1mo ago

UK parliament to StopKillingGames campaign: "There are no plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video games. Those selling games must comply with existing requirements [...]"

petition.parliament.uk Petition: Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold

The government should update consumer law to prohibit publishers from disabling video games (and related game assets / features) they have already sold without recourse for customers to retain or repair them. We seek this as a statutory consumer right.

3 comments

I have no plans to amend my acquirement methods for video games

"A trader or third party can upgrade and improve the features of digital content so long as it continues to match any description given by the trader and conforms with any pre-contract information provided by the trader, unless varied by express agreement. "
That's an odd paragraph to include.
- It's not that weird. What they're aiming to avoid is the situation where a developer does a bait-and-switch replacement of the original, advertised game concept to chase a new demographic with new money. If you have never experienced this, count yourself lucky. A shady developer can advertise/sell a great concept in some niche like a compelling roguelike, survival crafting game or even a cozy and artistic decorating game, and actually create a decent game with lots of potential... at first. And then when it's collected a bunch of genuine good reviews and they realize either it's harder than they thought to make, or it's not making the cash flow they expected and not likely to, literally just replace the whole product, product page, everything with some generic shoot-em-up battle royale asset flip as an "upgrade" and alienate the early buyers to get a whole new audience to throw money at them until they realize the reviews are for what's essentially a totally different game before it crashes into mostly-negative territory. You might not think something this egregious ever really happens, but it does, especially in the horrible land of Crowdfunding/Early Access.
  The first example I can remember that happened to me personally was called "Star Forge" not to be confused with the more recent board game adaption of the same name. The linked post is about the internal development drama behind the scenes, but the bait-and-switch bullshit happened years ago and it went sideways very quickly and was eventually pulled from the store never to be seen again.