Its Never Too Late to Change

From Kotaku


I fucking hated this game.  The story was pretty thin, and incredibly rushed, and the game was so shallow.  This is all nothing new.

However, after reading that article, I realize why it should be illegal for game stores or Best Buy or whatever to be able to deny me a refund if the game is shit.  If a game is bad, I should be able to return it and get my money back, not because I feel I was lied to or deceived or because I was not happy with the experience, but rather, I should be given a refund to teach companies to NOT PUT OUT SHITTY PRODUCT.

Companies thrive on the piracy laws that prevent end users from receiving refunds if they are not satisfied with a product.  Movie theatres will deny a customer a refund if a customer watches more that a preset amount of time of a movie, claiming the customer "received the service they paid for."

While that is technically true, at the same time, it is not.  The customer paid for a good time.  If a good time was not had, they didn't really get what they paid for.  So refunds should be given regardless.  Same for video games or CDs.

Back to Final Fantasy XIII...

What is interesting here is the admittance that the game was released when they knew it was not going to be well-received.  Why was this decision made?  Because they knew, regardless of whether it was well-received, they knew they were going to make a profit on it because of anti-piracy laws and how they prevent users from returning games if they are dissatisfied.

And this, in the wake of the ruling about how used games sales are being threatened (again, from Kotaku), only furthers the lack of quality expected to be delivered by publishers, and furthers the lack of responsibility for pushing out bad product by developers.

If this is going to happen, then I say that I should be able to demand a refund for bad games, otherwise, how am I protected as a consumer?  Used games at least give you a 7 day return period if you are unhappy with the product, so I say long live game stop and used games sales.