PC Do game developers owe anything to the people buying their games?

Kyonshi

Kyonshi

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A common fallacy from a lot of entitled people is that they believe they own a game because they paid for it and therefore, the devs of such game become the mere servants of those who "own" it and must abide to each of their ordres.

From what i know, you dont own a game, nor the intellectual property, when you give money for it. You pay for a right to play that game, if i can put it roughly. Correct me if im wrong.

The @%$# storm that happened these last weeks, and also today, when the 7DTD Facebook page posts about the Twitch integration, and the upcoming livestream about it, tends to unleash a horde (lol) of ignorant and entitled people who give an awful amount of crap to the Pimps. Its pathetic to a level that science didnt discovered yet. I know im not the only one to see this. Its either that or the damn console/Telltale debacle that i think i wont see the end of it while im alive.

"The Pimps only work on this @%$#ing Twitch thing and they should focus their resources on REAL content"

"They didnt deliver anything promised. Case in point, the game is still in Alpha and we'll never see a full release"

"The Pimps screwed us all on console and let us down. Its their fault, they shouldnt have cut a deal with Telltale blah blah blah"

The minute i reply to one of them (yes, i know, i shouldnt waste my stamina with this) that the Pimps dont owe anything to anyone, i get served the same insanities, ranging from they dont know how to work and of course, as mentioned, "they owe us a complete game!".

I know i'll be told that the devs indeed dont owe @%$# to anyone and i do know that. Still, im curious to know what's your opinion about the responsibilities a game developer has toward the community, good or bad, that support their titles and what's the extent of such responsibilities, where are the limits, where does it stop.

 
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No

and imo (keep in mind I have never used twitch nor am I interested in twitch)

do not buy early access if you expect a finished game. Wait for it to be released.

that said, I do think the Pimps lack of even a moderately conscience road map and the perpetual “when its done” just encourages fear/uncertainty and ultimately anger.

 
Kyonshi said:
The minute i reply to one of them (yes, i know, i shouldnt waste my stamina with this) that the Pimps dont owe anything to anyone, i get served the same insanities, ranging from they dont know how to work and of course, as mentioned, "they owe us a complete game!"
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What? Nobody told you that they hope you get cancer and that a fire kills your entire family? 

Weak sauce responses, man...

:)

 
I would say no, they don't owe them anything.

However...

If you want to stay in business, obviously they need to make stuff folks want to buy.

 
If I had a penny for every hour I've spent playing this game... I could buy several more copies!

I think they owe me pennies.  Or early access to their next game.  Or both.

 
Gazz said:
That's actually true. There just isn't a date on this because it's game development, not baking cookies.
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No, it's not (not legally, albeit morally it's another matter...).

The EA Steam agreement clearly states that the game could even never be finished by the devs... You're buying the product "as is" at the time of purchase.

 
Depend on the country the software get published.

Gazz and me are german's and here the developer have to give out patches for their product or the customer got the right to his cash fully back even after the limited refound time.

But since 7D2D don't get released so far, they have a special status.

And the customer just got the right to test their product.

 
Okay there is two ways to see this issue:

The legal view and the moral view.

The legal view is pretty easy to answer:
They gave a statement about what they want to include and worked on the game AND you got what you were promised. At least like to a significant percentage.
Therefor legally, TFPs are in the clear.
If you wanna know how hard it is to actually sue a game, look at chronicals of elyria.
They got millions of $, had years and years of development, but other than a few pretty pictures and a preview of stuff that could have been done in a few days in any engine (with the promise (this is totally on a big server)... and the lawsuit still took a lot of lawyers and many MANY outcries.
Lets see if they can get their money back.

The "moral" view is a bit more complex.
What did you buy when you bought the game? The right for EA? The completed game? The right to influence like stocks?
There is I think no clear answer.

But I do think that you should not make an EA game, if you do not care for your players opinions.
They TWICE listened to player feedback, and that was the bearmodel and the burning Z model.

There might be instances where they did as well... but not on the MAJOR complaints, again, at least not to my knowledge.

BUT this is their right to do so. I just wished they would go less with "their vision" that changes every two alphas and a bit more open to the community feedback.
 

I think any person is entitled to their opinion. No matter how bad it would be for 99% of other players. And if I want to own an icecreamtruck and sell icecream to bandits, then that is my wish.
But all too often I see people wish for something a bit too agressively and beeing hunted down and beeing told "this is not your game!".


So I am in the middle. I accept that it is their game, I still wish they would listen a bit more to the community, since without them their EA game wouldn't have been paid.

 
Yeah, quite obivous that we aren´t entitled to anything. Especially as this game gave a lot of us quite the experience already.

It´s amazing with what kind of arguments the people demanding quicker development and/or the release come up on the steam forums. That one thread about how long the game is already in early access is hilarious. (poor mods tough, they have a lot of work to do there)

@Canute That´s interesting. I should check our laws here. Austrian government tends to have a lot of similar laws from you guys. Not for this game, but that is generally good to know.

 
Viktoriusiii said:
But I do think that you should not make an EA game, if you do not care for your players opinions.
They TWICE listened to player feedback, and that was the bearmodel and the burning Z model.

There might be instances where they did as well... but not on the MAJOR complaints, again, at least not to my knowledge.

BUT this is their right to do so. I just wished they would go less with "their vision" that changes every two alphas and a bit more open to the community feedback.
 

I think any person is entitled to their opinion. No matter how bad it would be for 99% of other players. And if I want to own an icecreamtruck and sell icecream to bandits, then that is my wish.
But all too often I see people wish for something a bit too agressively and beeing hunted down and beeing told "this is not your game!".


So I am in the middle. I accept that it is their game, I still wish they would listen a bit more to the community, since without them their EA game wouldn't have been paid.
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They did listen to the community, but in the end, it is their game and their development project.  Just because we purchased an EA game doesn’t mean that they have to implement the feedback from the community.  Listening to feedback is one thing; obligated to make changes based on feedback is something different and not a requirement  for EA games.

 
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I would say legally it is a grey area until tested in court. Between Valve and the developer there is no signed contract (AFAIK), just some rules that may or may not be enforcible (I'm sure lawyers will not be happy about the rather unspecific statements in these rules). One rule states that upon entering EA you should have a working game available for the players, not just a tech demo. This is maybe the only **hard** requirement you can read out of the rules. Quote: "Early Access titles must deliver a playable game or usable software to the customer at the time of purchase". A few other "must" rules are in a FAQ and read more like suggestions, I have my doubts they would hold up in court as hard rules.

Besides that abandoning the game is acknowledged as a valid decision of the developer but steam warns it may reimburse players (and then probably try to get back that money from the developer, otherwise it wouldn't be a warning)

Between valve and the customer there is a legal sale, but the game is obviously not sold as a finished game. Courts in different countries may give different legal guarantees depending on what they decide the product is, i.e. whether they judge it to be an investment, sale of a prototype, sale of a prototype plus development, sale of damaged good or sale of a product with typical guarantees (last one is very unlikely though).

In Germany there is a legal concept of "no surprises" at least for private customers. Therefore whatever Valve promises for EA titles is actually binding, whatever can reasonably be expected as well is a grey area for the courts. One may suspect that further development effort may be expected in EA or not depending on what the judge had for breakfast that morning 😉

Disclaimer: No lawyer is me, obviously.

 
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BFT2020 said:
Listening to feedback is one thing; obligated to make changes based on feedback is something different and not a requirement  for EA games.
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Well if you have 100 requests and only 2 are actually fulfilled... I would not say that they listen (numbers are hyperbolic).
That is more like random chance that they wanted to do it anyways.

Listening is nice, but I feel like (personal opinion) they do not actually take it into consideration... or at least not for long.
Which means listening becomes pointless, because the result is not changed. I can claim a wall is listening to you, but you wouldn't try to convince it of anything.

I don't think they are OBLIGATED to. But I do think that pushing your vision against the paying supporters is not ideal.
And they have done that time and time again. A17 was just the most major one, because it basicially changed the genre, was released WAY too early to be sold in the wintersales and made modding a lot harder to do. It was an all in one FU to the community.
But this was by far the only time. Just with smaller stuff.

And I think TFPs are right on the edge of what I would call acceptable.
They at least do have active moderators that keep us informed and they give us Alpha updates so we know what is coming...

But when it comes to feedback...
They are one of the worst devs of any EA game. There are some that simply abandon the project, they are obviously much worse.
But in all my time here on the forum and on youtube... I have rarely, if ever, seen them take feedback to heart. Because they have their vision and they follow it.
Which is fine... I would still appreciate it if they gave in once or twice.


 

meganoth said:
In Germany there is a legal concept of "no surprises" at least for private customers. Therefore whatever Valve promises for EA titles is actually binding, whatever can reasonably be expected as well is a grey area for the courts.
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How surprising, would you say, would it be if 7d2d became a racing game? 🤔
Food for thought! 😆

 
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Objectively speaking I think they have done well enough so far to the original scope on their kickstarter promise and will surpass them in some ways when everything is said and done.

As far as how long its taken, that sorta comes with the territory of early access indie development.  Could have things been completed faster? Sure, but my guess would be we would have a lesser game then we have now.

 
Viktoriusiii said:
Because they have their vision and they follow it.
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I for one am SO glad they do exactly this. They've ended up making a game I've poured thousands of hours into and will continue to do so in the future. No other game in my library even comes close. So yes, keep to your vision TFP, it's the right path!

 
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