Is a gaming consumer watch dog needed?

I think it's definitely needed.

The ludicrous EULA's foisted on us had no real power in the past, so you could safely ignore them. With nearly every game being tied to accounts or online activation we can now lose any, or even all of our games with a single button press. That's of course if the companies can be bothered to keep the servers up and running anyway.

Games companies are now pushing 'games as a service', but they're forgetting that prompt, friendly and helpful customer service is part of the deal.
 
ok, so say said watchdog did exist, what exactly would they control?

- T&C from EVERY company and website known to sell games were legal
- Games and Software work on EVERY pc that meets minimum requirements
- Any offers on EVERY companys website is adheard to unless a breach in their T&Cs
- Customer Service from EVERY game dev and game retailer is to atleast a minimum standard
- Freedom of speach on EVERY media is upheld and no action to be taken if people slander a company name**

ok, so how much man power do you think that will take, how much is open to interpretation, and who is going to fund this.
not to mention the amount of people that will abuse this when they purchase an overhyped game and feel dissapointed it didnt live up to that, or their system is just buggy or outdated driver wise.

** the op in the EA thread to which this was started over has not confirmed this is actually an EA ban or whether its just the software glitch many others have experienced. if so, then EA could infact open a lawsuit for slander surely as he has bad mouthed them over something that is not true.

like i said in my previous posts, i agree something needs to be done to make the pc gaming experience worthy of the £500+ (or even the cheaper) spent on pcs over its £100-£200 console counterparts.
 
^This is exactly the problem. A simpler solution would be a collective impulse from US THE CONSUMER: going back to my favourite moan: Black Ops; if everyone (across all platforms) that had a poor experience with this game refused to buy the DLC and the next CoD game it would show our power and perhaps go some way to informing devs and publishers that this type of 'fraud' is unacceptable to the gaming community. I can only hope this will be the case, but a great many people had a disagreeable time with BO's predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, and still BO sold a staggering, record-smashing amount.

This was because a franchise such as CoD is (was?) much-loved and previously had produced genuinely excellent and innovative games, so you get a degree of brand loyalty and the sentiment: "Well, I really want a new CoD game, and it can't be as bad as the last one so I'll pre-order this new one". Factor in the marketing hype that is fuelled by record sales and the paid-for, biased reviews that are EVERYWHERE and soon you get a byzantine network of reasons to impel the perhaps slightly naive gamer to stump up his hard-earned cash for Modern Warfare 3 - which will be just as unfinished, buggy and annoysome as before and so continuing the vicious circle.
 
Deific said:
Watchdog = yes please.


Publishers need to know they can't ship half-finished games and not bother to fix them for months, if they fix them at all. They need to know that selling a game on a multiplayer experience and then having shoddy and broken servers is unacceptable. Then as mentioned in the OP, need to know that criticism of their own game does not warrant or justify banning people from the games they've bought - and doing so should put them at liability to be sued/compensate the individual.
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I think some people are seriously getting the wrong end of the stick here...

The point of the watchdog would be to enforce things regarding your rights. If games developers release half arsed games and still get people to pay through the nose for it then frankly, thats your own stupid fault for buying it.

But preventing nVidia from attempting to **** AMD customers over when they lend 'assistance' to some games... its not marketing strategy, its being a dick. Steam banning your account because PayPal screwed up and reversed the charges is just an epic circle jerking with each claiming the other is responsible (as far as i remember from times its happened). EA doing it on a whim because you didn't like there game.

That is the sort of thing that should get enforced... not butthurt idiots who bought into the latest CoD knowing full well it was going to be crap but preordering it anyway! Not software/hardware issues with certain games, that would just force people out of the market because its not even possible to ensure it works on everything.
 
Evilsod said:
I think some people are seriously getting the wrong end of the stick here...

The point of the watchdog would be to enforce things regarding your rights. If games developers release half arsed games and still get people to pay through the nose for it then frankly, thats your own stupid fault for buying it.

But preventing nVidia from attempting to **** AMD customers over when they lend 'assistance' to some games... its not marketing strategy, its being a dick. Steam banning your account because PayPal screwed up and reversed the charges is just an epic circle jerking with each claiming the other is responsible (as far as i remember from times its happened). EA doing it on a whim because you didn't like there game.

That is the sort of thing that should get enforced... not butthurt idiots who bought into the latest CoD knowing full well it was going to be crap but preordering it anyway! Not software/hardware issues with certain games, that would just force people out of the market because its not even possible to ensure it works on everything.
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so what exactly do you propose the said watchdog was in charge of then? stopping hardware giants sponsoring a game to help its development, or allowing them to sponsor the game, but not reap any benefit from it other than their logo being on the box and the opening credits?
sorry if that sounds like im being a dick, im really not trying to be, i just dont really understand what people actually expect a watchdog be responsible for.
 
paradisiac said:
so what exactly do you propose the said watchdog was in charge of then? stopping hardware giants sponsoring a game to help its development, or allowing them to sponsor the game, but not reap any benefit from it other than their logo being on the box and the opening credits?
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I'm on about things like nVidia working with DX11 and effectively blocking it for AMD card users so they can try and promote there own cards. Ensuring it works better on your cards is 1 thing, but cutting out features for AMD users is just ridiculous.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if it got to the situation where nVidia are actively trying to sabotage it so it runs poorly on AMD cards and runs smoothly on there own.
 
Evilsod said:
If games developers release half arsed games and still get people to pay through the nose for it then frankly, thats your own stupid fault for buying it.
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I'm certainly a lot more careful when purchasing games now, but I think you insult consumers too much. If you meet all the relevant criteria, it is NEVER the consumer's fault that a product doesn't do what it is supposed to do.

Especially so with games when no demo is released, pre-release and post-released reviews (the gamer's bread-and-butter) say the game is excellent (mainly due to being paid for - how is this even legal anyway?), the developers release information and game footage showing how great the game is and then the game is released unfinished, buggy across tens/hundreds of thousands of PCs and consoles and the purchaser cannot get any kind of refund.

PC users like me have long accepted that some games won't play well (or at all) on their systems due to a lack of uniformity among the PCs and their components, but still almost every single title you can buy off the shelf nowadays is compatible - especially with patching. Some games, like BO, still aren't and it is clear that the devs/pubs release some games that they know are going to cause problems and simply do not care because by the time people now, their money if already unrefundable. In this regard, something should be done.
 
Forde said:
I'm certainly a lot more careful when purchasing games now, but I think you insult consumers too much. If you meet all the relevant criteria, it is NEVER the consumer's fault that a product doesn't do what it is supposed to do.

Especially so with games when no demo is released, pre-release and post-released reviews (the gamer's bread-and-butter) say the game is excellent (mainly due to being paid for - how is this even legal anyway?), the developers release information and game footage showing how great the game is and then the game is released unfinished, buggy across tens/hundreds of thousands of PCs and consoles and the purchaser cannot get any kind of refund.

PC users like me have long accepted that some games won't play well (or at all) on their systems due to a lack of uniformity among the PCs and their components, but still almost every single title you can buy off the shelf nowadays is compatible - especially with patching. Some games, like BO, still aren't and it is clear that the devs/pubs release some games that they know are going to cause problems and simply do not care because by the time people now, their money if already unrefundable. In this regard, something should be done.
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To some extent yes, it is the devs fault. Badly optimised pc and console releases making it unplayable in some areas. Horrible game-breaking bugs/glitches. But thats only a small fraction (at least the latter is).

End of the day there was no excuse for buying Black Ops. They didn't offer ANYTHING for preordering it. No discount, no maps, nothing. If people preordered or day one purchased it when they would lose absolutely nothing for waiting a few weeks that is entirely there own fault. I know Activision cut every corner they could to save money on the development and spend it on extra marketing, but if they continue to turn a huge profit they aren't gonna change there minds any time soon.
 
There is every excuse for buying BO. It is a game that should work, but for a significant portion of people who bought it it didn't. Plus, most of the reviews that appeared upon its release were favourable - there was one particularly stark review which told the real story about how buggy and linear the game is but that took a while to snowball - perhaps even a couple of weeks. To all intents and purposes to your average gamer BO was a decent CoD game - and one that was hoped would rectify MW2's shortcomings - there was no reason not to buy it.

The benefits of pre-ordering is itself anyway: wanting to be sure of a copy on the game's release day. To some people, that's important as they might have a rare day off and want to relax and play the new game, or perhaps they just want to get a head start on the multiplayer ranking system.

I support you're last sentiment entirely, though. What's your solution? Do you think we should 'educate' gamers more to the pitfalls of buying a game before real reviews can tell the truth? How do you know which reviews are to be trusted?
 
Evilsod said:
I think some people are seriously getting the wrong end of the stick here...

The point of the watchdog would be to enforce things regarding your rights. If games developers release half arsed games and still get people to pay through the nose for it then frankly, thats your own stupid fault for buying it.

That is the sort of thing that should get enforced... not butthurt idiots who bought into the latest CoD knowing full well it was going to be crap but preordering it anyway! Not software/hardware issues with certain games, that would just force people out of the market because its not even possible to ensure it works on everything.
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A half-arsed game is entirely different from a half-working game - perhaps you got the wrong end of the stick?

Evilsod said:
End of the day there was no excuse for buying Black Ops. They didn't offer ANYTHING for preordering it. No discount, no maps, nothing. If people preordered or day one purchased it when they would lose absolutely nothing for waiting a few weeks that is entirely there own fault. I know Activision cut every corner they could to save money on the development and spend it on extra marketing, but if they continue to turn a huge profit they aren't gonna change there minds any time soon.
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This has no bearing or relevance at all. It doesn't matter if your opinion of black-ops is that it didn't offer anything for pre-order and so wasn't worth pre-ordering. Fact of the matter is, it was a broken game, a product which was unsatisfactory, and did not meet what was advertised (a working multiplayer experience). How much they cut from the game, or how little effort they put into making it a good game has no part in this discussion. You are clearly misunderstanding the topic at hand.

*Note: I did not buy black ops
 
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What bothers me the most is not really the price or the treatment some players receive, after all, developers do spend millions creating the game, what bothers me the most is the sheer lack of quality new games are being released as, I used to be obssessed with gaming up until 4 or 3 years ago? Now, I can barely play a title for more then a few hours, everything is just so recycled, watered down, unoriginal and repetitive...
 
but with all the pre ordering, and from what i have noticed with portal 2, people hoping on early release, does this not put more pressure on the devs to release something, even if its not completed on deadline day else there will be outrage in its masses when people that purchased expecting the game on a given date never appears due to them adding some finishing touches?
 
Evilsod said:
I'm on about things like nVidia working with DX11 and effectively blocking it for AMD card users so they can try and promote there own cards. Ensuring it works better on your cards is 1 thing, but cutting out features for AMD users is just ridiculous.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if it got to the situation where nVidia are actively trying to sabotage it so it runs poorly on AMD cards and runs smoothly on there own.
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is this not similar though to microsoft only allowing support for xbox 360 controllers in most, if not all, GFWL titles?
they invest money i assume to have this feature, therefore the devs have more reason to release it on pc. without this, then maybe the pc games would be even less than they are now.
 
This is something me and my dad were discussing, for example steam when you pay for a game it's only available via steam to install and play, which means if you get banned you would loose x ammount of games. I use steam and when my dad wanted to try out crysis 2 i had to let him use my account to play the game, however originally you could have a digital copy of the disk and he could play it without the hassle of downloading or having access to my account, or having the internet to play. I think steam should give account users right's to download to digital copy which means that they could play the game on any machine as long as they used their unique serial code, which means not having to download every single time you-reinstall the machine. Because in theory they still have the rights to stop you using the game even if you paid for it. Im not saying i hate steam because it's a very good interface and easy to use, however they should make more games available of guest pass.
 
dave1983 said:
This is something me and my dad were discussing, for example steam when you pay for a game it's only available via steam to install and play, which means if you get banned you would loose x ammount of games. I use steam and when my dad wanted to try out crysis 2 i had to let him use my account to play the game, however originally you could have a digital copy of the disk and he could play it without the hassle of downloading or having access to my account, or having the internet to play. I think steam should give account users right's to download to digital copy which means that they could play the game on any machine as long as they used their unique serial code, which means not having to download every single time you-reinstall the machine. Because in theory they still have the rights to stop you using the game even if you paid for it. Im not saying i hate steam because it's a very good interface and easy to use, however they should make more games available of guest pass.
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pretty sure there is a backup option in steam which means you dont have to re-download after a fresh install. although wouldnt help with the problem of installing on your dads pc.
 
My best friend recently had valve decide that he had been cheating and has blocked him off all his valve games, totalling around 80 quid, and he had most certainly never cheated on any game online. Absolutely rediculas.

Upon contacting valve they told him to simply stop cheating then. No possibility VAC might be wrong, even though it banned millions of people on MW2 for no reason.
 
8igdave said:
My best friend recently had valve decide that he had been cheating and has blocked him off all his valve games, totalling around 80 quid, and he had most certainly never cheated on any game online. Absolutely rediculas.

Upon contacting valve they told him to simply stop cheating then. No possibility VAC might be wrong, even though it banned millions of people on MW2 for no reason.
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this exactly my point, they can't stop you using games that you have brought, understandibly they can stop you playing games online if you cheat. But the line needs to be drawn somewhere.
 
but surely if you are that worried, then dont buy digital copies of games :confused: of you go around shops then you will see they also do offers, its just a bit more work looking.
yeh its unfair to lose everything down to something like cheating (whether you did or not) without a reason to explain properly and be shown some proof by the company. maybe a suspension or something from the game in question to teach you a lesson. obviously if you didnt cheat then this would be harsh, but better than loosing everything.
i just dont personally see what a watchdog would achieve, there is soo much going on that it would be impossible for them to monitor it all and look into everything.
even a well established organisation like trading standards try their hardest not to get involved in anything and prefer you to sort it out with the offending company yourself when possible.
i think the only way you will stop this is with your wallet. if your not happy with a company, then dont buy from them again. eventually enough people doing this and they will either change their ways, or drop all support for pc altogether. which lets face it, with a watchdog breathing down their neck would probably lead to the same outcome.
 
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