Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Interesting Article in French Newspaper
MurlockDance
Member Posts: 1,223
Usually, the French press is pretty quiet about video game releases, but I came across an interesting article about D3's release while reading Le Monde's website .
The general gist of it is that a consumer group, the UFC-Que Choisir, is basically keeping an eye on how things develope with the online-only play aspect and the initial high price of the game: the consumer group believes the asking price is too high for the service people are getting considering all of the downsides to having to play solo online (for example).
This is one of the most important paragraphs and is a quote in the article from the UFC-Que Choisir.
""Les DRM altèrent très significativement les usages, puisque le consommateur ne peut jouir de ce jeu comme bon lui semble (par exemple chez un ami, dans un lieu public, etc.), tout en étant soumis à des dysfonctionnements très gênants (une coupure de réseau qui fait perdre le bénéfice de la partie) et cela sans aucune contrepartie tarifaire (les prix ne baissent pas). Il n'est pas acceptable que les consommateurs ne puissent pas jouer à un jeu payé entre 50 et 60 euros dans de bonnes conditions", s'alarme l'association."
Basic translation: 'the DRM changes quite significantly how the players derive enjoyment from the game (for example limiting playing over at a friend's, in a public place, etc.), all the while being subjected to extremely annoying errors (sudden booting from the game that loses all progress) and without any counterbalance in the price (retails at same price as other games). It is not acceptable that players can't play a game they paid 50-60 € for in good conditions.'
The article goes on to say that this consumer group has gone after other game developers/publishers for overly enthusiastic DRM that can ruin peoples' enjoyment. The group is saying that if bnet problems continue, they will elevate this to an association that investigates fraud.
I am interested to find out what comes out of this. I had really bad problems a couple weeks ago with not being able to get into the game at all (one entire week of Error 37). Some other EU folks here said that they had similar problems. The launch here was very bad. The many downtimes since then have also been bad. The article didn't even address the major hacking events that could or may have compromised peoples' details on top of the ingame inconvenience of losing gold, items, etc.
My question though is where does it start and stop? This industry has been plagued with problems since Day 1, just look at the release of Anarchy Online as perhaps one of the worst ever. It was sort of accepted back then that this sort of thing happened and if you were a fan of the game and the company you just took it on the chin. Nowadays, it looks ever increasingly like that is not really legal or that people are becoming less and less tolerant. I admit I am losing my tolerance, especially with respect to something like D3 which is not an MMO (no persistant, open, online world, different type of development cycle, etc.). We are forced to play when Blizzard deems it ok, and if you want any form of "security", you have to have a mobile phone handy at all times.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Comments
Knowing the French they'll probably organize a strike about it :P
My brand new bloggity blog.
Vote with your wallet. End of story.
As we say here in France "dans grève il y a rêve"
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.