Could the EU make games glitch-free?

Latest News Headlines
#1

I just posted the article Could the EU make games glitch-free?.

Proposed changes to consumer protection laws in the European Union would hold software makers accountable for faulty products, but the game industry is arguing the rules could end up hurting…

Read the full article here:  [http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/15944-Could-the-EU-make-games-glitch-free.html](http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/15944-Could-the-EU-make-games-glitch-free.html)

Feel free to add your comments below. 

Please note that the reactions from the complete site will be synched below.
#2

I’m more concerned about games that ship with bugs that never get fixed. For example, pressing the right thumb stick on an Xbox 360 Gamepad in the PC version of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones does not reset the camera like it should. This bug was never fixed and never will be.

#3

Good, it will force the game companies to program better instead of pushing out products that are still considered betas.

#4

I’m still under the belieft that nothing computer related is infallable. I don’t think you’re ever going to make a game that bug free, out of all the people that buy it and play it, they’re going to find a bug you didn’t think of. I think it would better to legislate that they have to fix the problem, rather than asking the impossible.

#5

Reminds me of one of the pages from my old “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar years ago:
“Any system that relies on human reliability is inherently unreliable.”

#6

There have been games where bugs and design flaws became features that could be exploited by pros. Joust was one of the earliest I know of. The original Quake had several that allowed a player to move faster than normal which is how the speedruns were performed. It’s really hard to identify what are bugs versus design flaws. If the law is limited to exploitable flaws that can compromise a client or server system then it would make more sense.

#7

The bugs I am talking about are the ones where you buy the game and the game won’t even work on your system or suffers from frequent annoying crashes. Games have always had glitches that people can exploit. Galaga was one of the earliest arcade games that I can think of that had a glitch where you could cause the enemy ships to run out of ammo for the rest of the game by allowing a single “bee” type ship to shoot until it ran out of ammo. Usually took around 20 minutes. Glitches are just part of any game but bugs shouldn’t crop up especially if your beta testers are any good. Some of the games nowadays are released that are still beta. They do it on purpose so they use the public as unsuspecting beta testers. I remember my brother bought Temple of Elemental Evil back in the day and the damn game wouldn’t even work out of the box. Talking about being pissed off especially after you forked out $40-$60 bucks on a damn game.

#8

Excellent examples of good games, but flawed to the end, with no relief. People can no longer say “Hey I want my money back!!” They/we get told “Oh, we’ll give you a store credit…” BS, I don’t want the credit, I’d want my money back, for that’s the only way to send a message back to the XYZ company is to pull the money back out of their greedy li’l biscuit pickers, and sing “We’re not gonna take it” as loud as possible. Now there’s a mental image for ya! :wink:

#9

We all know they release the games knowing the state the software is in. Some games are released in the state that they are not even finished or full of bugs and keep crashing (gothic 3 etc come to mind). Nowhere else could you get away with such poor workmanship. Its not that games have bugs, there will always be bugs and you can’t get them all, its releasing games with half finished levels or bugs that crash the game so that you can’t complete them. You would have to be mad not to download a PC game first to try it before buying, its not worth the risk to spend +£30 to see if the game can be completed or becomes fun after months of waiting for patches, if any.

#10

I second that.

#11

Klingon Academy anyone ? A bit obscure but a great game with show-stopper bugs in the intial release. It was impossible to pass the 6th mission until the patch was released. Fans were flipping out at the time waiting for the patch. Myself included :wink:

#12

Back in the day of Sega Genesis vs. Nintendo, Nintendo had a 3 strikes type of qualification program for releasing games on their platform. Game developers had to submit the game to Nintendo for testing. If a bug was found they would refuse the game and the developer had to fix it and submit it again. I believe they had 3 chances to get it right. If it failed 3 times, the game was banned from ever being released !

I wonder if this kind QA is still in effect on any platform.

IMO the advent of Live / online gaming services has encouraged the “release it now and patch it later” attitude.

#13

kiss my ass so what, i get a 2 year grantee on everything so go fuck yourselfs you fuckers

#14

It’s about bloody time in my book. I remember back in the old days, as a programmer YOU HAD TO FIX STUFF. So why not now! Sick of purchasing either a $10 game or $2.5k software that’s buggy as shit. I can cop a few issues with software, don’t work then I want my money back. Nice move, I just hope the rest of the world follows suit.