I've seen this same arguement used with many computer games. Name one court case where it actually happened...
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I've seen this same arguement used with many computer games. Name one court case where it actually happened...
"Million". I think your images of Paradox' sales are a bit fumbled to say the least... By about a margin of a a few hundreds of thousands.
I did not bring the law into this. I'm in my right to respond, esp. since I do know something about 'the law' from my RL profession. And again, stop questioning me in public. I thought our eight of so PMs were enough...
Sorry for the OTbut this statement immediatley brought Black Adder to my mind.
Leftenant George:
"The war started because of the vile Hun and his empire building"
Captain Blackadder:
"George, the British Empire, at present, accounts a quarter of the globe, while the german empire consists of a small sausage factory in tanganiika.
I hardly think we can be entirely absolved from blame on the imperialistic front."
I bought WitP about a year and a half ago and reacently bought AE. Both games were considerably more expensive than HOI3.
Of course, I have no idea (well, a little from Matrix´ forum) how WitP 1.0 was, as when I got it, it was allready 1.8, but AE was extremely stable/polished and very balanced (in terms of historical accuracy, you can´t realy ballance a Buffalo vs. a Zero; very small issues are being looked at now)
Why did I shell out so much money for a game, you ask?
Well, let me put it this way:
When I was 18 I got my first car, a very old, used one, of course. Money was sparse, but as an 18 year old, you had to have a stero in your car. So I got me one on the cheap. Cheap RC, cheap booster, cheap speakers. After about a year the booster was dead, the speakers shot. So I got new ones. Again a year later, same thing. And I bought another cheap set. Yet another year later, I finally bought a more expensive set. Good RC, good booster and excellent speakers. This set has lasted me for about 15 years. In the long run, it was far cheaper than the cheap ones.
Same goes for games. Paying more initially, for a game I will play for years will be much cheaper in the long run, than buying a game for 20 euros, only to buy the next one in a couple of weeks.
If I want quality, I have to pay for it!
Obviously, this is only me speaking. As you can see, when I was younger I too jumped on the "cheap - now" waggon, and such a concept will probably work reasonably well with the grognard group, but not with the "twitchy FPS crowd"
Cheers for the Black Adder reference and Vent_Gala for a well turned phrase.
Beyond that i'd say that the bit about economy and long term functionality is spot on. I've gotten 100s of times more value out of JA2 then I spent for my copy and the same can be said of HoI 2 which I still see as the best grand strategy game ever made.
European law doens't work on precedents ('cept for England), so precedents don't matter.
Also, there's no 'value minimum', as I said. Even if you commit fraud for just five €, you still comitted fraud. Legal action never happens about these sums because the parties concerned never think it's worthwile - but that doesn't mean that one could not procecute (sp?) if they pressed the case.
It's not like you lose your rights because the transaction didn't involve enough money... That's a pretty narrow way to approach things!
Once again, I have to make some things clear mate. Nothing personal again, but you're mixing up a number of different legal concepts.
1 - Fraud = criminal offence, punishable with imprisonment. The issue at hand is under no circumstance a criminal case.
2 - Consumer law: this is where you ought to be looking. The words you're looking for are 'misleading advertising'. Not a criminal offence. However, punishable under consumer law. Usually by fines.
3 - Damages: only handed out in very specific circumstances in Western Europe: like suffering tremendous physical, psychological or other damage that cost you dearly. Not a court in Europe would hand out damages in this case.
4 - To summarize: hypothetically, if such a case were to come before a court and, hypothetically, you'd win... you'd either get your money refunded or product repaired. And the producer fined.
Wow, this thread has taken a turn for the dumb.
As I understand it Frederik has organised refunds for the frothingly dissatisfied who PM him, which seems like a pretty good thing to do considering a lot of companies just say "tough luck, no refunds for software".
For the rest of us, who are just very dissatisfied, we are happy to just come on here and bitch about the number of bugs, in the hopes that they'll patch it quickly, and maybe hire a full-time experienced QA guy (which is very different from a tester) next time, and delay the release until it's in good shape.
But there's always one person whenever a really buggy game comes out who starts threatening class-action lawsuits due to his human rights being trampled on.
Maybe if installing the game caused your computer to catch on fire and burn down your house with your wife and kids inside, I could then understand this logic, but as it is I just have to say some people are stupid.
As I understand it Frederik has organised refunds for the frothingly dissatisfied who PM him, which seems like a pretty good thing to do considering a lot of companies just say "tough luck, no refunds for software".
For the rest of us, who are just very dissatisfied, we are happy to just come on here and bitch about the number of bugs, in the hopes that they'll patch it quickly, and maybe hire a full-time experienced QA guy (which is very different from a tester) next time, and delay the release until it's in good shape.
But there's always one person whenever a really buggy game comes out who starts threatening class-action lawsuits due to his human rights being trampled on.
Maybe if installing the game caused your computer to catch on fire and burn down your house with your wife and kids inside, I could then understand this logic, but as it is I just have to say some people are stupid.
Again, that's consumer protections. They are not human rights. Don't abuse the term.
Posted by Vulture:
It's not rocket science. Foul language, insults, ad hominem attacks, spam... will not be tolerated.
You tell em Vulture! I hate hominems too! Never know if the author meant read (present tense) or read (past tense).
Left (direction) or left (the room).
Fight the power! Down with hominems!!!
:rofl:
It's not rocket science. Foul language, insults, ad hominem attacks, spam... will not be tolerated.
You tell em Vulture! I hate hominems too! Never know if the author meant read (present tense) or read (past tense).
Left (direction) or left (the room).
Fight the power! Down with hominems!!!
:rofl:
Nice points I suppose but it seems that would matter when PI sold how many copies of title since the longer something has been out the lower the demand and the price become.
Honestly I have no idea what financial shape PI is in but I will say that selling something that is a pre-beta would likely make anyone that is not a committed PI fan rather disenfranchised. I would also point out that reviewers don't wait for a game to have the final patch issued the one can expect plenty of negative reviews seeing the state that HoI 3 has been in. Negative reviews are very bad for a game company since a great number of customers don't simply buy everything that a firm issues but bases a purchase decision upon published reviews.
Other then what i've already mentioned I found everything else you raised agreeable.
Not sure if you have found the answer to this as I am coming very late to the thread, but I accidentally discovered a possible reason for this. I too had some 'corrupted' save games and could not figure out why, then noted something after I sent in a save game at the request of one of the mods for a bug I reported. The mod reported back that the save was 'corrupted' but that same save I sent in and subsequent saves were working fine on my system.
What I noticed was that I had been playing with a mod (Shibs Airborne mod to be exact) which changed the tech tree by adding units as well as how certain existing units behaved. So, when I got the reply post from the mod back about how the save game I sent was corrupted and mine were still working fine, it got me to thinking about what might be different about our two setups. The only thing I could think of was the addition of different mods. Some experimentation later and I was able to recreate 100% the 'corrupt' save game by simply removing Shibs airborne mod and attempting to load a save game that had been using it prior (ie no mod, save game would not load properly and appeared corrupted. Mod in and it loaded without a problem).
Let me say that there is nothing wrong with Shibs Airborne mod and it does not 'break' the game, but it appears that within the save game something is added that requires the same mod to be loaded in order to work (I do not know what as it is beyond my skills). It may even be that this might be the root behind the CTD's from save games as well.
edit: edited for clarity
It'd be worth it to get this product 'repaired'!
Plus it would send out a much needed signal to the entire games industry, for that matter.
Bill3000 said:
I didn't say it's part of the Declaration of Human Rights or anything - I pointed out that consumers have, in fact, RIGHTS - and not just "the right to spend money on things of our choosing", as you put it.
Also, I found a notice on a case concerning a violation of Directive 1999/44/EG (which is the EU directive we're talking about here - and which contains the exerpt (sp?) I posted above) concerning €70 - so there is, indeed, no lower money barrier for this thing.
You know, all this discussing this makes me actually want to go through with this... I have the money, connections and time to do this - and I just love courtrooms...
It'd be worth it to get this product 'repaired'!
Plus it would send out a much needed signal to the entire games industry, for that matter.
You know, all this discussing this makes me actually want to go through with this... I have the money, connections and time to do this - and I just love courtrooms...
PI, WILL fix the game at some point, so you're suing them to "force them" to do what they're going to do anyway is beyond my reasoning, the company's CEO has offered to personally ensure that anyone who asks for a refund gets one... if you want to "send a message, by suing this company, the message you'll be sending is "don't give good customer service, because you'll STILL get sued by some :censored:"
seriously i don't get what you think you'll gain from suing PI, suing CA, or EA i can see the point of though
It'd be worth it to get this product 'repaired'!
Plus it would send out a much needed signal to the entire games industry, for that matter.
I didn't say it's part of the Declaration of Human Rights or anything - I pointed out that consumers have, in fact, RIGHTS - and not just "the right to spend money on things of our choosing", as you put it.
Also, I found a notice on a case concerning a violation of Directive 1999/44/EG (which is the EU directive we're talking about here - and which contains the exerpt (sp?) I posted above) concerning €70 - so there is, indeed, no lower money barrier for this thing.
You know, all this discussing this makes me actually want to go through with this... I have the money, connections and time to do this - and I just love courtrooms...
Paradox would point to the fact that they offered refunds to people who requested them, and you'd get thrown out of court. Plus by the time your case started in 6-12 months, the game will probably be playable, so they'd be found to have made a good faith effort to fix their product.
But please, go ahead and do this. I could use some laughter after getting so frustrated by this poor release of a great series of games.
The only thing more annoying to me than game companies that shovel us crap, is lawyers that want to sue everyone for anything.
I recall there being alot of bugs in HoI1 and 2 aswell. Was it HoI1 or 2 where there was no troops defending France in Belgian border and you could conquer all of Europe with 1 cavalry? Which HoI was it where Romania managed to conquer most of Russia most of the time?
Some random quotes from me at the time of HoI1 release:
Things have hardly changed over the years and I remember being really frustrated due to the limited money I had at the time and how buggy the game I decided to give that money for was. Still I kept buying Paradox games since they make the games I want to play and they make them better than anybody else.
I really do understand the frustration and unsatisfaction and while I think they have something to improve in their business practise, having fanboys like me who are willing to overlook possible short comings of their initial releases again and again, they must be doing something right. In the end, there isn't a single Paradox game I have regretted of buying (and starting from EU1 I've bought them all apart from Rome and Diplomacy).
I can appreciate that - the point is that they shouldn't have released the game in the state it was in the first place.
There's hidden defects (which place no blame on the producer - everybody gets fabrication errors sometimes), and then there's a blatant disregard of pretty obvious defects, and still selling the product claiming it works as advertised (by the simple fact that there were no warnings to the contrary).
And those are two very different things.
It'd be worth it to get this product 'repaired'!
Plus it would send out a much needed signal to the entire games industry, for that matter.
I didn't say it's part of the Declaration of Human Rights or anything - I pointed out that consumers have, in fact, RIGHTS - and not just "the right to spend money on things of our choosing", as you put it.
Also, I found a notice on a case concerning a violation of Directive 1999/44/EG (which is the EU directive we're talking about here - and which contains the exerpt (sp?) I posted above) concerning €70 - so there is, indeed, no lower money barrier for this thing.
You know, all this discussing this makes me actually want to go through with this... I have the money, connections and time to do this - and I just love courtrooms...
I almost would like you to go through with this and then report back here what your findings were. I think I can safely say that I'm in the large majority that thinks you'll be laughed out of court since your case is: I deserve damages because in the game I bought the features that were promised were there, but didn't work correctly at first. Dude, don't sue Paradox, sue Microsoft and Apple and every either big name software company because the situation described occurs with their releases as well and they are much, much bigger fish with much, much deeper pockets. I'd also advise keeping a running tally of things that you buy that break through no fault of your own, you can sue them as well, and what about a restaurant that messes up your order or a company that ships you the wrong product: you are surrounded by wonderful lawsuit opportunities!
By the time this even makes it to a court room (assuming it would) the game would be patched up/expanded and running like the well oiled machine it will be. Or, said customer would have become bored and moved onto a new game forgotting all about the terrible emotional roller coaster HOI3 was for him/her thus wasting everyones time and money.
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