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Consumer rights/protection, false advertisement, and trivialization of issues.
Drez
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This will be something of a mixed bag. I was going to post this in H/A, but I thought I would open it up to discussion. I'd like to hear what people have to say to my specific issue, but after I think it would be good to have a discussion about what rights consumers do have, what rights they should have, and what kind of recourse is and should be available to them.
Also, I am not a lawyer. I'm a legal layman, but that's okay, most of us are. The point is, I can only discuss the law insofar as I understand it as a non-lawyer United States consumer.
Okay, so my specific issue is this.
I pre-ordered BioShock 2 for the PC via Steam. There was no public demo or any way for me to test the game before it came out. The return policy on Steam is this: You can get refunded for canceled pre-orders, but once a game is released, they issue no refunds.
This is really no different from most PC game retailers. Very few (if any) will allow you a full refund or even store credit for a PC game. Most brick & mortar stores only allow defective returns, which means you get the same exact product back if your particular copy is broken or defective.
Now, my issue may seem rather trivial. And this is something I will get to at the end of my post, but regardless of that, the issue is provable and does exist. The issue is vertical HUD stretching in 16:10 resolutions. The 3D graphics of the game don't have any vertical stretch, however the HUD elements (as well as menus) stretch vertically. This has been proven by many consumers on the 2k Games technical support forum to be a universal issue. In other words, there is sufficient evidence out there that the problem is not a video card/monitor issue, but rather that the game is flawed and causing the vertical stretch. Not a single person has been able to provide a screenshot where the HUD is not vertically stretched in a 16:10 resolution.
Sounds unimportant, right? Well for some people it isn't. Maybe it's a part of my OCD, but if I am looking at something that is supposed to be a circle but is actually an oval...it kind of bothers me. And I know others feel the same way. That said, I could enjoy the game even with this visual quirk, were it not for this:
http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/article/bioshock2pcmegafeature
The above is an article posted on January 29th, 2010 on the "Cult of Rapture" site, which is hosted and run by 2k Games. I bolded the relevant statement in that quote. That statement is both explicit and provably false. Now, I am not claiming that they maliciously lied. It is possible that the person answering those questions really believed that statement to be true. But regardless of intent - that is a false statement.
The big problem here is that the game came out on February 9th, which is a whole 11 or so days after that article was published. Steam (and other retailers) were already taking pre-orders on BioShock 2. And as I explained, after February 9th, the consumer had no possibility of returning the game.
With no demo either, there was literally no way for the consumer to assess the truth value of that article. Considering the content of that statement is provably false, I consider it false advertisement.
Couple this with the fact that the consumer has no recourse except to complain and basically hope and pray the issue gets fixed, and you have a situation where 2k Games could have conceivably "trapped" customers into purchasing the game with no hope of refund. It is possible that the HUD looking correct in all resolutions was a selling point for some people. If so, that article may have lead some people to pre-order the game and summarily find out they were screwed when the game was released.
Now, as for trivialization: A lot of posters like to hang around the 2k Games technical support forums and shoot down complaints of this nature, flippantly suggesting that they are trivial. On one hand, I agree. You can play the game fully with the vertical stretch and it won't really hinder you much. On the other hand, I think the false advertisement is a very non-trivial issue. In fact, I think it is completely separate, to the point where what is being falsely advertised is irrelevant. I think it is very important to protect one's consumer rights especially because the consumer has no power while the company has all the power. I think allowing oneself to be walked over - even for a "trivial issue" - is a terrible thing.
But maybe I'm just overly cynical and this really isn't a big deal. In general, I just don't see consumers having much recourse in their transactions with businesses nowadays. Not many business even offer phone billing support anymore. If you have a problem, you have to email them, or post through some kind of mailto form on their webpage, and hope for a response back. I've had situations where a company had no phone and never responded to any of my messages.
What can we do as consumers to assert our rights?
Also, I am not a lawyer. I'm a legal layman, but that's okay, most of us are. The point is, I can only discuss the law insofar as I understand it as a non-lawyer United States consumer.
Okay, so my specific issue is this.
I pre-ordered BioShock 2 for the PC via Steam. There was no public demo or any way for me to test the game before it came out. The return policy on Steam is this: You can get refunded for canceled pre-orders, but once a game is released, they issue no refunds.
This is really no different from most PC game retailers. Very few (if any) will allow you a full refund or even store credit for a PC game. Most brick & mortar stores only allow defective returns, which means you get the same exact product back if your particular copy is broken or defective.
Now, my issue may seem rather trivial. And this is something I will get to at the end of my post, but regardless of that, the issue is provable and does exist. The issue is vertical HUD stretching in 16:10 resolutions. The 3D graphics of the game don't have any vertical stretch, however the HUD elements (as well as menus) stretch vertically. This has been proven by many consumers on the 2k Games technical support forum to be a universal issue. In other words, there is sufficient evidence out there that the problem is not a video card/monitor issue, but rather that the game is flawed and causing the vertical stretch. Not a single person has been able to provide a screenshot where the HUD is not vertically stretched in a 16:10 resolution.
Sounds unimportant, right? Well for some people it isn't. Maybe it's a part of my OCD, but if I am looking at something that is supposed to be a circle but is actually an oval...it kind of bothers me. And I know others feel the same way. That said, I could enjoy the game even with this visual quirk, were it not for this:
http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/article/bioshock2pcmegafeature
BIOSHOCK 2 PC Q&A
How did you deal with widescreen? How will someone on a regular monitor and a widescreen monitor see the game?
We support single-screen 4:3, 5:4, 16:9 and 16:10 resolutions. The game has been optimized to ensure that all game elements such as menus, HUD, UI, etc appear exactly the same regardless of what resolution the user is running the game at. The only major difference for 4:3 and 5:4 users will be the smaller Field of View compared to a widescreen resolution.
The above is an article posted on January 29th, 2010 on the "Cult of Rapture" site, which is hosted and run by 2k Games. I bolded the relevant statement in that quote. That statement is both explicit and provably false. Now, I am not claiming that they maliciously lied. It is possible that the person answering those questions really believed that statement to be true. But regardless of intent - that is a false statement.
The big problem here is that the game came out on February 9th, which is a whole 11 or so days after that article was published. Steam (and other retailers) were already taking pre-orders on BioShock 2. And as I explained, after February 9th, the consumer had no possibility of returning the game.
With no demo either, there was literally no way for the consumer to assess the truth value of that article. Considering the content of that statement is provably false, I consider it false advertisement.
Couple this with the fact that the consumer has no recourse except to complain and basically hope and pray the issue gets fixed, and you have a situation where 2k Games could have conceivably "trapped" customers into purchasing the game with no hope of refund. It is possible that the HUD looking correct in all resolutions was a selling point for some people. If so, that article may have lead some people to pre-order the game and summarily find out they were screwed when the game was released.
Now, as for trivialization: A lot of posters like to hang around the 2k Games technical support forums and shoot down complaints of this nature, flippantly suggesting that they are trivial. On one hand, I agree. You can play the game fully with the vertical stretch and it won't really hinder you much. On the other hand, I think the false advertisement is a very non-trivial issue. In fact, I think it is completely separate, to the point where what is being falsely advertised is irrelevant. I think it is very important to protect one's consumer rights especially because the consumer has no power while the company has all the power. I think allowing oneself to be walked over - even for a "trivial issue" - is a terrible thing.
But maybe I'm just overly cynical and this really isn't a big deal. In general, I just don't see consumers having much recourse in their transactions with businesses nowadays. Not many business even offer phone billing support anymore. If you have a problem, you have to email them, or post through some kind of mailto form on their webpage, and hope for a response back. I've had situations where a company had no phone and never responded to any of my messages.
What can we do as consumers to assert our rights?
Switch: SW-7690-2320-9238Steam/PSN/Xbox: Drezdar
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Another would be if you pre-order an MMO and are promised X ingame thing, you don't get it when the game comes out. It's a small thing, but an example is the TOS uniforms in STO. The game launched without them and didn't have all of them for quite some time - minor issue right? Well customers preordered it from a specific retailer for that triviality.
Master Of Orion 3 taught me a valuable lesson.
My main problem is with fine print used to basically render advertisements false. My current example is Comcast's $99 "Triple Play." $99 for cable, internet, and phone...right? Okay, taxes and fees apply...I can deal with that. They can't accurately predict in a national advertising campaign what the tax rate on telecom services in Kitsap County, WA wil be.
But $5 for the modem? The telephony modem that, unlike regular cable internet service, they pretty much require you to use? Equipment required to actually utilize a core aspect of the service? So it's accurate to say that, aside from the taxes that vary from location to location, pretty much every last user is actually paying $104, right? Right.
So the $99 was a lie. And while that aspect is explained (briefly) before you sign up, that doesn't change the fact that the price Shaq and Ben are talking about doesn't exist. Good times.
I feel like there should be some kind of oversight for this kind of thing. Customers should have some kind of recourse between "do nothing" and "class action lawsuit." And not just for gaming, of course. I feel like the digital download (and even retail software) industries have a lot of nooks and crannies that companies can hide in and exploit, but they aren't the only industries where consumers suffer in this way.
Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
Steam Friend code: 45386507
That's what I was getting at with Comcast. If there are fixed and known charges that 99% of your customers are going to have to pay, you should be required to include them in the advertised price. Cable companies have moved away from the "HD equipment rental" fee that was common (where they'd advertise "FREE HD!" but you had to pay $10 a month extra for the box), but somehow adding $5 a month for the telephony modem is still acceptable for people.
Which is hilarious, because while you can still watch cable without HD, this piece of equipment is required to use an entire "prong" of the service (phone).
I also had fun with amazon.com's UnBox service. I decided to give it a shot ($4 for an on-demand rental of a new release, instead of $5, and obviously I hate Comcast)....only to find that after paying for the non-refundable movie the most throughput I could get on the stream was like 500Kbps. Movies don't look so hot at 500Kbps on a 37" HDTV. Downloading wasn't an option, because at that rate it would have taken 8 hours (I tried).
So yeah.
On-demand my ass.
But of course I have no real way to determine what the video quality will be before I order...and (theoretically) no way to get a refund if it's unacceptable. My bandwidth was fine...all other websites (and p2p downloads) were rolling at a healthy 15Mbps.
Luckily, after about three emails back and forth I was able to get my money back...not something they normally do, and not anything they had to do, and that's my concern.
For the past 6 years or so, there's this rinky-dink suit shop on Broadway all the way downtown in NYC.
Every single day, they stand outside advertising "all suits half price!"
Uh, if all your suits are "half price" every day for six years, isn't that the ACTUAL price? Isn't it, then, false advertising to suggest they are half price?
I know that's a little debatable. Technically, I can tag something with an MSRP of $200 at $400 and then cross that out with "$200" scrawled underneath and call it "half price" even though I really just marked it up so I could mark it down to MSRP while calling it "half off," but in my opinion, it is still shady and exploitative.
I thought there was some legal requirement that in order to claim that a price is the retail price that a sale is based on, it must be at that price for a given percentage of the year.
Though IIRC, that percentage is ridiculously low. Like, you can mark it up to full price on the first Wednesday of every other month, and you're golden.
Maybe I'll go look this up. Probably not, though. I'm kinda lazy today.
EDIT: Oh, and I love that this is how pretty much every liquidation sale ever works as well. The company doing the liquidating comes in, marks everything up about 100%, then starts it at 50% off. Often you can peel off the "sale" stickers and see the original prices...I remember some articles coming out about it when Circuit City went under, but it happens at basically every store closing. I'm curious, though, how this'll work at the Dollar Store that's closing down the street...I mean, I don't think you can exactly get away with marking everything up to $4 and calling it 75% off. I'd hope people would notice.
If you ever do, I'd be interested in reading that. I used to pass them every day and I laughed at them every day over it.
http://dca.lacounty.gov/tsfalseadvertising.htm
As for the OP, while I agree "break the cellophane and its yours for life" sucks, without some(highly reliable) way to tell if someone played the game(to some arbitrary level of completeness) they really don't have a choice.
All any complaint over this will actually change is them responding with vaguer more qualified promises in the future. Hell their claim is technically impossible as theres no way the circles at 1920x1080 look exactly the same as they look at 1024x768 regardless of stretching, as they would be more rounded(unless they went through the effort to make the 1920x1080 circles blockier-which I'm sure everyone with HD monitors would love).
fakeedit:this is exactly what the word trivial is for.
Now with that said, and if there's a counter argument to the above: That sucks man, sorry. I got boned in the first game, so I told them to fuck themselves on the second. Hopefully if you've been fooled once, or even twice, you know better in the future now.
Please elaborate.
Because I had the Xbox 360 version of the first game. I was a brand new PC consumer to the BioShock series for the second game. I had ZERO problems with BioShock on the Xbox 360 and had ZERO awareness of issues with the PC version of BioShock 1 (at least until BioShock 2 came out and people started comparing them).
Unless the widescreen on the console version was bigger than the widescreen on the PC version. In that case mea culpa.
In the games entire graphics system(menus/HUD/game graphics)-let alone the entire game, the complaint is that in one case a small part of the HUD is slightly ovoid instead of circular.
Actually, I have a friend that works Comcast in a Best Buy, and he says a good 50% of people choose to purchase their own modem, rather than lease it from Comcast.
Okay, we did this in the other thread. Ask your friend if he's referring to Comcast internet subscribers in general, or those who also have their VoIP phones through Comcast.
Because that 50% number probably doesn't hold for the latter. Because those modems cost quite a bit more (IIRC, the Comcast rep said it required a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, with telephony support...the only cheap telephony modems I can find are DOCSIS 2.0). And while they can be found for less on eBay, a Comcast rep I talked to basically said that they won't activate those, because they're "probably stolen," so they'd require a receipt from an authorized reseller.
Telephony modems != Cable modems
Now look up the words "worth" and "importance" - both of which have personal, subjective value. My entire point is that while something may be trivial TO YOU, it doesn't mean it is objectively trivial. Thus, it seems "exactly what the word trivial is for" is what I implied in my first post - so other people can make inane comments to the objective value of something, an objective value that doesn't exist.
The issue, to me, is non-trivial. And the whole concept needs to be thrown out the window. People need to understand that while something may not be important to them, it doesn't mean it isn't important to someone else. There's no way to quantify objective value. Value is a wholly subjective concept.
Things change in game development. Features get cut, things that were working stop working, and tough choices have to be made about what stays and what goes. It's perfectly reasonable to be unhappy, but it's silly to assume malice on 2K's part in a case like this. If it's a big issue for you, the best thing you can do is not buy future products the company makes. The last two points of this article seem to apply here.
Most stores won't allow returns on PC games, due to obvious issues with people installing the game and then returning it.
In general terms, there's probably an interesting discussion in where consumer rights begin and end, but it has to be a discussion about realities and not ideals. It would be nice if every piece of advertising we heard was 100% accurate, but asking for a world where game developers can never discuss any feature that might get cut is asking for a world where game developers never advertise their games. If people have a realistic suggestion for resolving this, I'd love to hear it.
How the fuck do you cut a feature 11 days before a game comes out.
That Q&A was like a month before release. And it's still up on their website. And it mentions 16:10 specifically.
The only solution I can come up with is allowing a one-week (or other arbitrarily short, hell it could be 48 hours) window for those who pre-ordered to return the game, if they can give a specific reason relating to pre-release advertising why they're dissatisfied. Maybe somehow work in some clauses regarding whether or not a public demo accurately depicting the functioning of the game was available. I'm not going to write a detailed bill right here since it's never going to happen, but I see no reason we can't improve on the current "we can not deliver what we claim and you can go fuck yourself" model of software purchases.
Edit: The problem with a one-week window it the same as with any PC game return - people could just install the game and then take the full refund. The nature of the PC platform opens up a lot of exploitative loopholes, on both sides.
You can release a press release saying it's been cut. And allow pre-orders to cancel.
And all of this is especially unforgivable on a platform like Steam, where they can basically see how far you played into the game...there's no reason not to offer a refund for a technical issue like this at that point, other than "olol we already got yer moneys."
Sure, because everyone wants to be the Alan Wake guys and have their game crucified over minor technical bullshit.
Seriously though - is this a thread about realistic solutions, or is this a thread about "what I wish the world was like"? I don't mean to belittle your answer, but it's an important distinction because every solution comes with ramifications. Are you saying that Congress should pass a law saying that developers must advertise whenever they cut a feature? Is it enough to put it on our website, or do we have to give the press release to gaming news sites? If we cut three features in a day do they each need their own press release, or is one enough?
You have to be careful about how you handle the incentives, because things that are cut usually get cut for good reasons. If our press release from two months ago advertised "9 expansive worlds" but world 7 simply isn't fun, should we keep it in the game in order to live up to our promise, or drop it because it makes the game better? Remember, cutting certain things in the last month of development is the norm for most developers, so this sort of thing comes up a lot. I understand that it's frustrating when a feature doesn't appear, but the cure could easily be worse than the disease.
Congress should probably pass a law requiring stores to accept video game returns. And possibly obligate the publisher to do the same as well.
Yeah, I'm basically sick of game publishers being able to use "ZOMG PIRACY!" to completely eliminate any chance of returns. Especially when a game doesn't actually have features promised prior to release.
And I'd be fine requiring a publisher to release a pre-launch "fact sheet" listing any features cut or nonfunctional at launch. Make them freeze this like 3-7 days out. Then require them (meaning both allowing it on sites like Steam and taking back excess stock from retail stores) to allow cancels of pre-orders.
That or pass a law requiring platforms like Steam to allow resales of licenses among users (possibly with a percentage cut of each transaction going to Steam and the developers). A huge part of the problem on PC in particular is that measures used to prevent piracy also make it harder (or impossible) to resell the game if that feature was important to you. I'm going to be less mad if I wind up losing $10 or $20 when I unload a copy of an Xbox game that had important features cut than if I'm basically stuck with a $50 PC game.
EDIT: Basically the only thing I'm not willing to accept is the status quo.
Once again,
In case you are unfamiliar, a chargeback is a process of getting a charge on your credit card refunded by your credit card company which can be done in a wide variety of situations (stolen card, fraud, defective merchandise, false advertising). Unfortunately, as I indicated in my previous post, Valve has a nasty habit of banning anyone who employs a chargeback on defective or otherwise unusable software purchased on Steam.
Yeah, whatever you do don't try that shit on Steam. Or they'll take all your toys away. Which is pretty fucked up, when you think about it.
I keep waiting for some credit card company to take issue with it; it is (to my understanding) strictly against the credit card company's policies for vendors to take any sort of retribution against a customer who issues a chargeback. Of course, we shouldn't need credit card companies to intervene; there should really really be a law against just arbitrarily taking away goods that have been paid for, even when they are digital.
Services like Steam are pretty much going to require entirely new consumer protection legislation, and we should really got on making such legislation sooner rather than later.
Yeah, chargebacks in general are pretty easy, and a good hammer to use on companies that don't live up to their promises.
The problem comes when that company has a kill switch that can make hundreds upon hundreds of dollars worth of your previous purchases go up in a puff of smoke.
And I think computer software has had long enough to suggest that your "buyer beware/badmouth them" strategy has shown itself to be ineffective. I'm gonna go ahead and suggest we need new laws to sort this out.
Want to fuck someone over? get their password to their account, buy something in their name and chargeback, you've fucked them out of a couple hundred dollars and steam will refuse to talk to them.
Edit: Steam is awesome and happy go lucky, but if it decides to fuck you ever, you are fucked hard. We've seen it a couple times in this forum.
Edit: to the person that responded to me about the FOV issue. No. When the rest of our media and the standard in video games is to use an increased FOV for widescreen and crop that for 4:3, instead of cropping a 4:3 image to fit letterbox, that isn't right. It was a different issue then UI Scaling, but they still fucked up. There's other really big additions, like promising an "emergency patch" a few days after release for people who couldn't even launch the game, which took 3+ months and came out with the DLC.
The point of the matter is he should of looked into his purchase before he made it. I honestly don't think there's an excuse with owning the 360 version for the first game, because for some people it would crash their 360's during play. Thats a huge fucking issue to have on a console game. There's a huge amount of "buyer beware" in this industry that doesn't apply elsewhere, it does need to be looked into. I mean it is worse in steam because they track how much time you spent in game, they can literally look and have a policy that says "wait, you played this game for 10 hours and want to return it now because you don't like the UI? no way!" Yes things should work the first time and we shouldn't be required to do research on every purchase in our society, but things just don't work that way in this day and age.
I tried my best to delete my comment before anyone saw it. Oh well.. I've never used Steam (I hear it's coming to Mac), which is why I kinda wanted to remove myself from the conversation. Too late for that!
Anyways, as an outsider, I think it's pretty interesting that Steam was held up as an example that both sides of the copyright crowd (information should be free to move around / people should pay for the media they consume) could rally around.
But to hear that if you use Steam long enough they have you by the balls by banning your entire account. That's not very good. Imagine if it spills into other media? Like Steam-for-music?
Maybe the solution is more services like Steam. So they could compete on 1) Price and 2) Customer Service.
Yeah, Steam is a fantastic service as long as you never end up on their bad side. Then you realize that you have basically zero protections whatsoever from them.
Except that, as you can see from XBLA/Wii/PSN/Steam/iTunes/others, it's entirely likely that any competing services would enact many of the same abusive policies. It's become pretty much the standard that when you buy digital content, you have no rights, no guarantees, and no recourse.
I don't see that changing without some sort of change in law.
I'd love to be able to return my PC games, but at the same time, the platform is already incredibly unattractive to developers. Making piracy even easier would have some serious ramifications in terms of what gets developed for/ported to PC. I know the prevailing wisdom on this forum is that piracy doesn't exist/doesn't matter, but people who make business decisions in this industry simply know better than that.
This depends entirely on whether or not they're willing to return the product. If I try to return a product because it doesn't work as advertised, and you tell me to go eat a bag of dicks, don't be surprised if I leave the product on your counter, walk out the door, and call my credit card company.
What, precisely, have I done wrong then?
And yes, Steam is unique and evil in that they have (and use) the ability to take all the other products you've purchased, rather than simply restrict your account from future purchases.
No, it's not that piracy doesn't exist or matter. It's that as an industry software developers (and particularly game developers) have gotten used to being able to tell their customers to fuck off. And blame it on piracy, whether or not that's relevant to the discussion. Which is bullshit.
Explain to me again why I should be able to return a game to Steam within a 48-hour or 96-hour window, provided I haven't played said game for more than X hours? I mean, other than that the publishers would never allow Steam to issue such a refund because they're used to being able to sell garbage and call all sales final.
I'm not sure you understand the point of a chargeback. If the merchant agrees to give you a refund, there is no reason to call your credit card company and ask for a chargeback. When it comes to credit cards, chargebacks exist pretty much specifically for disputes that the customer and vendor can't resolve themselves. Yes, Valve is within their rights (morally and legally) to refuse to do business with you in the future if you issue a chargeback on them whether the chargeback is justified or not. They are not doing that, though. They are stealing all of the other games you've purchased, games which you have purchased in full.