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 purplefood wrote:
For the love of...
There is a difference between a game not living up to expectations and a company actively misleading people by giving them a demo which pure fabrication.

That's true. What the plaintiffs will have to prove is that the latter actually happened.

It reminds me a little of Tabula Rasa, frankly. That game underwent a massive shift between the end of beta and launch.

 purplefood wrote:
For the love of...
There is a difference between a game not living up to expectations and a company actively misleading people by giving them a demo which pure fabrication.

It's mostly a difference of scale. I have seen games mislead, tell half truths, hide, and even out right lie. The sticky part is where we draw are line in the sand. Is it just with made up game footage? Well that isn't even that uncommon. BS;I Made up a lot of footage for the demos that was never included in the game. Now no one will sue over a good game like BS:I, but you could.

 Ahtman wrote:

nomotog wrote:
Suing because a game didn't turn out as well as promised or shown is sticky.

Indeed. If only there were some body of rules, and people that were experts in those rules, that others could avail themselves of to make a determination on such things.

I mentioned the lawyers. You know it's funny how we have so many lawyer jokes, but we appreciate the work they do to sort out sticky messes like these. Though I recall another story I read about a different topic that pondered how much the court system knows about games. Dose your local judge know what a bad game is? How about a good one? If you picked 9 people off the street would they be able to tell you why A:CM is a bad game? Games have been around for a long time though, there must be gaming lawyers by now right? Right?




Now the core idea you should be getting is that this is all very sticky. It should still be done though a consumer needs recourse for when a company takes advantage of them. I say gamers even more so because of how and when we buy games. We put a lot of trust into these companies and they shouldn't be allowed to abuse that trust without punishment.

If game companies could be held liable for not including something shown in a non-final build, that would be the end of pre-release advertising with anything other than screenshots.

There's a difference between saying "we want to include this feature in the game" or even saying "this feature will be in the game" and handing out a hands on demo to the press saying "play fifteen minutes of our game." The first two, even if shown in a trailer, are clearly conceptual. Similar to how those idiots at Bioware touted that ME3 would have 16 different endings (hahahahahahahaha). Those are things that when said can be twisted into being true. ME3 does have 16+ endings. It just so happens that those endings are all virtually identical with only minute differences between them.

It's vastly different to present something as representing the product in the way they did and then releasing something entirely different. What they effectively did was a bait and switch. They showed off what appeared to be a high quality game that got a lot of people who played it for fifteen minutes excited. Then they released a monumentally lower quality product bearing little resemblance to the demo they showed everyone for full retail price.

It's a fine line I know but the line is still there. Sega and Gearbox crossed it.

nomotog wrote:
I mentioned the lawyers. You know it's funny how we have so many lawyer jokes, but we appreciate the work they do to sort out sticky messes like these.

I believe the aphorism you are looking for is 'everyone hates lawyers until they need one'. If you want lawyer jokes the best people to ask are lawyers, most of them originate from within the brotherhood.

 LordofHats wrote:

Those are things that when said can be twisted into being true. ME3 does have 16+ endings. It just so happens that those endings are all virtually identical with only minute differences between them.
it.

I feel like I am the only one who understand thats lol.


I like the attempt that people are trying to call out Sega for this mess but I simply can not see this succeeding.

 purplefood wrote:
For the love of...
There is a difference between a game not living up to expectations and a company actively misleading people by giving them a demo which pure fabrication.

As you say, I'm not sure how this point keeps getting missed over and over again, but here we are. I think you can disagree with the merits of the case - I think you could argue that the demo was supposed to represent look and feel, or... whatever - but no one is suing because "the game wasn't good".

Fun Fact: People could care less about misleading if the game is good.

See the Halo 2 trailer.




Anyone who has played Halo 2 can tell you that the game in this trailer is a completely different game. The difference is Halo 2 was still a good game in spite of that. That demo video is almost as different from the end product as the A:CM controversy is.

The A:CM trailer is this. This is the "infamous" trailer everyone is furious about. Listen to the language he uses in the beginning. Some quotes for you in the first 1:30 or so of the video.

"Today we're going to show you a bit of the game."

"-we haven't shown the game in action before, and so you're going to see what the game actually looks like, not just screen shots, but actual gameplay."

At 11:12 he says "That is a quick taste of Aliens Colonial Marines, that's a section from Act II in the game, hopefully we'll be showing you more before too long."

He doesn't say "demo" he says "game", implying a finished product. He even says that that specific part is in the game, in Act II (heads up, you play several parts mentioned in that trailer, they look NOTHING like that, play NOTHING like that, etc.)




He's pretty clearly implying that this is what the finished product will look like.

If any game lawsuit had ground to stand on, it's this. This isn't like the Mass Effect 3 lawsuit, this one has some legitimate ground to stand on. It'd be like if you went to go see the next Star Wars movie and all the Stormtroopers were running around in these.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
It'd be like if you went to go see the next Star Wars movie and all the Stormtroopers were running around in these.

Spoiler:

Not quite, wouldn't it be like going to see the star wars movie after a trailer where the stormtroopers look like this and feature heavily, and the guy from the studio who comes out before the trailer shows says 'this is the opening scene of our movie, just like you will see in the cinemas', then they look like the one above.

Ok so assume that this goes through and wins. What would be the result of that?

nomotog wrote:
Ok so assume that this goes through and wins. What would be the result of that?

People get money refunded.

Gearbox loses a lot of public goodwill it had.

Gearbox, Timegate, and Sony will get some bashing from fans.

Sony will drop some sort of legal action onto Gearbox to try and remove blame from themselves, and to try and make back money that they may or may not have lost from this debacle.

Honestly, whatever lawsuit Sony drops against Gearbox will have far more impact than anything this one will, unless it somehow sets a legal precedent for people to sue games that are really terrible. Maybe it'll make companies more leery about what they show before release, so we'll see far less preview trailers and screenshots as well.

 Squigsquasher wrote:
If they should be suing anyone they should sue Timegate for screwing the game up. If Gearbox hadn't had to get Aliens: Colonial Marines finished by Timegate then it WOULD have resembled the demo. Unfortunately, Timegate completely ruined the entire thing, and when Gearbox got it back they had very little time to fix it, as Sega were getting fed up of the constant delays.

Dont blame Timegate. Gearbox are the douche-bags that ignored this project for seven years to work on their own property which didn't have a time limit.

I shows a great amount of incompetence when you screw up an Aliens Shooter.


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 MrMoustaffa wrote:

nomotog wrote:
Ok so assume that this goes through and wins. What would be the result of that?

People get money refunded.

Gearbox loses a lot of public goodwill it had.

Gearbox, Timegate, and Sony will get some bashing from fans.

Sony will drop some sort of legal action onto Gearbox to try and remove blame from themselves, and to try and make back money that they may or may not have lost from this debacle.

Honestly, whatever lawsuit Sony drops against Gearbox will have far more impact than anything this one will, unless it somehow sets a legal precedent for people to sue games that are really terrible. Maybe it'll make companies more leery about what they show before release, so we'll see far less preview trailers and screenshots as well.

Gearbox has already lost a lot of public goodwill. Duke Nukem + This = Bad. Now they just have to screw up Homeworld and EVERYONE will hate them.

Dont blame Timegate. Gearbox are the douche-bags that ignored this project for seven years to work on their own property which didn't have a time limit.

I shows a great amount of incompetence when you screw up an Aliens Shooter.

Personally, I blame all 3 groups AND specify Borderlands 2 also sense the companies decided to put more effort in Borderlands then Colonial Marines.

In advertisement in the UK, they usually have to label things quite clearly in the corner.

EG, "actual gameplay video" "this footage may not represent the final gameplay experience" "Not actual gameplay."

Does this not happen in the US in general?

However, that's for mass public advertisement, whereas I'm assuming they wouldn't have such caveats in an E3 demo.

Personally, I blame all 3 groups AND specify Borderlands 2 also sense the companies decided to put more effort in Borderlands then Colonial Marines.

Why the hatred for Borderlands 2? : /

 Galdos wrote:

Dont blame Timegate. Gearbox are the douche-bags that ignored this project for seven years to work on their own property which didn't have a time limit.

I shows a great amount of incompetence when you screw up an Aliens Shooter.

Personally, I blame all 3 groups AND specify Borderlands 2 also sense the companies decided to put more effort in Borderlands then Colonial Marines.

Well SEGA and Timegate had nothing to do with Borderlands. SEGA gave borderlands a bunch of money to make Colonial Marines and Gearbox shirked it to work on their own property (which was published by 2K)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Compel wrote:
In advertisement in the UK, they usually have to label things quite clearly in the corner.

EG, "actual gameplay video" "this footage may not represent the final gameplay experience" "Not actual gameplay."

Does this not happen in the US in general?

However, that's for mass public advertisement, whereas I'm assuming they wouldn't have such caveats in an E3 demo.

Well the UK advertising thingy, already found that the trailer they have up on steam is not representative of the real game.

 Soladrin wrote:

 Necroshea wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
They aren't being sued for making a bad game. They're being sued for misrepresenting their game.

So tell me this, if someone wouldn't have bought the game would they have cared? Not really, it's just another bad use of the license.

So most likely the ones throwing a tantrum over this are the ones who bought the game.

So they're going to court over a 60 dollar or less game they bought on impulse.

Publisher - "Hey consumer, this game is good. Here, you can buy it if you want."

Consumer - "Wow this game sucks, I'm suing you"

What about the people who thought the game was good? Should they join in on the lawsuit too?

If you still don't see how this is a completely silly suit that should be laughed out of the court, don't even bother responding back to this, there really is just no point.

You are aware that false advertisement is simply Illegal right?

I for one am glad to see this happen and I do hope they can make some headway (though I very much doubt it). Publishers are getting away with horrible business practice and in some cases even straight up illegal actions for way too long.

Thats kindda the same for what devs are doing with DLC. Some of those bastards actually HAVE the DLC on the disc youve already paid for, and then tell you "Yes, for $5 you can get this DLC!" I too hope this has a positive effect on the gaming market. I wont hold my breathe but Ill hope anyways

You see, between "This is *murmur*not*murmur* the actual game footage" shenanigans and the "The DLC is already on the disk! This is great news as when you pay us the £7 to get it we can save you the £3 download fee!" BS is why I try my hardest to not splurge on games. As much as I want certain games oh so badly, lately it just seems to me little indie developers are making much better games for much better value. Hell even the free games, things like Cataclysm getting constant support and saying a proverbial FU to the DLC mindset by just updating the game and incorperating the good mods that come up, or even some of the RPGMaker/ Wolfgame maker games. Am I crazy? Maybe. Am I rambling? Probably. Did Lone Survivor give me more joy for £3 than A:CM could ever have given me for £40? You bet your donkey it did. The problem now is that the game companies have gone from "Oh hey guys it's us, the lovable little company known as EA, how about giving this new thing we came up with where you play a town mayor?" and become the bloated mess that created Sim City. A few heavy losses though probably wont do them much good in the same way losses don't do GW much good, EA will just pump out in 6 months a game simply called The Sims where every item is bought via micro-transaction, adding a second floor comes as a DLC and you can choose 2 Sims from an amazing selection of 4 (don't want to look too similar to your neighbors after all, gotta keep that super amazing always online function looking good right?) anyway off the soap box i come.

 Mr Hyena wrote:

Personally, I blame all 3 groups AND specify Borderlands 2 also sense the companies decided to put more effort in Borderlands then Colonial Marines.

Why the hatred for Borderlands 2? : /

I think its less "for" borderlands 2, and more for the fact that they spent the total production time focusing on that which could have been released whenever not having any real "time limit" rather than on A:CM which was left stagnating and getting close to its sell by date.

I think its less "for" borderlands 2, and more for the fact that they spent the total production time focusing on that which could have been released whenever not having any real "time limit" rather than on A:CM which was left stagnating and getting close to its sell by date.

A:CM was already well stagnated before they were given it. Honestly, A:CM should have just been canceled. Too many developers had been involved in it; thats a sign of a game which will never amount to anything nor make any money.

BL2 was bound to make a better financial return and be a better investment AND a better game, so it would be foolish not to focus on it.

 Mr Hyena wrote:

Personally, I blame all 3 groups AND specify Borderlands 2 also sense the companies decided to put more effort in Borderlands then Colonial Marines.

Why the hatred for Borderlands 2? : /

Is there a lot? I thought it was just me. I thought the original Borderlands seemed really dumb and could not understand why anyone gave a damn about it

Borderlands isnt to blame for it but when Gearbox saw that they had a hit with Borderlands they put more time and money into the sequel that otherwise would have gone to Colonial Marines.

 Mr Hyena wrote:

Personally, I blame all 3 groups AND specify Borderlands 2 also sense the companies decided to put more effort in Borderlands then Colonial Marines.

Why the hatred for Borderlands 2? : /

Rumor has it Gearbox funneled a lot of money that was supposed to be going to A:CM to making Borderlands 2, which wouldn't surprise me one bit, because Borderlands 2 has a ridiculous amount of stuff in it.

So in some fans minds, Borderlands 2 is a thing to rail against, since it (supposedly) was a leading cause to why Gearbox neglected A:CM like they did.

I know that after this whole debacle, I will not buy another Gearbox game unless I can be absolutely assured it's good, and even then I'll have reservations. This game plus Duke Nukem have shown that they're nowhere near as "reliable" of a choice as they used to be. I was already turned off preordering before A:CM came out, but this was what really drove it home.

I hope this will make people more leery to preorder games, but I won't hold my breath.

On an interesting side note, I've noticed that Gamestop has been a LOT more aggressive with their sales associates trying to get you to preorder, and I can't help but think this has something to do with it. I've had guys sit there and argue why I should preorder for up to 10 minutes, when I know they have better things to do. I had a manager actually stop what he was doing and start the whole "why wouldn't you preorder? You know the game will be sold out for the first week, you won't be able to get it anywhere... etc. etc." Maybe after this fiasco Gamestop's preorders are down and they're trying to make up the lost sales? I've never seen Gamestop employees do that. Heck, they're even setting up tables in one store with lists of preorders, and handing out flyers to you stating which games you should be preordering.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
On an interesting side note, I've noticed that Gamestop has been a LOT more aggressive with their sales associates trying to get you to preorder, and I can't help but think this has something to do with it. I've had guys sit there and argue why I should preorder for up to 10 minutes, when I know they have better things to do. I had a manager actually stop what he was doing and start the whole "why wouldn't you preorder? You know the game will be sold out for the first week, you won't be able to get it anywhere... etc. etc." Maybe after this fiasco Gamestop's preorders are down and they're trying to make up the lost sales? I've never seen Gamestop employees do that. Heck, they're even setting up tables in one store with lists of preorders, and handing out flyers to you stating which games you should be preordering.

That sounds extremely annoying.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 Mr Hyena wrote:

Personally, I blame all 3 groups AND specify Borderlands 2 also sense the companies decided to put more effort in Borderlands then Colonial Marines.

Why the hatred for Borderlands 2? : /

Rumor has it Gearbox funneled a lot of money that was supposed to be going to A:CM to making Borderlands 2, which wouldn't surprise me one bit, because Borderlands 2 has a ridiculous amount of stuff in it.

So in some fans minds, Borderlands 2 is a thing to rail against, since it (supposedly) was a leading cause to why Gearbox neglected A:CM like they did.

I know that after this whole debacle, I will not buy another Gearbox game unless I can be absolutely assured it's good, and even then I'll have reservations. This game plus Duke Nukem have shown that they're nowhere near as "reliable" of a choice as they used to be. I was already turned off preordering before A:CM came out, but this was what really drove it home.

I hope this will make people more leery to preorder games, but I won't hold my breath.

On an interesting side note, I've noticed that Gamestop has been a LOT more aggressive with their sales associates trying to get you to preorder, and I can't help but think this has something to do with it. I've had guys sit there and argue why I should preorder for up to 10 minutes, when I know they have better things to do. I had a manager actually stop what he was doing and start the whole "why wouldn't you preorder? You know the game will be sold out for the first week, you won't be able to get it anywhere... etc. etc." Maybe after this fiasco Gamestop's preorders are down and they're trying to make up the lost sales? I've never seen Gamestop employees do that. Heck, they're even setting up tables in one store with lists of preorders, and handing out flyers to you stating which games you should be preordering.

That's pretty much what they do in Game in england. Hell even the two walls+ standing shelves space right next to the doors are dedicate just to pre-orders, let alone the people working there and whatever promotable they have further in.

Its especially baffling because so many people preorder you're pretty much assured 90% the time that you'll be able to find a hard copy. The only exceptions are sleeper hits and no one sees those coming. "You know it'll be sold out release week" is a load of crap. I walk into the busiest Game Stop in the DC metro area and they have copies.

Oh totally, especially since any Gamestop worth their salt is in a mall, so even if they run out you can hop over to Target or similar.

And even then, most Gamestops order excess due to wanting to be able to sell as many as they can.





I'm quite happy with this. While I'm not sure we can do anything to Capcom (internationally, anyway), I am getting tired of the shady business crap that perviates the industry.

 KingCracker wrote:

 Soladrin wrote:

 Necroshea wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
They aren't being sued for making a bad game. They're being sued for misrepresenting their game.

So tell me this, if someone wouldn't have bought the game would they have cared? Not really, it's just another bad use of the license.

So most likely the ones throwing a tantrum over this are the ones who bought the game.

So they're going to court over a 60 dollar or less game they bought on impulse.

Publisher - "Hey consumer, this game is good. Here, you can buy it if you want."

Consumer - "Wow this game sucks, I'm suing you"

What about the people who thought the game was good? Should they join in on the lawsuit too?

If you still don't see how this is a completely silly suit that should be laughed out of the court, don't even bother responding back to this, there really is just no point.

You are aware that false advertisement is simply Illegal right?

I for one am glad to see this happen and I do hope they can make some headway (though I very much doubt it). Publishers are getting away with horrible business practice and in some cases even straight up illegal actions for way too long.

Thats kindda the same for what devs are doing with DLC. Some of those bastards actually HAVE the DLC on the disc youve already paid for, and then tell you "Yes, for $5 you can get this DLC!" I too hope this has a positive effect on the gaming market. I wont hold my breathe but Ill hope anyways

Buying the disc doesn't mean your buying the unlock key for DLC content on the disc, unless it says otherwise. Companies do it cause they know DLC is popular and is a way to extend the life of a game, while also funding the next game in the series. If fans really hated DLC, we'd never see DLC sell.

Heck, in a lot of cases it reaaaally helps the game shine and last longer. Continuing with Borderlands 2 as an example, the DLC scheme for that was amazing, because while not essential, it really was spread out in a way to enable to player to return to the game and still have tons of stuff to do. Fallout's DLC scheme is also a good example.

Its win/win for the fans.

Nobody hates DLC as a concept, it's more of the fact that people like Capcom have twelve characters on the completed and on the disc and expect you to pay for them, instead of just handing you the finished product out of the gate.

Also, a fair amount of DLC is trivial stuff like Horse armor, when Knight of the Nine and Shivering Isles is more of what DLC should be.

Slarg232 wrote:Oh totally, especially since any Gamestop worth their salt is in a mall, so even if they run out you can hop over to Target or similar.

And even then, most Gamestops order excess due to wanting to be able to sell as many as they can.

I'm quite happy with this. While I'm not sure we can do anything to Capcom (internationally, anyway), I am getting tired of the shady business crap that perviates the industry.

LordofHats wrote:Its especially baffling because so many people preorder you're pretty much assured 90% the time that you'll be able to find a hard copy. The only exceptions are sleeper hits and no one sees those coming. "You know it'll be sold out release week" is a load of crap. I walk into the busiest Game Stop in the DC metro area and they have copies.

I'm sure we could start a whole new thread on pre orders at Gamestop and it'd hit 10 pages before Tuesday, it drives me crazy talking to those people. I worked in the Electronics department of Toys R' Us one year. I know that all that stuff is BS, because I worked it and remember it works very different. Buyer Protection plans (not sure what Gamestop calls theirs, but it's the same) is a scam, preordering is a major scam, and the whole "it'll be sold out in a week" is only true if said game is Call of Duty and it's Christmas season (so always then) Other games would sell out occasionally, but would be in stock somewhere else (of course Gamestop doesn't want you to know that.)

Sorry but Gamestop is a sore topic for me.

I'm not really sure why I still shop there now that I think about it, need to change that...

Hard copies is a quickly dying medium.

Nobody hates DLC as a concept, it's more of the fact that people like Capcom have twelve characters on the completed and on the disc and expect you to pay for them, instead of just handing you the finished product out of the gate.

Then wouldn't they have to bump the price of the finished game up since you'd be buying the unlock key too?

Also, a fair amount of DLC is trivial stuff like Horse armor, when Knight of the Nine and Shivering Isles is more of what DLC should be.

I thought Cosmetic DLC was the better kind of dlc, the stuff that isn't necessary and can be used to support the devs and publisher.

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Then wouldn't they have to bump the price of the finished game up since you'd be buying the unlock key too?

They do bump up the price. They give you the incomplete product and charge you extra to access the rest of the content on the disc that was purchased by you the consumer. That's why it makes people angry. Regardless of the legality or fairness of it, it's kind of greedy to sell things like that. They could completely avoid the issue by just not putting the content on the disc, but I never claimed Capcom understood what DLC is, just that they have some bizarre idea of what DLC is.

Then there's stuff like the From Ashes DLC for ME3, which contained content that honest to goodness should have been part of the main game. It really should have. It tells the player a lot of useful stuff and even makes the ending make slightly more sense. But instead EA took a section of the game and told Bioware to isolate it on the disk so they could sell it for extra.

That's just sleazy. Especially when these are companies will multi-billion dollar companies behind them. They don't need a pick me up.

That's just sleazy. Especially when these are companies will multi-billion dollar companies behind them. They don't need a pick me up.

Look how easy THQ fell.

Not putting it on the disc doesn't really make a difference since you still can't access it without buying the dlc anyway.