Comments on: Developers Corner – Perspective and Structure

By: jaymoffitt

jaymoffitt — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:01:59 +0000

I agree with you generally regarding government intervention. But I will hold to my opinion that in some cases the mere “threat” of government intervention forces an industry to self-police. But as for the particular comment you’re 100% correct.

Again, thanks for reading the blog. The comments (and commenters) have and continue to make this a better blog.

Sincerely,
Jay Moffitt

By: Stabs

Stabs — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:42:42 +0000

It must vary by jurisdiction but this is the Amazon policy here in the UK

“If for any reason you are unhappy with a DVD purchased from Amazon.co.uk, you can return it to us in its original condition within 30 days of the date you received it, unopened (with any seals and shrink wrap intact) and we will issue a full refund for the price you paid for the DVD.”

That’s the same as games here, if you open the shrink wrap you can’t exchange or refund it but generally if you don’t open the shrink wrap you can.

Personally my taste runs to minimal intervention. I don’t think governments need to legislate on behalf of consumers on this issue because I don’t think consumers are unaware of the risk of wasting money buying poor games. I think it would be brutally hard on the industry if there were some standard they were required to meet assessed post-release by customers.

Of course general consumer protection law may generate that scenario anyway but I hope not.

Regarding the business case my experience has been that whenever a company extends more generous conditions their product does well. Diablo 2 came with free bnet access for life. DDO skyrocketed after it went F2P and gave a third of the game away.

Many thanks for the kind words re my blog!

By: jaymoffitt

jaymoffitt — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:55:05 +0000

Some very good points. I’m not advocating a liberal return policy on video games, just not a closed-door policy on EVER returning video games. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that games are the ONLY form of medium that is no-return, no-exchange (even with other goods that have no resale value there is sometimes a return for an EQUAL value, not just an IDENTICAL product).

My point as I tried to make in the short post was that a developer should have enough confidence in their product that if the result is absysmal, say as measured in the bottom 5% of Metacritics, or a D grade in three or more of the top national publications, a dissatisifed consumer can EXCHANGE it for an equal value game from the same publisher. Sure, that’s a bottom-line hit, but so is an enraged “I will never by another game by this publisher” and actually meaning it.

Appreciated the comment, and I do want to note I enjoyed reading your blog http://www.stabbedup.blogspot.com

By: Stabs

Stabs — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:56:21 +0000

At least one objection might be regarding the short lifetime of games. If legally I can exchange, say, Batman: Arkham Asylum for an alternative game provided I bring it back the next day then I could buy it at 9.01am, play until 2 am, finish it off the next day and get my new game. Many single player games really can be finished in a very short time.

A friend of mine once complained to me that HMV, a record store here in London, were being awkward about exchanging records he bought there. As they had widely advertised a no questions asked exchange policy I was initially outraged on his behalf. When he went on to say he’d used the same receipt to swap and tape fifty records all for an initial £10 purchase I felt considerably more sympathy for the shop.

Basically if you can take a game – even for a very short period – then exchange it the developers stand to lose a lot of revenue.