That there have been PC games in the past that have been completely broken, and that stores have carried them and I don’t recall ever seeing this kind of demand being made of those stores.
The GOG version actually includes the unofficial patch, with official approval.
If the facts are accurate, I can’t believe some people here are trying to defend a company that is knowingly selling a broken game. Sad…
What game is Gamestop selling that doesn’t work for anyone? You obviously have something in mind. Stop being coy and just spit it out already.
I can’t speak for Gamestop, but you are completely wrong otherwise. As I said before, Target routinely pulls product that is reported to be nonfunctional. Good stores, even decent ones that want to keep their customers, do not continue to stock broken wares. Stop exaggerating.
Then you weren’t paying attention. This kind of behaviour has never been acceptable for either online retailers or brick-and-mortar retailer.
Oh I’m not trying to defend Stardock, and it’s definitely crummy for the consumer whatever the real reason behind it is. Just some idle speculation about behaviour that does seem odd otherwise. (edit: And apparently isn’t the case!)
This is such a nonsense article. Wasn’t there a time when “journalists” would at least follow-up with someone to find out the facts?
This is what I mailed to them:
This article: http://consumerist.com/5408206/stardock-selling-broken-downloadable-game has no basis in fact.
What’s the deal here with the consumerist writing up something like this without even attempting to ascertain the truth in the matter?
We have gone to Enlight 3 times about this and Trevor Chan himself has assured us that we have the latest version of Warlords Battlecry 3 and that is has NO DRM.
What people complain about is that there are fan patches that fix some of the bugs in the last official version (which is what we sell). We are obviously not authorized to distribute a fan-patched version of Warlords Battlecry 3, but there’s nothing that stops customers from applying those updates themselves.
In the future, it would be helpful if your writers did some due diligence before posting something like this.
So is what the Consumerist post is saying about the DRM triggering (Ring of Elven Greed, etc) just not true?
So what are all the complaints about? There seem to be a few people with the same odd issue. That seems strange.
Hope you guys get this sorted.
It’s not unheard of for people with pirated versions of a game to go to an official forum for help.
I don’t know if that’s the case here but that’s a possibility I suppose.
Which GameStop extarbags!
I have no idea. Odds are they applied some some file that is dependent on a fan-made patch of the game.
It would be like someone buying Master of Orion 3 and downloading a fan mod not realizing the fan mod required a fan patched version of MOO3 (which there were some) and then blaming Atari or whatever for the fan mod not working.
Most games do have some sort of checksum lookup to make sure they have the right files. It has nothing to do with DRM.
The article is just so obnoxiously wrong. It’s just barely one step above those forum rants that blame games for breaking their monitor or whatever.
Did Battlecry 3 use that protection scheme that makes the game go haywire if it’s not there, though? Maybe Trevor is saying it’s ok and has no DRM, but not explaining what that really means… aka the game breaks itself because it acts like a pirated copy of the game?
Maybe they’re not even sure what it is they’ve given you? Stranger things have happened.
Keep us posted if they get back to you, I’m a subscriber and I can complain too.
But GOG is?
Something’s not adding up here.
I want to go back to this. I don’t recall anyone defending them in the light of those “facts,” we were brainstorming because there has to be a better explanation than “Stardock is evil LOL.” You can make that assumption about a lot of companies but have to give most people the benefit of the doubt until the truth comes out.
GOG’s not just a publisher, they also take responsibility for making old games (with DRM) work on current PCs and OSs (without DRM). Sometimes, if not all the time, that means patching/modding/cracking.
“Commandos” on Steam is broken for a lot of people. Mainly everyone that has a modern PC with a decent CPU. The game’s speed is linked to the CPU speed and therefore unplayable.
Valve refers to Eidos (publisher). When asked Eidos refers to Valve.
Valve knows about this issue for a long time but keeps selling the game…
Probably the only good way to solve that would be to make “Pyro Studios” work on a patch. However the question is if they still have the source code somewhere and if Eidos would pay for coding the patch.
To be fair the GoG version also doesn’t work for some people but the problem is a codec that is not present in the current Windows OS like XP, Vista and 7. GoG is looking into that issue though they also continue to sell the game.
I wouldn’t touch that game with a 10 foot pole as seller since it seems pretty complicated.