I understand it sucks. I have faith in some companies as well.
I get annoyed when the game is crap but while I blame the developer for making a crappy game, I don't blame them for my purchasing decision. That's all me.
Basically, you learn your lesson and not file a class action lawsuit for 60 bucks.
Gender: Male Location: In Luna's mane, chasing STAAARS!
You say it's the consumer's fault but do you mean that 100%? Are sure developers have no part in influencing gamers whatsoever? It was their deception that sold the game in the first place. They showed off their new brand of Wheat Thins at the grocery store, gave everybody a sample and they liked it enough to go buy a box, only to go back home and find out the crackers taste like shit and are left pondering the question "where's what was promised? This isn't it."
No, that's not what they did- giving out samples you say are the same as the real thing and aren't, that really would be false advertising. But a free sample in this case would be a playable demo purporting to be directly like the game and used to sell the game, of which there was not one, and if there was one it wouldn't have looked like the misleading earlier videos anyway.
Early versions don't necessarily resemble the finished product- that's just a general fact of life and ridiculous to make a point of litigation. They didn't directly mis-represent the final product, they just over-promised in advance. If you pre-order or buy a game before you have checked or heard feedback on the actual finished product, that's a risk you knowingly took.
The ultimate point here is- this is not deception, it's under-performance. Even if you could prove that they always knew that the final game would never look as good as the demos, that's obviously not something that speaks well for them but it's still not criminal so long as they didn't directly try to show the final released product as being better than it was.
The appropriate punishment is therefore in reputation and market, and like I said earlier, that punishment is being served. No need for the law. From a wider perspective, it's also a lesson about the gaming industry in general with how problematic review embargoes are, as clearly all the review publications wanted to tell everyone that the game was no good before release but could not.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on May 1st, 2013 at 10:56 PM
TBH, I think suing them is a bit much. There's no real basis for it. In all honesty though, I hope that Gearbox (and anyone else that thinks of giving people the wrong impression about a game) has learned their lesson, and will be careful about misleading people in future.
While nothing they did was illegal, it was certainly a dick move, and I'd hope that they learned their lesson.
The game isn't a POS. it's bad, yes, but it's still playable. It's just, at the end of the day, a massive disappointment compared to what we'd been led to believe it would be.
It's the consumers fault for buying something that is shit. They're is plenty of ways to find out if a game is good or not before buying the game.
The only time I could see it being the developers fault is if they release a game that is broken (bugs, glitches and crashes) because I feel it's unrealistic for a gamer to know that in advanced.
But the issue was how Gearbox/Sega misrepresented the game from pre-release footage.
Man, f*ck this game. Got me all excited for nothing. So glad I dodged the bullet here because I always like to give games a try before judgin' them and this was just.... Bad.
Gender: Male Location: In Luna's mane, chasing STAAARS!
Randy, you're worse than Bleszinski
I've watched you from that very first day
To see who you'd might screw
To see what you'd put me through
To see what you wouldn't do
And all the ways E3 surprisingly made us pleased with you
It was time for Aliens to come
We're now mad, and we can't find Ripley's gun
Ridley Scott's not happy
How dare you mess with me
There's nowhere you can flee
Now it's time for you to give me back my money
it's not the consumers fault for buying shit when they're lied to, that statement is just stupid and ridiculous. It's the consumers fault for supporting the shit they buy, that i will agree upon. However, the majority of the consumer whom have bought coloniual marines do not support the game. a better example of what i think you were trying to say is call of duty fans. You know, the fans who ***** and moan about the product they buy year afater year and continue to play religiously.
__________________ "If you tell the truth, you never have to remember anything" -Twain
(sig by Scythe)
Gender: Male Location: In Luna's mane, chasing STAAARS!
It's not really the consumer's fault. It's not like Gearbox falsely advertised with a stage demo before so nobody knew better and before anyone says Duke Nukem Forever was falsely advertised, they're wrong. Everything they showed off for Duke this generation was is in the latest installment. If gamers bought it, then it was their fault. Colonial Marines is a completely different story. It's not the consumer's fault this time.
If you buy something and it's shit, it's your fault for buying it.
It being shit, is the fault of the company. All companies with a product to sell will lie, cheat and steal to get you to part with your hard-earned cash.
Using the term 'false advertising' is misleading, as it implies you are saying there is a legal wrong here, which there is not. A misleading preview is not the same thing as false advertising. If they had actually advertised the release version of the game using the misleading footage, then that would indeed have been false advertising and nobody would be arguing it (and indeed, the law would be after them).
What happened here is that either the preview demo footage was always doctored to look better than it was ever going to be able to look, or they had to cut corners to get the game actually to run. In both cases, this is not uncommon practice with pre-release demo footage; Gearbox are just catching more PR flak here because of dashed expectations. But you honestly should not be holding a company legally responsible for the final product not looking like the test versions. As people have said, this is the responsibility of the consumer. If you make a purchase based on pre-release material, you are taking a risk in full knowledge of not having actually seen the finished product.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on May 7th, 2013 at 06:35 AM
I think another reason Gearbox is catching flak is because it's just a crappy game. Look at Killzone 2, the game didn't look like it's pre-release footaget but it wasn't a bad game so people are more inclined to forget about the pre-release footage.
Alien: Colonial Marines is just a crappy game so the pre-footage is even more glaring.
Gender: Male Location: In Luna's mane, chasing STAAARS!
That Killzone 2 pre-release footage was nothing more than a cinematic. Anyone who took that seriously as gameplay footage must've been delusional and hey, I liked the sequel because it was actually enjoyable. Can't say the same for Aliens though. Randy did show off what actually looked like gameplay footage back in 2012 and everyone does have a right to complain. They were deceived and Gearbox, as they know how much they trusted their fans as much as they trusted them, could've gave a warning they screwed up but instead let the chips fall into play and now they are regretting it.
Then you got YOUR money's worth. Can't say the same for everyone else >_>
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Thanks Scythe for the sig.
Last edited by Nemesis X on May 7th, 2013 at 07:58 PM
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