In addition to what @Kiwasi has contributed, the language of the examples provided is important: Digital goods, the supplier has to provide a remedy.
the right that faults in what you buy will be put right free of charge or a refund or replacement provided.
As a developer or publisher, you have an opportunity to fix the problem in the face of a dispute. If you absolutely can’t or won’t, then yes, the buyer is entitled to a refund. This allows for the fact that yes games have bugs, and yes patches and updates are typical - but the latter is often abused and not everyone supports a game after release, so in those cases consumers need protecting.
If you’d bought a truly broken game and hadn’t had an opportunity to play it within 3 days (not unusual, esp with gifts), you’d probably be pretty mad. 30 days is fair, and it gives the developer a reasonable window to remedy problems.
Usually we get nonsense laws when they try to apply previous media laws to new media, like movies and songs. But how the heck did they come up with 30 days. I beat skyrim in like 12 hours. Also a set number of days from the purchase date is a bad idea because someone with my schedule lately hasn’t been able to game in the past 4 or 5 weeks. If it’s a set date before I can return it I could be well beyond the return date and not even open the case yet! (for physical mediums)
It’s fine though, in this case AAA will make the stink. Their titles cost more and they stand to lose much more than we do having these conditions spelled out.
There is a general sense (in the common wealth at least) that many of the big software companies haven’t been paying their dues. Because the businesses are often online, and no physical goods are exchanged, traditional concepts like borders and import tariffs don’t always work.
I think many governments are actually gearing up to tackle digital businesses. Games are a small part of this. But we’ve already seen sales tax applied to online purchases. Now we are seeing consumer protection laws. It won’t be long before the digital industry is back on an equal footing with all of the other industries.
This is hardly a bad thing.
And if an AAA or indie doesn’t want to comply, then you’ll see sales of their products banned. Gaming is a long way from being considered an essential service. The gaming industry (at least in my part of the world) has very little political clout.
For america that’ll depend on the 2016 elections. If bernie sanders or lessig are elected, then money is not speech. If any other candidate wins, then money is speech… and gaming makes quite a lot of money.
So you would be excited and more impressed by planets^3
Freedom to have usually misleading and occasionally false advertising
It’s not about political clout, it’s about throwing lawyers at defence and keeping it going until a landmark ruling is obtained. Money can solve lots of things.
Freedom is a slippery concept, and has some different connotations depending on what part of the world you live in.
Protection of basic human rights, including consumer rights, comes well within my definition of freedom. There are many people who don’t have the time or the skills to judge a product before buying it. They should be protected from scams and unethical business practices.
We can’t run multi page threads bemoaning cheap clones flooding market that are not worth playing, and then be opposed to someone passing a law to do something about it.
At the time Cube World had just released to the public and I don’t believe there was much on the developer. Additionally the initial release was very advanced and much closer to a release candidate than most early access games.
Regardless risk should not fall solely on the shoulders of the consumer.
True enough. And Consumer protection doesn’t limit consumer spending, it’s there to provide a sense of security - that it’s safe (or at least not completely reckless) to spend.
The public spends when they have money, and they spend it more willingly on things they feel are a good investment.
@Stardog Reading reviews is one mechanism for researching purchase, but not everybody does that (especially when buying gifts), and the industry is moving more and more towards pre-order schemes with early access and exclusive content attached to it, quite often at incredibly high (>£100) prices.
@derkoi Steam’s Early Access is a slightly different kettle of fish anyway. It’s made clear that Early Access is for games that are in a state of early development. You can’t complain a feature is broken if it hasn’t been written yet (or the dozens, hundreds of other features it relies on to function properly haven’t been implemented yet). Maybe this is where Valve’s own dispute resolution comes in (I don’t know because I’ve not looked at it that closely), but I’m reasonably confident the new law won’t be much use with Steam EA except in extreme cases of abuse by the developers.
It’s not a magic button, you have to be able to demonstrate you’re not getting what you paid for, and if you knowingly bought something not finished yet, well, that’s bargain hunt (or not, if you paid a premium price).
I don’t want to turn this into a Steam thread, but I wonder what Early Access would be like if Valve held payments - or a percentage/cap) in escrow, to be paid when games are actually finished, or when they reach advertised milestones.
Early Access seems susceptible to fly-by-night developers. It might not hurt much to have an incentive for developers to finish the job, and to a good standard.
A few weeks back I had an idea for a video game crowdfunding site that combine Kickstarter’s support for one-off projects with Patreon’s support for milestone based payments. I was pretty excited to get started on it until I did the math and realized that it would take far longer for something like that to catch on and become profitable than I had time to invest in it. Maybe someone else can take the idea and run with it, because I’d like to use it. I think the added confidence it would inspire in patrons would be a huge advantage over Kickstarter and having the opportunity for a project’s support to grow organically over a longer period of time is probably better for developers.
Can I get a refund when I watch a movie and an actor did a worse job portaying the character than he is supposed to?
Can I get a refund when I read a book and there is a typo?
Can I get a refund when I listen to music and the singer didn’t hit the right note?
Can I get a refund when I buy a chocolate pudding and it just doesn’t taste the way I expected?
I’m sorry, I think this is hilarious.
In a bad way.
This reminds me of the discussion about whether or not developers should be allowed to advertise a game without making every aspect clear beforehand.
It’s just common sense to not include every detail about a product. And as already referenced, some games depend on their bugs in order to be funny. It’s not even something that’s generally a bad thing. It can be used as part of a style.
Of course, most people won’t put a warning on their game saying “This may include several bugs across the whole game!”, but on the other hand, are there warnings for everything I buy which I might not like about the purchase?
Why would video games be treated differently?
No, but you can probably get a refund if you buy chocolate pudding and you get rice pudding. Or if you buy chocolate pudding and the cup is empty. I don’t think the law is about getting a refund if you merely don’t like the game. It’s about getting a refund if the game is fundamentally broken and unplayable. Though the definition of “fundamentally broken” probably varies so much that there will be tons of illegitimate refund requests. I just got a FreeFly VR headset and some of the app reviews for VR apps complain that the game has two screens! People have gotten really really bad at knowing what they are getting themselves into when they download a product these days. As a developer, I’d probably refund a person if they bought a VR app not knowing what the heck VR is and that it is supposed two screens even thought it’s right in the description for all the apps that you need a VR headset. I think it’s the right thing to do. But I’m not sure it’s something you should be forced to do. Encouraging consumer confidence is great, but there’s something to be said for encouraging consumers to be responsible with their spending as well.
