Why are Broken Games Accepted?

[Vausch]

War Z was broken in its terrible glitches, bully tactics by the developers, and was so poor it was taken off Steam.

Diablo III was broken at its time of launch due to the terrible always-online DRM that causes so many to be unable to play something they paid for, yet pirates could play no problem. People defended it because "it's Diablo".

Steel Battalion for the Kinect was a defective product. No getting around that, it just didn't work, it was defective and if it were any other sort of product it would be recalled and probably couldn't legally be sold.

Now I'm not talking about games with glitches, in this day and age that's something that's bound to happen. Heck it's been happening since gaming started, but most of them aren't so bad they completely ruin the game. So why do we accept broken games?

 

[Lucyfer86]

I'd really like to know how did pirates supposedly played Diablo 3. I don't see it happening, at that time emulators were barely even working, with majority of stuff still missing / not working.

 

[jehk]

Pirates couldn't play D3 without problems during early launch.

Online games are online. I'm not going to get into if D3 should have been online for not. I don't care. However, saying an online game is broken because of some down time is pretty unfair. It's an inherent risk for additional features.

I can't say much for SB. It should have been recalled. I'm not sure what industry standards and mechanisms are in place to support such things. It probably hasn't happened a lot as an industry because of the patchable nature of software.

 

[Dead Seerius]

I don't think people 'accept' broken games so much as they unwittingly buy into them without checking to see if they're defective. Sometimes a game's reputation precedes it and people just assume it'll work fine. Once people notice they've been duped I would hardly call their attitudes accepting if internet mob mentality is any indication.

My question is why broken games are even allowed to be put up for retail. Why that's accepted I cannot say.

 

[DustyDrB]

Games have had glitches since the beginning of the medium. To a reasonable extent, it's something you have to accept as a possibility when you buy a game. Some people also really like to stretch the meaning of the word "broken". Glitchy doesn't necessarily mean broken. There are loads of glitchy games I've played but haven't had those glitches actually hinder my experience in any major way. Broken means unplayable. Steel Battalion, from what I've heard, seems to fit that description well.

 

[blackdwarf]

Because something that is broken for someone, doesn't have to be broken for everyone. Like D3, I never had really a issue with it being online the whole time, because I would always play D2 online, so Diablo was just a online game for me. I understand that some people why some people hate and I don't disagree that it is a issue, but for me it just wasn't a problem.

But indeed, why some retails allow it to sell.

 

[ThePuzzldPirate]

Cause like everything else, it is a matter of opinion. But for the most part, something, even broken, can manage to shine and achieve what they are aiming for.

 

[Esotera]

Every game (and software product) that you buy is broken in at least some form, most of the time these are shrugged off as glitches and bugs that don't really affect play. It's never possible to get rid of all bugs in a program in a real-life situation, and there's a lot of pressure to release a game that hasn't been properly tested and hope the quality is ok.

If it flat out doesn't work, that's a clear-cut case, but a lot of the time it's subjective.

 

[Andrewtheeviscerator]

I didn't have any problems with Diablo 3 when I got it, so that's probably why.

 

[LetalisK]

Pirates couldn't play D3 without problems during early launch.

I didn't think pirates could play D3 at all, what with so many assets server-side, necessitating logging in to the server. I always thought that was the real reason Blizzard set it up the way they did and the auction house was just a cover.

 

[jehk]

Pirates couldn't play D3 without problems during early launch.

I didn't think pirates could play D3 at all, what with so many assets server-side, necessitating logging in to the server. I always thought that was the real reason Blizzard set it up the way they did and the auction house was just a cover.

I think there were many reasons for it being online only. Hacker deterrent. Digital rights. Auction house. I recall looking into the claim that hackers were playing and finding a server emulator that offered like 0.001% functionality of the actual game. I'd agree. They weren't really playing at all.

 

[Folji]

With the right kind of marketing and plenty of it, you could get people to buy just about anything, right? Especially if you got a name with a good reputation to it, which is exactly what you had with that Steel Battalion game! Personally I try not to hop onto games just as they're released, but instead wait for the metascore to gather up and then decide whether to get it or not and how much I'd willingly pay for it.

If only Steam would be more active about actually showing the metascore of various games... unless it's purposefully being held back from some of them because they aren't actually worth the money!

 

[Evil Cabbage]

I don't think the issue is that people accept them - rather, they

A) Buy them, not realizing their defects, and just move on without complaining OR
B) Realize their defects, but for whatever reason don't run into them or find fun in the game despite them OR
C) Realize their defects and protest to hell and back

To address your examples:

DayZ: While people certainly bought the game, I think the fact that it was pulled from Steam and refunded suggests that a significant portion of the playerbase didn't accept it. Also, a playthrough I was watching on Youtube the other day suggests that some enjoy it for having an "it's so bad it's good" quality.

Diablo III: As you'll know, Diablo III's always on DRM wasn't exactly received swimmingly by many gamers and was met with a torrent of protest. On the subject of that, while I think that always on DRM is a self-destructive corporate practice, from what I've seen, defences were more than just "it's Diablo so anything goes." Some honestly believe that the DRM is nessecary to prevent against piracy, while others might have a great internet connnection and not play it all the time, rendering the issue moot for them. Though draconian, you could potentially bring up the argument that you're technically only buying a 'licence' to use 'Diablo III' and therefore must accept corporate skullduggery as a condition of being granted the licence.

Steel Batallion: I don't know a huge amount about this one, but it'll likely suffer in the user review department.

So yeah, people might buy a product, but that doesn't mean they'll accept it or continue to play it if they find it bad.

This was way too long wasn't it? Oh well.

 

[Corven]

I think it is mainly due to the current mentality of "ship it now, patch it later" that the game industry has towards game releases. It's been going on for a number of years now so people have become used to getting a buggy mess of a game and waiting months for patches to make it playable. I think this is causing people to have a higher threshold of what they will deal with when it comes to buggy or incomplete games.

 

[Zhukov]

War Z was broken in its terrible glitches, bully tactics by the developers, and was so poor it was taken off Steam.

How is a game that caused such a fuss that it was removed from sale being used as a example of people accepting a broken game?

Same goes for Steel Battalion. It's known above all else for being non-functional.

Don't know about Diablo 3. I barely played it and, seriously, fuck having that debate again.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

I don't want to sound optimistic, but I think because we know, for all the QA in the world, there will always be that one game - that one fucking game, that dodges every known law of videogaming quality assurance. It's not unplayable like Steel Batallion, but it might be graphically repugnant and play like arse. And in most cases those games are frowned upon, yes, but every so often - once in a blue moon - there is a game that ticks those boxes that is also unrelentingly brilliant.

<link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa19-c1R_Qg>F.K.

In the coffee.

 

[DonTsetsi]

War Z was broken in its terrible glitches, bully tactics by the developers, and was so poor it was taken off Steam.

How is a game that caused such a fuss that it was removed from sale being used as a example of people accepting a broken game?

Same goes for Steel Battalion. It's known above all else for being non-functional.

Don't know about Diablo 3. I barely played it and, seriously, fuck having that debate again.

Yes, but try to get a refund and see where that gets you. You can only get one for the steam version of War Z.

 

[MagunBFP]

I have to point out that Diablo 3's always on DRM wasn't actually the game being broken, it was a feature that was well documented online before release, on the box that you had in your hands when you purchased it and in the agreement when you installed it. At every point you were given the oppurtunity to not buy it.

You could have considered the DRM broken if suddenly, out of no where, with no advance warning or explanation, the game wouldn't work unless you were online but calling something broken just because you didn't like it is bullshit.

On the lighter side of Diablo, I am waiting for Blizzard to announce that for Diablo 4 they will have a new DRM strategy... you can only play when a Blizzard rep is standing next to you personally making sure you're not cheating or being naughty.

 

[Shinsei-J]

All of these games have had huge outcrys around them so I'd say no one is accepting them.
Steel Battalion was torn apart by critics and not played by many.
Diablo had glaring flaws that hit quite a few people within the first two weeks but was still playable to a lot of people after the first 2 days. Just a failed launch.
War Z, say no more. You said it all, it got pulled.