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Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

I wish that Capcom had to refund every single user who ever played this on Linux. It shouldn't be legal to stop people from using things that they've previously bought from you.

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I think "the game won't start" is one of the options in the Steam refund process, so if Capcom doesn't fix it, that might be worth a shot.

Can you get a refund if the game works at first, then gets broken by an update?

According to [1] refunds are basically guaranteed if within 14 days of purchase and less than 2 hours of play time, and anything outside that is "we'll take a look at it"

So if you've played for more than 2 hours, you're at Valve's mercy. But if a lot of people complain, they might take mercy on you.

[1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5FDE-BA65-ACCE-A4...

Definitely doesn't work on everything. I had to remove a bundle from my account that had broken depots where the executable was literally missing. It was country and sale (winter 2011) specific, so I'd imagine not a lot of people complained.

Was Linux ever a supported platform for the game, or it just happened to work with Proton/Wine?

That might be a valid defense for their behavior if it were still feasible to play the version of the game that you bought.

Well, my argument is more like "You played it on a platform they didn't support, and now they published a version that broke however you got it to work in the first place".

For example, if you managed to run the game on a platform not officially supported by the developers/publishers, does that now mean they're not allowed to do any changes to the game that could jeopardize that?

I'd say that would ultimately be a risk Valve takes from writing "Steam Deck verified" on the store page, and one they can pay from their 25-30% cut.

They can make whatever changes they want to the new version as long as I can keep playing the old version. (I'd be okay only being able to play multiplayer with other people also on the old version, but not with being unable to play multiplayer at all.)

To my knowledge this game was never advertised as a game to play on the Steam Deck officially.

If you choose to play a game on an unsupported platform, that is your problem and not theirs.

In reality it's Valve's problem since they have pushed Linux on gamers without proper education that it is not in fact an official platform for any of these games and could break at any time.

Now if they advertised this game as playable on Steam Deck, sure! But most games don't and for good reason.

The official MH Twitter page did recently shout out MHW as being playable on Steam Deck. Not sure if they did it for Rise but I wouldn't be surprised.

They also do acknowledge it being broken and their looking into it so it wasn't totally intentional.

Still shitty and completely unnecessary. Really Rise is old enough at this point that DRM should be removed, not added.

I agree on the DRM side, this is more based on the situation of Linux gaming. Other games have broken with a simple update that had nothing to do with DRM.

I find it absurd to expect support on an unsupported platform. I put that particular blame on Valve. But for some reason we are perfectly fine with Valve not properly educating their customers (which for the record I am one, I love my Steam Deck but I also understand what's going on and the realities of gaming on Linux) and putting the blame on developers instead.

I do find it interesting that Twitter said it, but their website makes no mention of it: https://www.monsterhunter.com/rise-xwp/en-us/

The game is marked as Deck Verified by Valve [1], which means someone at Valve will have tested it. More about how a game is marked as Deck Verified [2]

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1446780/MONSTER_HUNTER_RI... [2] https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/compat

I could have sworn that deck verified was fully automated and I don't see clarification either way there, but regardless.

Your point emphasizes that this is Valve's problem and not the publishers. Valve is pushing an unsupported platform for games by saying it's "verified" when an update could easily break that (as evidence here). A developer is not likely to target an unsupported platform for testing.

Especially given:

"If you take no action, after approximately a week your review results will automatically be published and show up on your game detail page".

So that checkbox being on the Store page is not confirmation from the developer for supporting the platform.

Capcom have acknowledged that they will provide a hotfix in the near future to fix the issue [1]. Anecdotally, the newest Proton Experimental fixes the problem for me on my Steam Deck.

[1] https://x.com/monsterhunter/status/1749390124385771852?s=20

In the Netherlands at least you can reasonably assume it is compatible with your device when it says "Deck Verified" and can get either a fix or a refund within a reasonable amount of time (say, 2 weeks) from the place of purchase, I imagine similar countries have similar laws. So from such countries a letter or two should do the trick, but of course only a small percent of people who bothered reading the law know that and they probably don't teach law in middle school.

Could be the basis for a pretty funny class action or mass arbitration.

Both likely banned in the TOS.

Edit: Looked it up and to Capcom's credit, there's no arbitration requirement in the EULA for MH Rise on Steam.

I seriously doubt you can ban both of them; a company might be able to pick how they address grievances, but it seems unlikely that you can just ToS your way to complete legal immunity like that.

That won't stop then from trying, and with this SCOTUS court, they might rubber-stamp it

There have at least been attempts via creative restrictions on already-mandatory arbitration, notably 23andMe after their breach[1] updated their TOS to require a mandatory conference with the company before filing arbitration[2], seemingly as a way to prevent mass arbitration (since they could claim to only have enough staff to handle a trickle of such conferences).

1. https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/04/23andme-confirms-hackers-s...

2. https://www.23andme.com/legal/terms-of-service/#dispute-reso...

I think if you violate the right of first sale retroactively, the customer should be able to demand a full refund, the item reverts to inventory, and the company has to pay taxes on it.

The game is for Windows.

So they won't have an issue refunding the millions of steam deck and Linux copies who've only ever played it on linux, since it wasn't supported originally.

That is Valve 's problem by emulating Windows games, instead of fostering a native GNU/Linux games ecosystem, while Android/Linux is doing quite alright.

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