is one area where I just completely disagree with Jim, and not for the reasons he presumes in his preemptive straw man.

I don't want Steam to be the arbiter of what games are available through their service. They don't have the time to get good games up in a timely manner. If Jim doesn't like what they have now he will certainly be unhappy once they go API and anyone can sell through Steam.
 

WeepingAngels

New member
May 18, 2013
1,722
0
0
Great video Jim. One of these days you should do a video about the people who justify every nasty action a corporation makes with "they are in business to make money". The "anything goes to make money" attitude doesn't help anyone.

On this topic, here's the thing. The publishers know that it's much harder to get a refund on an opened video game than most other products. They know that if they can just get you to buy a game, you will be stuck with it. Apologists need to see that too. If you buy a crappy TV, you can return it in most cases and yes, that's after you open it and try it out.
 

Infernal Lawyer

New member
Jan 28, 2013
611
0
0
I made a thread on the forums about Steam selling a game that outright didn't work because the servers required to run the multiplayer-only game were long since ditched by the developers.

I was really astonished at the amount of people telling me "Oh but it's the customer's job to find out if it's even possible for the game to fucking work at all".

Thank god for you, Jim, for making my point.
 

Infernal Lawyer

New member
Jan 28, 2013
611
0
0
Thanatos2k said:
We've got to the point where people are actually selling illegal games on Steam?
We've gotten to the point where games that simply WILL NOT WORK NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO are being sold. Fray: Reloaded edition says hi. (Actually, this game isn't available for sale since a few weeks back... But that's still at least a year after all the servers for the multi-player only game were shut down
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
I'm watching the video a second time (to gather my thoughts as I type, not to pretend it's somehow worse when EA does it). It's a shame that Drill Queen is nowhere to be heard.

The problem isn't even just that there is mockery of the consumer for them buying the product. Companies berate us for disliking a game. They berate us for expecting a game to work. They berate us for expecting a game to live up to claims and/or promises. And that's just disturbing. It reads as "what kind of moron actually buys the crap we're selling?" and that's an absurd notion. Further, it comes off as the kind of smug idiocy that led to the Xbone fiasco: gamers will like what we tell them to like. And while it did poorly for Microsoft, other companies have done far better than they probably deserve.

Of course, we do bear some of the responsibility. I know that not everyone's on NeoGaf and I understand that lying to the consumer flat-out is wrong, but at the same time, even when this behaviour is called out we as a consumer tend to reward it. Even informed consumers, even the informed consumers who scream "boycott!" buy the games quietly and hope nobody notices it on their recently played list. I think to some extent, we get what we deserve.

But all things, as they say, in moderation.

For one, we seem to have one of the most deceptive and/or facilitative criticism/review systems in at least entertainment media. Having done the occasional CD review (that's how dated my time as a music reviewer was, people still used these strange silver platters as a media vector), I was encouraged to come up with positive or constructive criticism, but I've never known an editor to encourage someone to outright lie. It seems that not telling a game company that its shit don't stink is something that will have people demanding your head on a platter. And again, gamers do that, too.

I bring up music because of my own experience with it, but also because audiophiles can be hateful, petty, and entitled. And yet, I've only seen one attempt to have a music critic fired for a "bad" review, and I'm not sure that was a serious attempt or hipster irony. In gaming, heads can roll and we help facilitate that by raging against people who don't tell us exactly what we want to hear. On this site we had people say crushing YouTube's gaming section would be a small price to pay to get rid of PewDiePie. And I assume most claims like this are histrionics, or even jokes. But some of the folks I know and have every reason to believe they're serious.

That is to say we, the hardcore, enlightened, edumacatued gamer are still often one of the biggest stumbling blocks as far as gaming goes. We are facilitators. Less so the common gamer, who might not know and honestly, shouldn't be expected to be this unreasonably in the know.

But I digress. Not only do we seem to have a worse system for evaluation of games, we have fewer recourses. Many stores won't even exchange physical copies, and digital services are "all sales final" in most cases. The GOG and Origin refund policies are considered novel selling points, and we're far from seeing it adopted elsewhere. You can pitch a fit for a refund on Steam, but even with broken games they are reticent to offer a real refund. Yes, there are exceptions. So freaking what? Basically, they can be cajoled into making exceptions. That's not a good model for the consumer.

One of the ways we guard against bad products is the refund and warranty system: if something doesn't work, we get to take it back. And the companies have to deal with that.

Meanwhile, addressing both the point of consumers not taking it and the later point that people frequently make an exception for EA, America specifically and maybe the West in general (but I don't know) seems to have raised a couple of generations with a sociopathic streak. Or at least a narcissistic streak: when it happens to someone else, it's all "boo hoo, you entitled idiots, go kill yourself." when it happens to them, it's "this is the greatest injustice in the history of mankind." And we do see a lot of that swing. It's not just "I don't care." It's "I don't care, screw you for caring, and I will berate you for it." There is berating behaviour whether you are just disappointed in a game or disappointed that you were sold a bill of goods.

The Simpsons once had an episode where Homer's attitude towards a gay guy is changed only because said gay guy saved his life. The character jokingly comments that if only every gay could save his life, they'd be set, and that's sort of the principle we have going: a bunch of people who can only relate to things as they directly impact them, hence EA getting so much hate even from the "Buyer Beware" crowd.

A nation of Homers. *shudder*

An extra big "Thank God For Jim" on that note.
 

leviadragon99

New member
Jun 17, 2010
1,055
0
0
Well yeah, that's the thing, Caveat Emptor should be a valid argument, but in such an environment cultivated to actively misinform and yank money out of us, people can hardly be blamed for being misled by the whole ordeal.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
josh4president said:
Wait, Jim, didn't you mock Mass Effect fans when they expected what they were promised back with Mass Effect 3?
I could swear he changed his tune with more context. I could be wrong, though.

jehk said:
Yep. These corporations have us by the short hairs. It shouldn't be that way and the only real thing we can do is be aware of what we're buying. Go! Go! Libertarian paradise. :p
No consumer protection, rights or recourse. Isn't this already a libertarian paradise? :p

Aardvaarkman said:
Remember - we had E.T: The Extra Terrestrial for the Atari back in the 1980s.
Remember--you're pointing at a period of crash, one predicated in large part by shovelware. Pointing to that doesn't make a compelling argument. Pointing to a period noteworthy for its shovelware to the point it was a contributing factor in the biggest crash of the media (in the West, anyway) is sort of ridiculous. There has always been shovelware, yes, but there have been varying levels. Pointing to the relative infancy of gaming is also kind of a poor way to rationalise it. I would expect better quality control from an industry that's several decades old as opposed to one where major developers were still in single digit lifespans.

Perhaps partly, but I think it was mostly to do with the rise of the home computer.
This argument would be valid if it was merely console sales that saw issues. However, home computer software also took a hit, and we ended up with the whole market shrinking greatly. You don't seem to be following the facts but instead massaging them to force them to go where you want.

The personal computer did impact the console market, but beyond that is just trying to shoehorn an explanation through the back door.

Magmarock said:
Wow people actually disagreed with you about Steam quality control and and spouted buyer beware.
In part, but mostly people argued against it without paying attention to his video. Jim already mentions the context of the other half of the video, but I sometimes suspect people just see a title like "Steam needs quality control" and jump in to argue against the title without watching the video. It's even less surprising when Valve/Steam is involved, because Steeeeeeeeam has an even bigger/more rabid defense force than Nintendo.

xaszatm said:
OT: I do overall agree with this Jimquisition. Though I do not think another Video Game Crash is on the horizon, there will be a huge backlash against this lack of quality control and it won't be pretty to the industry as a whole.
I'm just going to add to what you said: not only do I not think another great crash is on the way, it's virtually impossible for one like the '83 crash to happen again. I'd be willing to wager THQ was as close as we're going to come, and that came down largely to speculation on a peripheral.

Abnaxis said:
Erm...the same reason people buy dedicated consoles for gaming today? Simple installation, plugs into the TV, guarantees to some degree that the software will work with the hardware, and exclusive titles. That's just quick, off-the-top-of-my-head reasons.
Many of the home computers on the market were very similar to the consoles on the market. There was little issue (at least, comparatively) with things like "dedication" at that point. I'd also point out that prior to the crash, the hot titles didn't tend to be console exclusive, so that's unlikely.

veloper said:
No, it's not a get out of jail free card.

Games can be shit and the companies that produce them will get verbal abuse, but researching your games before you buy, is still sound advice, unless you like to play shit.

It's not like righteous indignation will solve anything by itself.
I don't think anyone's arguing that research is bad. Jim makes a solid argument in his video for the larger problem of information in gaming and contextualises his statement about "Buyer Beware." No offense intended, but did you actually watch the video?
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
Thanatos2k said:
We've got to the point where people are actually selling illegal games on Steam?
Yes, we have. TotalBisuit also did a video on a game that was not within the publisher's right to release, including copied elements from the original. I won't name it because I'm not sure how it fits with the forum rules, but....

We're seeing Steam selling games that the people selling don't have the right to in one way or another.

Infernal Lawyer said:
We've gotten to the point where games that simply WILL NOT WORK NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO are being sold. Fray: Reloaded edition says hi. (Actually, this game isn't available for sale since a few weeks back... But that's still at least a year after all the servers for the multi-player only game were shut down
And they put some of those games on sale because Steam seems to want to get your moneys any way they can.

But also, we have illegal games being sold on Steam, which was the question.
 

gamegod25

New member
Jul 10, 2008
863
0
0
Have a feeling those that use that "Caveat Emptor" excuse are either pretty well off (they can afford tossing money away on crap), work for those same companies and suckering consumers is their meal ticket, or they are just assholes trolling.

If you are really making excuses for a lack of QA from these companies then you are part of the problem.
 

grigjd3

New member
Mar 4, 2011
541
0
0
I have to admit that the recent flood of shovelware onto steam has put me into the position where I don't bother looking at what's available very often. Hell, there aren't even any games I can think of that I am looking forward to. Part of the issue is greenlight and the "indie scene" which is kind of like the explosion of cable channels in the late nineties and early 2000s: total quality remaining a constant while the quantity keeps growing. When this started, I liked that there was a way for people not interested in the old stodgy ways to getting their games published to access the audience directly. Now it seems like every college kid with too much time on their hands wants to sell me their latest RPGMaker collage.
 

Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
1,262
0
0
Zachary Amaranth said:
Remember--you're pointing at a period of crash, one predicated in large part by shovelware. Pointing to that doesn't make a compelling argument. Pointing to a period noteworthy for its shovelware to the point it was a contributing factor in the biggest crash of the media (in the West, anyway) is sort of ridiculous.
I'm not sure how it's ridiculous - it emphasizes how things today are not the worst they have ever been, as Jim claims in his video. If shovelware was so bad in the 80s that it led to a major industry crash, then how is it not a compelling argument that things aren't nearly as bad today as they were then?

Zachary Amaranth said:
I would expect better quality control from an industry that's several decades old as opposed to one where major developers were still in single digit lifespans.
Indeed. Which is why Jim's contention that quality control is worse today is so strange.

Zachary Amaranth said:
This argument would be valid if it was merely console sales that saw issues. However, home computer software also took a hit, and we ended up with the whole market shrinking greatly. You don't seem to be following the facts but instead massaging them to force them to go where you want.
But home computer sales rose throughout the 1980s, including during the console crash of 1983-1985. The market for home computers certainly did not "shrink greatly" during that period - it grew.

You mention home computer software sales. I'm not sure what figures or sources you are using for that, but it seems pretty irrelevant. Software piracy was much easier on home computers than on consoles, so even if software sales did shrink, that doesn't mean that the home computer market wasn't growing at the expense of consoles or computer software sales.

My anecdotal evidence from that era is that less than 50% of software used by home computer owners was purchased - much of it was pirated. I'd be very interested in seeing your figures for software sales, especially if they include a worldwide breakdown, to see if they match my experience.

Zachary Amaranth said:
The personal computer did impact the console market, but beyond that is just trying to shoehorn an explanation through the back door.
I wasn't aware I was suggesting anything "beyond that." My contention is that personal/home computers had a significant effect on the console market. It appears you agree.
 

Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
1,262
0
0
gamegod25 said:
Have a feeling those that use that "Caveat Emptor" excuse are either pretty well off (they can afford tossing money away on crap), work for those same companies and suckering consumers is their meal ticket, or they are just assholes trolling.
No, "Caveat Emptor" is not an excuse, it's a warning/suggestion. And it's a suggestion that's meant to save money, so the idea that people who think you should think carefully about your purchases before spending are rich people throwing around money seems rather absurd.

Even more strange is the idea that people who suggest you think carefully about your purchases are working for companies that want to suck you in. If somebody wanted to suck you into spending money on dodgy products, then why would they suggest you carefully think about your purchases?

gamegod25 said:
If you are really making excuses for a lack of QA from these companies then you are part of the problem.
Who's doing that?
 

gamegod25

New member
Jul 10, 2008
863
0
0
Aardvaarkman said:
gamegod25 said:
Have a feeling those that use that "Caveat Emptor" excuse are either pretty well off (they can afford tossing money away on crap), work for those same companies and suckering consumers is their meal ticket, or they are just assholes trolling.
No, "Caveat Emptor" is not an excuse, it's a warning/suggestion. And it's a suggestion that's meant to save money, so the idea that people who think you should think carefully about your purchases before spending are rich people throwing around money seems rather absurd.

Even more strange is the idea that people who suggest you think carefully about your purchases are working for companies that want to suck you in. If somebody wanted to suck you into spending money on dodgy products, then why would they suggest you carefully think about your purchases?

gamegod25 said:
If you are really making excuses for a lack of QA from these companies then you are part of the problem.
Who's doing that?
The problem is that some people use it not as a warning or suggestion but to make it sound like the buyer is the one at fault not the company that put out a broken/shitty mess or allowed it to be sold on their site. My point is even when exercising caution its far to easy to get misled and not only will the companies act like its not their fault/problem but fanboys will be all "Oh buyer beware, you should have been more careful lol".
 

Voulan

New member
Jul 18, 2011
1,258
0
0
I remember back when I first bought Skyrim for the PS3 and it was suffering terribly with lag issues and bizarre bugs before they eventually fixed the problem, and then they announced that they were not going to release the DLC for it (although they did eventually). I was part of a vocal group expressing bitter disappointment about the whole issue, and I actually had someone tell me something along the lines of, "Well, you never should have bought Skyrim for the PS3. You never should have bought a PS3 as well. You should have KNOWN. It's YOUR fault."

I was practically lost for words. Glad I'm not the only one that thought that kind of argument was completely stupid.
 

Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
1,262
0
0
gamegod25 said:
\
The problem is that some people use it not as a warning or suggestion but to make it sound like the buyer is the one at fault not the company that put out a broken/shitty mess or allowed it to be sold on their site.
But that's not what you said in the post I was replying to. You implied that everybody who used the term was either a rich person throwing their money around, or someone in the pocket of the industry, or a trolling asshole.

So, now it's just some undefined amount of "them" who do this?
 

Kuro Serpentina

New member
Dec 10, 2012
50
0
0
If a game is bad, it could be named and shamed as being as such. Nothing progresses and nothing grows if no points out faults. That said, the point of critic is to make sure less bad games get made. Be elitist about it and expecting everyone to be as informed as you is just dumb.
I shouldn't even have to worry about a game I pick up being bad! Bad games are supposed to be a rarity, an oddity, that slipped through the electric fence of quality control. If I have to search for a good game, through a pile of shlock, someone on QC needs to get fired!
Great video Jim, as is to be expected of you these days