Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomphoolery | Hacker News Reader

No refunds? Really?!?

The guy who sold me my bong has a better fucking return policy than that.

The main appeal of the game was apparently the multi-player, which isn't going to be that great if nobody bought the thing. You can't expect a refund for this type of purchase from either Steam or the studio that developed it, that is ridiculous. They shouldn't have removed it from people's libraries though, and the developer should have released one last patch that disabled the DRM and let you run your own server.

Running your server is probably too much to ask for since their server is likely integrated ito many of their other systems and the code is probably something they want to keep out of public hands BUT I like your idea of one last patch for DRM free version. Online will no longer work but at least single player would.

As with WoW, Ultima Online and various other MMO's, unauthorized servers tend to be written from scratch using an analysis of incoming and outgoing client/server traffic. Nobody would expect Square Enix to release their server software, just simply to disable the DRM so that others can play the game and attempt to write their own server software if they choose.

That's amazing. I agree that would be a fair outcome with no losers in the deal.

Why can't people expect a refund? Why is that a ridiculous expectation?

Because it's in the contract that you agreed to upon purchasing. The only thing you can do is no longer agree to those types of contracts.

You can not sign away all rights on purchase, or otherwise scam artists would have a much easier time.

Maybe not all rights, but pretty close. This is the norm these days. People will pay for temporary use of music, movies, tv shows, and video games until some old guys in a skyscraper somewhere decide otherwise.

Not really the same. Buying a subscription to a service carries a different expectation vis-a-vis the payment of a lump sum for the product.

So its not a ridiculous expectation, since it had to be explicitly included in the contract.

That contract doesn't have legal weight in many jurisdictions.

Every consumer protection law in existence just called and asked for their money back. Those laws exist precisely to unambiguously defeat the kind of argument you're making.

Maybe because the people who bought it early on have already played it and derived significant value from it? It doesn't seem right to me that they get all their money back when presumably most of them weren't playing it any more.

I don't agree with the kind of always-on DRM that's led to this, but I don't think full refunds for everyone is a reasonable solution either.

Would you expect a refund for the cost of WoW when they shut down their servers in 2032? Of course not. It was an online game. You played it for years, and it's now over. You don't get take-backs.

Wrong link. Order of War still works, it was multiplayer version "Order of War: Challenge" that was shutdown. It was not available for sale since April, and it was removed from Steam in September.

http://www.steamprices.com/us/app/34670/order-of-war-challen...

Ah! Thanks for the correction.

Bongs can't be returned for health and safety reasons.

I would argue that "no returns" is a lot more lenient than someone stealing the stuff you bought from them and not giving you a refund...

While "Order of War: Challenge" might have been sold separately at some point (I'm not sure), I think that most players (like me) were those who bought the original "Order of War" and got "Order of War: Challenge" as a free add-on.

Just go to GoG.com they offer refunds AND they have a wide selection of old and indie games.

GOG does have a few games with DRM even though they advertise as 100% DRM free. They have also sold games that phone home, although I don't think they have sold any that have phone home DRM. They are more reliable than anywhere else I know of, but do have some amount of false advertising.

I was answering parent's claim for refund policy. I haven't really encountered a game with DRM yet.

EDIT: Yeah, it seems some multiplayer games need serial keys to play multiplayer on their servers. You can't blame GoG for providing serial to multiplayer mode of a game. Single player should work without serial though.

The benefits it brings (no serial typing) compared with faults (overloading servers and allowing bots) and costs (huge to re-implement server from scratch), just make it virtually impossible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com