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Buggy games should be 100% allowed to be refunded.

I have no idea how many runs I started in BG3. Every few moments I report a bug. Every update the game seemingly gets worse. Decisions don’t work, pathing is awful, after the latest update attacks no longer connect properly and my character claims not to be able to attack with a clear line of sight and so on. I have never finished the game, because by the time I reach Act 3, it just gets too much. I don’t want to go into details, because, again, I reported tons of bugs. Steam refuses to refund me the money, even though the game is too buggy to complete. Sure, I can probably get to the credits, but the choices saved into the world aren’t mine and the world didn’t progress correctly. Multiple times I had dialogue not happen, end abruptly with no option to redo the line and rolling back save not fixing it. If you have no issues, I’m happy for you. But I’m tired. I just wanted to play my silly game and be happy, but instead I wasted 60 euros (actually 120, bought it twice, I’m a fool, don’t want to elaborate on that) to work as a free QA and be treated like dirt. Fuck this.

squid ,

If you’d not mentioned BG3 then more people would agree, but any game that is buggy should be refundable for sure and to say other wise is anti consumer

thelosers5o ,

I just wanted to comment to say that I find the game just as buggy as you say. I do think that some people are more sensitive than others. I’m playing couch coop and my gaming partner doesn’t notice any of the bugs until I call them out for him. Unless they are game breaking. Within 11 hours of play I have encountered 3 bugs that warranted a game restarts and countless other bugs that ranged from minor to frustrating.

This is typical larian though. Divinity 1 + 2 were the same for me. If anything this game is even buggier.

canis_majoris ,
@canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

You can refund games for being buggy, you cannot however, play them for dozens of hours and then refund them. Steam’s limit is two hours and two weeks.

danque ,
@danque@lemmy.world avatar

And two weeks? That must be new, I had games refunded after months but with a playtime below 2hrs.

BuboScandiacus ,
@BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz avatar

Maybe it’s different in the US ?

wccrawford ,

I think the “2 weeks” is the line for auto-refund, but they can and will refund you after that at their discretion. And they don’t seem to be jerks about it.

SheeEttin ,

Yeah. I’ve definitely gotten refunds past those limits. But I’ve had a Steam account for like 16 years at this point, lots of games, and I’ve requested a refund maybe twice.

StarkillerX42 ,

Steam is known to be more generous about the rule if you have few refunds on your profile and a decent amount of purchases. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for updates, even if the update makes the game unplayable.

ringwraithfish ,

Post your specs and driver versions

bane_killgrind ,

This is important.

ashok36 ,

You say that rolling back to a previous save “didn’t fix it”? Do you mean that the error happens every time you reload? How far back are you going in time?

Sprite OP ,
@Sprite@lemmy.ml avatar

Yes, the issues I encounter are 100% repro. I roll back to before the interaction that is broken at the time, but I had so many broken dialogues I’m too tired. My 2nd refund request was rejected by Steam, I wrote an email to Larian, albeit I fully doubt they will even respond, considering how much emails they get related to bugs. I’m currently sitting rewriting my CV. Some people may not understand, but I’ve spent my life in gaming, my work is literally being a gaming QA tester and I’m too tired.

bane_killgrind ,

What drivers are you using?

Are you using process inspection software?

LaGG_3 ,
@LaGG_3@hexbear.net avatar

Never buy a AAA game on release. They’re all buggy messes until a year or so in.

Sprite OP ,
@Sprite@lemmy.ml avatar

I genuinely wish I could find a new career and hobby at this point. I’m just too tired.

LaGG_3 ,
@LaGG_3@hexbear.net avatar

Definitely easier said than done, but you’re right - if you’re not enjoying the games, try something new to give them a break.

Montagge ,
@Montagge@kbin.social avatar

Larian games never get better lol

conciselyverbose ,

What you're describing isn't real, but even if it was, it wouldn't warrant a refund. You can't play 100 hours then make up phantom bugs to get your money back.

ALERT ,
@ALERT@sh.itjust.works avatar

Words of a person who hasn’t been involved in any software development whatsoever.

Sprite OP ,
@Sprite@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ve been literally working as a QA tester in gaming for years.

ALERT ,
@ALERT@sh.itjust.works avatar

With such an attitude, I am looking forward to your next post where you whine about being fired after working so hard for these years and being so professional boo hoo why am I being fiired. Please, union, save my job. Well, that’s because one of your corporation’s projects in another country that you have zero effect on earned a negative amount of money because of your fantasy and due to refund bombing. Instead of at least covering production costs, such losses would bury company after company all around the world until all of the game development switches to hyper-casual games. All because of toxicity you just made up. Think twice. Look further down your nose. That’s even not mentioning your professional mind deformation. You are not average. You should understand this. You see what others don’t and this doesn’t help you feel positive about products. You should be okay to feel bad about every single product, including your own. In every interview, I ask QAs questions like your fantasy to find out whether the person is able to perceive different work aspects from a business perspective, not only a product perspective. This is very important to discover in an interview to filter the red flag attitude like this post of yours. Sorry for the moral speech. It’s just my day-to-day work pain. I wish you the best, OP.

michaelrose ,

Most bugs aren’t unconditionally experienced by all comers or they would have been fixed. It’s entirely possible there are 17 horrible game breaking experience ruining bugs every single one triggered by a very specific combination of factors in a given work and out of millions of players one person to hit 5 and hate their life and many hit zero.

If you had bothered to read you would note they mention concrete defects that effected their playing not nits they were picking based on depth of experience.

Given extremely misery return policies if your game’s profitability is actually materially harmed let alone destroyed by returns you might have released a broken piece of shit and need to blame yourself rather than customers who believed in you enough to at least initially put their money where their mouth is.

You see what others don’t and this doesn’t help you feel positive about products.

Its a fucking game. If it doesn’t make you forget about it being a “product” and divert your attention from the reality for a few hours its developers have wholly and completely failed.

your professional mind deformation

Did this sound like how humans talk when you said it?

I ask QAs questions like your fantasy to find out whether the person is able to perceive different work aspects from a business perspective

You try to hire people who are literal soulless robots who think about the money that can be made from convincing people to pay you to shovel shit into their brain instead of having fun.

. This is very important to discover in an interview to filter the red flag attitude

Holy shit you might actually eventually hire someone who gives a fuck

I wish you the best, OP.

I just said you were a piece of shit nobody should hire but I totally “wish you the best”. If its a person you ought to avoid hiring its a person who walks into a legit conversation, shits all over it, insults people, and talks like a fucking robot.

Can you possibly keep your negativity to yourself if you have nothing useful to contribute next time?

ALERT ,
@ALERT@sh.itjust.works avatar

Most bugs aren’t unconditionally experienced by all comers or they would have been fixed.

This is not always true. I can assure you, that the game can be published with even critical bugs, and the development team has zero effect on this decision because whether to publish a game and when to publish the game - it’s the publishing department to decide, not the development. Because the development department always cares about quality, and always wants more time to polish more. If the development department made the final decision, the games would be published years later than they are and their budgets would skyrocket. This is why it is important to take the business side of game development into account.

If you had bothered to read you would note they mention concrete defects that effected their playing not nits they were picking based on depth of experience.

One can experience a major defect while keeping positivity for the game, but as soon as you start noticing hundreds of even small defects, your positivity breaks. This is the price you pay for being a professional QA.

Given extremely misery return policies if your game’s profitability is actually materially harmed let alone destroyed by returns you might have released a broken piece of shit and need to blame yourself rather than customers who believed in you enough to at least initially put their money where their mouth is.

You are right. As a consumer, you are totally right. And I agree with this when this is about something tangible and monofunctional like pliers, cutting a tree, cleaning debris, or other products and services not affected by subjectivity. When it comes to subjective products and services there’s always more to account for. Something specific to blame for faults. For you it’s a “game” that is bad, for me, you are talking about the team behind the game, and the team is not one unit. Those are people. People fuck up.

Its a fucking game. If it doesn’t make you forget about it being a “product” and divert your attention from the reality for a few hours its developers have wholly and completely failed.

This is a very powerful thought right there. This is what’s great about games. Now tell me, is the attention of those 96% of people who enjoy this game despite noticing bugs being diverted from reality for a few hours? Did the developers actually fail on this one? Or is it just the Head of the Publishing Department at Larian who said “Enough. We are publishing this NOW!”, and a few individuals with a negative attitude toward a great product?

image

Did this sound like how humans talk when you said it?

If you click on my profile, you will notice that I’m from Kyiv, Ukraine. I’m not a native English speaker, I have almost zero speaking practice. In Ukrainian, this is called “professional deformation”, or “profdeformation” for short. I tried translating this phrase into English. Sorry, I failed.

You try to hire people who are literal soulless robots who think about the money that can be made from convincing people to pay you to shovel shit into their brain instead of having fun.

Sorry, but you didn’t get my idea. You see, the game development teams are very sensitive to the products they make. When publishing comes and says that we are publishing the game now, the development team gets hugely frustrated, as they know not 100% of the bugs are fixed. But each person who is able to perceive this from a business side can understand that this publishing demand can be based on budgeting and made to save the jobs of these developers even with anticipated losses due to negative reviews. By putting this understanding into the heads of my subordinates I save them from frustration and develop their understanding of how business works. This is how I do this, I’m not saying this is the right way.

Can you possibly keep your negativity to yourself if you have nothing useful to contribute next time?

I’m sorry my reply frustrated you. I didn’t want anyone to be insulted. This is just how I express my feelings. I’m a little rough as a person.

michaelrose , (edited )

Thanks for the information regarding translation that makes it far more clear. I wouldn’t phrase that as “mind deformation” because that sounds like mental illness.

pancakesyrupyum ,

I’d probably love the tedium of being a QA tester. I’d be happy to switch careers and take your job if it probably didn’t imply a pretty hefty pay cut.

AlwaysNowNeverNotMe ,
@AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social avatar

Because every douche canoe would just beat the game then ask for a refund.

SheeEttin ,

If the automatic refund was rejected, you can ask for a manual review.

But if you’ve really started that many runs, and put in enough hours to get that far, don’t be surprised if they deny a refund. You’ve already experienced most of the game. It’s like going to a restaurant, tasting your meal, saying it’s horrible, then continuing to eat it.

Sprite OP ,
@Sprite@lemmy.ml avatar

I requested a refund immediately upon realizing the game is too buggy for a proper playthrough. How is it my fault the game is longer than 2 hours so it doesn’t go under the requirements? Besides, there’s no request for manual review. All reviews are “manual”, but they seldom if ever consider anything besides playtime, for examples look at the trend of running entire game and then refunding. I work professionally as QA, so to me this is plain bullshit. With the amount of time I spent reporting bugs, I should have a second salary, not money spent on a game I cannot even properly complete.

SheeEttin ,

They’re pretty lenient with refunds past two hours’ playtime, if it’s not that much more and you don’t have a history of requesting refunds. I’ve been refunded for games after like four hours, but I’ve also only done maybe two refunds tops.

PenguinTD ,

Have you consider sending your collection of ticket and professional bug reports to Latina and properly get a 2nd job and earn your justified income?

Granted I haven’t finished my first run, but locking out contents/dialog/story path is part of the deal in crpg no? (Or, like if you killed some NPC and then later not be able to finish a side quest involving that dead guy is fairly normal.)

averagedrunk ,

I don’t know that sending it to a random Latina would work. She’d probably be weirded out by some random person removed about a game.

Sivick314 ,
@Sivick314@universeodon.com avatar

@Sprite @SheeEttin too buggy for a proper playthrough? I have like 300 hours. I don't know what you are doing that you can't play the game, but that is not the experience most people have.

Haui ,
@Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I get that you‘re frustrated for more reasons than a freshly released game has bugs but this is literally the first time I hear of bg 3 being not completeable. What specs are you running on?

CorrodedCranium ,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

I could see that being a bit of a struggle to implement in the case where games become buggy after updates like you mentioned but I do get what you mean and have a bit of respect for companies who will issue refunds after some kind of community feedback regardless of playtime. For example when some games took away native Linux support and issued refunds. Similar kind of thing.

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