There’s tons of tension because of a simple problem that isn’t simply explained, and blizzard won’t hear it because it’s too nail on the head. And that’s the fact there’s currently two different generations here trying to play the same game and the company doesn’t care about the old one, because the newer generation is feeding bad corporate practices, such as refusing refunds, lack of completed product, lame excuses for bugs, failure, BETA ALPHA etc etc and why the game isn’t done.
Old Generation:
Hear about game from friends/family/co-workers
Go buy the game at a local retail store via CD’s If the game was good:
Keep game, tell friends, more people buy it. Company profits and grows. If the game was bad:
Friends/Family even retail workers at the counter would warn you DON’T BUY THE GAME.
Game sits on shelves, no sales made, refunds issued in droves because “retail store”.
Company doesn’t profit and either changes it’s behavior or product or doesn’t grow.
IF the developer decided to improve and the game became great, we then took the same cash and re bought the game at the store.
New Generation:
See’s awesome amazing CINEMATIC MOVIE QUALITY ADVERT for game that LOOKS AMAZING SAYING BUY IT NOW!
Goes to a online digital app clicks buy and doesn’t realize you don’t even own it.
Buys the game thinking they own it but in reality can lose it soon as your banned. If the game is good:
They must maintain their good behavior sucking up to the corporation to access what they rented. By following what the micromanage overlords deem is good behavior.
They tell their friends who are skeptical that it is a good game and they should buy it.
Corporation profits, they expand and more good stuff. “hopefully” If the game is bad:
No refund issued because no one has to answer to anyone through the internet.
You have to plead your case hoping for sympathy on a refund, hoping they agree.
No bad news is spread because advertising and forums don’t allow negative or opposing propaganda about their product. FULL CONTROL
Game continues on, gamers who are left with product either have to suffer through it hoping for a better future, or drop it and lose hard earned cash.
That’s what we’re currently looking at in a nutshell. It’s as simple as that. And because of these 2 generations, we have one side calling the other babies, and the other side mad as all hell because they earned a hard earned dollar and don’t like wasting it.
EDIT: I’m going to edit this and say it may not necessarily be a generational thing however the difference in upbringing between these generations “with a few really weird exceptions” is the difference between principles. You can see it in my next TLDR reply down bellow, that it may be just because people don’t understand what supporting your expectations and standards does to help a company grow instead of encouraging bad business practices.
I don’t feel like giving them yet another reason to remove a well thought out, effort given reply. But I am not saying one way or the other. What I said is what I said. But it’s the truth.
Your entire argument is thrown in the trash because this is false. They’ve got a detailed thread explaining the problem and how it isn’t so “simple.” Ppl just refuse to read it and would rather yell about their feelings in the most repugnant way possible.
Hey bud, no idea why more people aren’t +1ing your thread because you’re 100% correct. The newer generations of gamers indeed fuel bad company practice. They don’t take their consumer rights seriously at all because they grew up in an era where they were used to that kind of treatment from companies and they don’t know any better. The older generations remember when things were different and companies actually aimed at quality over disposable money making content.
The truth behind the issue you’re pointing out here, is that the newer generations of gamers very seriously need to pay attention to the example set from the older generation, concerning taking hard stances & boycotts to ensure the gaming industry maintains a certain standard of quality. If they continue supporting low quality and take it laying down, things will only get worse.
Isn’t it funny how the original Diablo 2 released over 20 years ago on ancient hardware & software ran so much smoother with less issues? Weird huh. I wonder what could have possibly driven a company to care enough about their game to make sure things were running so smoothly? Maybe just maybe, it had something to do with the consumer’s standard for what was acceptable and what was not. ^^
I mean, back then when I was like 17 years old, if Diablo II had come with this many problems, I would have just said: “Screw this, I’m going to go play a game that works on my SNES or N64” but newer gaming generations do not have this attitude in 2021 and that is why companies are getting away with this low level performance.
hard to describe it as generations though. Because the generation that started playing D2 back before LoD was even around is the same generation that caused the problems. Look at all the sports games that have been around for 20+ years, just releasing a new crappy version of the exact same game every year but still getting full price pre-orders from the same people every single year. It’s not a newer phenomenon, it’s been around since the early 2000s. It’s brand loyalty more than anything, like the people who rush out to buy a new iphone every year, even if the new model has flaws in it that make it worse than the prior one-the people just have to have it no matter the cost because it’s more of a status symbol than anything else. And consider a lot of the original D2 players also were early WoW adopters, and consider that if they played since launch to now, they have spent likely over $3000 in new expansions and monthly fees…for a single game. I’m an old fart myself, was playing games back on my family’s Apple IIc (games that were like 90% text with limited green and black graphics), but i realize the change has been a lot more than just the playerbase, it’s mostly in how modern economies work. It’s almost like companies sell stuff as a game, trying to min/max the same way players do with their games, and will copy successful builds from other companies to boost revenue. And doing so degrades the entire system, because they find ways to maximize how much players spend while minimizing the quality
They’ve got a detailed thread explaining the problem and how it isn’t so “simple.”
A corporations problem isn’t the problem of the people to fix, it’s their problem. And they should have addressed the problem before releasing the game. Especially when the problem is to that large of a degree.
If the chicken isn’t done because it is under cooked and could cause someone to get salmonella poisoning it goes back into the oven. If the flavor isn’t right we can put spices and adjust the flavor after it’s out. That’s the difference here. Connection issue isn’t as small as a simple flavoring issue, it’s raw chicken. And it needs to go back into the damn oven. Instead we have white knight geniuses sitting around waiting while the chef is now trying to cook it with a heat gun on the countertop.
This isn’t even a cooked chicken brother. I’m trying to tell you what we paid for wasn’t a good dining experience and instead of accepting the fact this restaurant isn’t providing what it promised, you’re telling us let’s wait and see to see how it looks after the heat gun. And I’m telling you from experience in the past when companies had to use CD’s. THIS isn’t good!
EDIT: And like I said in another post, this all boils down to bad management.
The manager tested their menu on 15 people, their restaurant holds 150 diners. They opened the doors thinking the could handle it. And now the managers are hiding in their offices while the chefs and the staff are struggling to stay afloat while diners and staff have to suffer consequences due to poor management.
I am not sure where you live, but in the US all software in a retail store was deemed non-returnable if you so much as took the clear package off. So you could not return software back then. You had to check reviews, talk to friends, etc. Same went for music CDs, movies, etc.
The inability to return software was a really big deal and why people made some very well thought out decisions before deciding to make a purchase.
Corporations have always been corporations - mercenary and dead set on keeping money.
You are correct on this. We were the original kids that allowed this happen. But then again we didn’t have any adult gamers pointing out to us what was wrong with it.
But now this newer generation DOES have an elder generation of gamers who are saying: “Hey, this needs to stop. Game companies are making more and more money, the crappier & more disposable the games they are making get. Everything is wrong with this. We’ve seen it develop, we know why it’s happening. We are telling you, it’s time to start speaking up, boycotting if you have to, to ensure quality gaming again.”
We all want good games, both the old generation & the new generation. The only problem is, the younger generation has no compare & contrast for what they have now vs. what used to be. Absolutely no idea how much better games were like 15-20+ years ago. And it’s deceiving because graphically, it would look like the games 20+ years ago were not as good. But proportionately, the game companies were trying sooooo much harder to aim at quality cult classic material than they are now. Nowadays they clearly aim at disposable game models that bring in a lot of cash, then get boring in 2 years, they make a new title rinse & repeat, do it all over again. 20 years ago however, they aimed at godly level quality games for the technology we had, and that is why still to do this day, you have people playing things like Starcraft, Diablo II, Smash Melee, ect ect. But see the game companies seen that “Bruh, you don’t make money off of 20+ years of guys playing a f2p Starcraft” and that is why we have disposable game models today.
If the younger generation REALLY knew what we know now, and had the experience to compare & contrast it, they’d take their consumer priorities more seriously. With enough people enforcing a certain standard of stiff expectation in the gaming industry based on that, we could start seeing some godly releases again. I’d be aaaaall about that.
I lived in Arizona, and Southern Oregon. And I’ve never had problems returning a complete CD package, so long as it was in good condition as the day I bought it. I simply told them I wanted a refund. Lot’s of friends/family/coworkers even randoms at school did the same thing. Often done at Walmarts, Office Depot. We avoided best buy due to their poor return policy, and as a result Best Buy didn’t sell that many. Even Gamestop didn’t even question a return they just accepted it. Of course I’ve always lived in small towns. So that could be a difference?
Maybe. It was just that software had no protections so if you bought it, opened it, and installed it and the key, you could essentially steal it by bringing it back after installing. All the boxes had stickers saying if you unwrap it you can’t return it. Same for Music CDs. Your local stores may have had a different policy, but that was not the norm.
I think game cartridges for Console though you could return. You had to have that in your hand to play so they knew you could not get your money back and keep it.
Millennials and Gen Z are the new gamers. Gen X (NOT Baby Boomers) are the old generation gamers. Damn, you just basically described the political atmosphere of America.
here in canada gamestop had to return your money as long as the cd was undamaged and the game key was still in the case on all physical copies of software i ever purchased from them. unless it was from M$ then you where sol. this was back in the day not sure how it works now.
Gen X is more busy after a good long days work, and less hours to put into the day to game so they’re limited on what they have to offer in time for gaming.
The other generations that are newer have the luxury as we once did back in the day in our HS years etc to sit around and basically troll a forum, not care because it’s their parents, money etc, and they have all the time in the world…
And then there’s a few exceptions from our Generation who never grew up and got a real job and mooch something “whether it be their parents, grandparents, sister brothers uncle… Or even welfare” so they don’t tend to count because they’ve yet to even grow up for an opinion.
Diablo 2 and quite a lot of other PC games have CD keys. Once opened the games were non-returnable. If you were able to return it, it’s because an employee didn’t know better not because of “the good old days”. How old are you?
I think you are mixing what the internet is and what a new generation is. 2 Completely different things. Say no one was born in the past 20 years internet would still have evolved to what we have now. Blaming a group of people for what technology and capitalism have brought together is unrealistic. Companies profit from the number of games they make and amount of copies they sell. They’ll go through shortcuts to achieve that and that’s capitalism. Remastering a game is a prime example of that, you get something that is complete and done and resells it just for profit. Because the company didn’t even have to make a big effort or have an insane amount of personnel needed to create a game, story, quests, etc. And guess who feeds those remasters? Not the new-gen, the old gen does because they haven’t got over their childhood games. Also when you state that the new generation is used to buying games that are shinny and have good propaganda so do you, after all, you are here on a shinny advertised game that malfunctions.
I don’t think there is anyone or any specific group to blame, everyone is to blame as the internet culture is built by everyone. The only way to change it is to make a group effort and not divide old gen, new-gen.
We are also more used to the new system, all of us. We get now to have our games fixed in real-time (or overtime). I remember back then when I played my Zelda games, they were all broken. But we were fine with it because it was a 1-time deal. And companies had to take their time to make games firstly because it was a 1-time deal and secondly because gaming wasn’t that popular. Not everyone in my school had a video game or a PC to play games. Nowadays the amount of titles you have to come out to compete in the market is high, if you compare the number of games all video-game companies come out with per year today is above the sky higher than years ago. There are just too many customers to feed and little time to program games for the market. I’m not defending how companies do their stuff, it’s simply the truth. Blame generation X or Y is a false statement when there is a lot more at stake. Thinking you are a special guy because 20 years ago you feel video games were better made because you cared, is just delusional. It was a different market to attend to and a completely different era for technology.
