I don’t know exactly who we talked to or whatever to get permission to release it as such… just going by what I’ve seen on our forums.
I was going to buy WBC3 from Impulse until I discovered it’s XP only. So sad.
WBC is one of my favorite RTS franchises. I still remember the day I bought WBC3 at retail and sat eating lunch reading its instruction book.
So any service like this – Steam, for example – that sells a third party game that may have bugs that render it unplayable at times is at fault? I actually think the seller is responsible and at the very least should accept returns and refund the sale. It’s like buying something from Target that isn’t quite right – you return it.
What is the return policy at these online vendors like Steam, Impulse, GOG, and others?
I hear it runs fine on Vista, but ymmv and there obviously can’t be any support if it doesn’t. I installed a CD copy on my Vista 64 box some time ago but I don’t think I ever fired it up since, so I can’t really attest to the validity of those rumors.
It certainly seemed that way.
[I]“In short, it’s neither Brad’s nor Stardock’s fault that the game is broken”
[/I]That seems like of unambiguous. And that wasn’t the only post along those lines.
“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.”
A comment like that seems to trying to excuse bad behavior.
Whatever.
Still, something isn’t adding up here. There are a fair number of complaints from different users regarding this on the Stardock forums, ranging back to the beginning of this year. If Stardock has gone to Enlight 3 times (as Brad claims), that also means there’s a fair number of complaints directly to Stardock. Yet the Stardock mods have just told customers to submit for refunds or that it’s not compatible with Vista or to contact Enlight. Those are rather inconsistent responses, especially if they’re sure that the version of Warlords is A-OK. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Why talk to customers about going to Enlight if you’ve been assured by Enlight that this version is fine? If you think a particular user-created mod causes this problem, how hard would it be to test that? 15-30 minutes worth of time? Wouldn’t that be faster than going back to Enlight 3 times?
However, if that version was broken for a majority of folks, I’d expect to see more complaints. And it’s not in Stardock’s best interest to knowingly sell a broken product. So I’m not passing judgment on either side because we simply don’t have enough information to make a reasonable determination.
I had an issue with a game on Impulse and Stardock quickly and politely refunded my money and removed the game from my list. They did ask what my issue was, but in an attempt to try to help me get everything working not as if they were questioning my attempt to get a refund.
Earlier in thread it was stated that Stardock offered returns. Which I think is very reasonable and responsible of them. Which credits this article as such as Brad stated it to be.
Seems to me like it was a case of a luser getting all heated because his favorite game broke.
Also, “ring of elven greed” - COME ON! Can’t anyone see the irony here? Perhaps even intended? Nothing screams “pirate” louder than this!
Witty lil sneaky devs, aren’t we?
I believe that GoG cracks games/inject code in order to make them work.
And any luser dumb enough to use Vista deserves whatever problems they get.
What is the return policy at these online vendors like Steam, Impulse, GOG, and others?
This is another point that should be brought up: IMPULSE provide refunds. In the thread referenced by that article, the user having this problem received a full refund.
The game works. But no, you can’t mix and match fan made mods that are assuming the user is using a fan made patch for the game.
if GOG is distributing a fan-made patch of the game (which someone is presuming) that’s something I can’t really comment on. Our agreements with developers and publishers give us only the right to distribute their copyrighted game as is.
Saying the game doesn’t work out of the box is a pretty outrageous thing to say. It works fine. Obviously, fan-made updates likely improve on the game beyond the last official update. Those users can use those fan made updates if they want.
Re: B&M stores selling broken games, I think you can still find Tabula Rasa for sale at Best Buy and/or Gamestop.
And they’re wrong to do it.
I know people here have no love for poor ol’ Derek, but…
After Take2 refused to give him further funds to continue development on BC3K (or something like that) they pushed the title out the door, even though supposedly Derek warned them that it’s no where near ready and then people would piss and moan at Derek with mails about it not working while Take2 did jack shit to help anyone or give refunds.
So are politicians, yet, they keep throwing promises and getting votes.
Money money money…hate humani…ty’s a bunch 'o fags!
Dangit, did a scan and missed those. Nevermind then.
I have zero experience with WBC3, but from reading this thread it sounds like Brad may not understand what the problem is.
The problem isn’t that the Impulse version has DRM. It does not, as Trevor confirmed. The problem seems to be that the removal of DRM has triggered an anti-piracy measure hardcoded into the game to gimp the player’s experience (similar to the anti-piracy measure that Titan’s Quest used).
So it’s entirely possible that the game is DRM free and broken as a result because Enlight didn’t take the necessary steps to fix the anti-piracy measure when they stripped the DRM.
I think that’s just stupidity on the part of the staff and not willful fraud.
Just to better clarify, I was attempting to verbally abuse the blogger(s) for posting their article the way they did, and I was also doing it at the expense of a customer who did not get the facts before sending that email along.
Stardock didn’t break it for those users, so in that respect it isn’t their fault. If you read the rest of my post, I did say that it would be Stardock’s responsibility to pull a broken product from their proverbial shelves fter offering refunds (which they did some time ago). It seems, however, that it’s not actually broken in the first place for most users - something else is amiss.
At this point, I’m pretty confused. Saying I wanted to buy the game from Stardock, it would work fine out of the box? No patch necessary?
This is what I was asking up above.
Brad, if you possibly could, would you please allocate a couple hours to play the game and get back to us on whether you’re getting treasures just fine or if you’re being tagged as a greedy elven pirate?
Tom mentioned this issue back in April:
http://fidgit.com/archives/2009/04/steam_and_impulse_demonstrate.php
That’s not the whole truth.
Customer:
“2. The support technician told me that I could only get a 75% refund unless I got written authorization from Enlight Games. (Based on their website, the name “Relic Games” might better apply to them).”
Stardock Response:
“Let’s say you bought this game from Best Buy. If you tried to return it, they would laugh you out of the building. In order to get any kind of refund, you’d still have to contact Enlight. The fact that we’re offering a 75% refund is, I think, above and beyond the norm.”
Telling the customer to get written authorization from Enlight before giving them a refund is not a small detail. Leaving it out makes you appear less than forthcoming.
Well, it seems not to work fine for a fair number of users stretching all the way back to January of this year. You seem to blame the problem on “fan-made updates”. Have you tested your version to see if applying fan-made updates does, in fact, result in the causing the issues? Or are you just simply speculating?
As I said, I’m not passing judgment. But I get the feeling we haven’t heard the whole story yet.