I think gamers have to be pretty happy with this 'bill of rights'. Its a nice thing to have. I'd liked to have seen a comment on modability in there also though. Mods really extend the life of a game. Meaningful expansion packs would have been good too.

Galciv2 had a few bugs on release, but what game doesn't. Look at Oblivion, crashes every few hours and has countless bugs but its still a great game! With regards to 'finished games', I can accept a game with bugs on release, but there is nothing more frustrating than having a company walk away from them (Star Trek Legacy, Master of Orion 3 anyone?). Stardock haven't walked away.

On updates, I think people are confusing bug patches with things like extra units/maps/technologies/map editors etc that are released to thank customers for buying the product. I really hope that

"The Developer's Bill of Rights"

1. To copletelty ignore everithing the player expect.

My point is that there are bazillions of different ways to improve or crush anyone system natural capacity for efficient downloads and (as you wisely suggested above) surfing on message boards.

One may think, going from 2800 bauds to ADSL+++ or T's is an indication of lag or worst conditions you or WE must cope with.

As a supplemental observation, i offer this; Mid 70's in College, i was actually stuck with 300 bauds phone clip support to transmit my set of 'punch cards' results to another building as final exam! These situations are what i call (today) slow stuff. Technology helping since, i can say that anybody can enhance the current experience of games WAAAAAYYYY beyond what i had to go through.

For a cost, i might add.

But, it's different than blaming a developpers' infrastructure for bad performance when the trouble is coming from someone's local hardware & what else.

Amen!

I like the idea and definitely think some of the rights shouldn't even be spelled out as they're just common sense but then some of them are a bit far fetched or naive.

Not all games need (or even should have) updates. Adventure games, like The Longest Journey for example, don't need updates. Even shooters, just your standard fare like half-life, or crysis, or whate have you. Expansions yes, updates - not if the game was complete when it was released, which is of course another item on the list.

A. Good luck trying to convince anyone to implement this policy. It's bad for business.

B. I know we shouldn't be treating customers as potential criminals, and being a customer I totally support that. Having said that you know that a lot of people will take advantage of something like this - go to the store and buy galciv2, rip the CD (no copy protection, right), jot down the serial number. Then bring the game back to the store claiming it doesn't work well on your PC, get full refund, come back home and enjoy the full game with all the future updates for free. I mean seriously, even honest people will have a hard time passing up on a deal like this.

I think at the end it all comes down to only just one item on this list, #8

If publishers adopt that way of thinking then most of the rest of the "rights" will be granted as it were.

There are always at least bug fixes to be made. In addition, look at what Valve is doing to Team Fortress 2: They are adding new stuff like more achievements. Completely unnecesarry stuff, as the game could easily do without, but stuff that veteran playser could appreciate. In addition, there are new maps added, as TF2 was rather short on maps.

Agreed. Valve had that trouble with their games, and it became worse because the serial number wasn't just a number needed to play the game: It is the number used to create a new online account or add a game to an existing account. Players found themselves being locked out because somebody else had already used it.

With a digital distribution system, I suppose the online store can offer a refund and release the number, but with a physical serial number, there's not much in place to tell the game company that the game has been returned.

Consoles maybe, but PCs?  That's just not going to be fair to publishers.  Far too many games don't play right not because of any fault in the game, but because the PC owner isn't maintaining the PC.  You can't expect a game to run right on a PC with a big pile of malware and a 90% fragmented hard drive.  Plus a lot of games are getting very short.  Buy it on friday, play it over the weekend, return it on monday for a full refund.

HOWEVER, I think buyers do have a right to know the requirements for a game.  Putting the requirements in microscopic type on the back of the box isn't cutting it - particularly since the vast majority of potential buyers have no clue how much RAM they have.  Vista provided a nice, easy Windows Experience index they can memorize.  There are some problems with the index (last I heard) but it's still FAR better than expecting the buyer to know how much memory is in their video card or how fast their CPU runs.  I have yet to see a single game have this number on the box, though. The only time I see them used is in the Vista Games folder but you can't see that rating until after you've already bought and installed the game!

Got the manual done for Twilight yet, now that it has been out for a few months?

I see meaningful updates (like the upcoming version 2 of GC2) as gifts.  They encourage me to buy software from that publisher/designer in the future.  Sometimes they encourage me to buy a game I had planned on skipping.  However, I just don't feel like I have a right to such updates.

???  Tons of games had the updater built in to the game itself.  I really don't mind if a game automatically loads a download manager.  And, with online games, it's often very important to have everyone playing the same version so I can see why some games would force you to update.  What can get me really mad, though, are download managers that set themselves to run every time you start your PC.  That should not be the default option!

"Adequately" is a pretty subjective term.  To me, minimum requirements means what it says - beyond this point you can not play the game at all.  However, if you do have a system that matches the min specs (and you've maintained the system), then you should be able to get through the whole game.  The recommended requirements are what you need to be able to get through the whole game and actually have fun.  But that's all pretty much irrelevant, IMHO, because so few people can read and understand what the requirements are anyway.

Amen.  Those CD/DVD drivers were just plain evil.

Huh?  I haven't owned a game in eons.  You license the right to install a game and play it, you never own it.

I wish I could agree with that.  Unfortunately, I think the majority of gamers ARE criminals.  The whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing doesn't work very well when most of your population is guilty.

Why?  I can see that as a problem for dial-up users but how many of those have we got left, and just how hard is it for them?  I guess I know why, though, don't I?  Because Stardock doesn't force it and you want to convince me that checking in with some server is causing me some kind of pain I shouldn't have to endure.

Again, why?  If they have the DVD in there so they can use some freaky DVD driver on it, then yeah, that's bad - but that was already covered above.  If they are checking the DVD to pull in some data they didn't want to put on my hard drive for some reason, that's fine by me.

Am I the only one who thinks it's more than a little bit hypocritical to talk about "Gamers' Rights" while trying to prevent that they make use of their rights given them by the law? Such as the right to resell their games bought in a shop without any restrictions printed on the outside?

Sorry, as far as I can see, this is just "Hm, 'The way we do it' doesn't sound great, let's name it 'Gamers' Bill of Rights', that's a much better marketing gag.".

So, as long as 11. isn't "Gamers have the right to resell their old games" I don't think this is meaningfull, sorry. Yes, I know, reselling games makes your profits lower, but that's life. What would you tell the car vendor who tried to force you into not reselling your old car? (And please don't try to argue with that stupid "Games are no property" trick, games were re-sold since they were invented, just the new possibiliies of the internet make it possible to try such a stupid stunt).

The problem with reselling GalCiv II (for example) is that the updates are available only if you have registered the game to your account.  Therefore by reselling you're not actually passing that value for money on to the next person who plays the game.  They might pay more money to get it new, but at least they'll have the same rights to service as you did.

However it's still possible to install and play the game without updating.  In that way, the vanilla game works quite well as an extended demo.  There's also a downloadable demo for those who can't get their friends to part with their GalCiv II.

See, that's where this argument goes wrong - if games are sold instead of licensed, the buyer of the used game has the same rights as the buyer of a new game. This would include aftermarket updates. It wouldn't be optional, they would be required to support second-hand games. Stardock's (or anyone else's) DRM would be illegal if the game was actually sold.

However, games aren't sold the same way that for example, a painting is.  The ownership of the game isn't being transacted, the license to use that game is.  If you actually bought a game in the sense of owning it afterwards, you'd be paying considerably more.

Update: I'm suprised (in a good way) by the new version from the the Customer Report. It's better than this version, esp. the last point - even it it contains some limiting clauses.

I support the idea, that...

The user has the right to sell their physical copy of their game but the publisher is not automatically burdened with creating some sort of user-friendly system. For example, someone may want to sell their physical copy of an MMO but the MMO does not have to allow the user to transfer their MMO character necessarily or if they do support this, they are not required to invest in the creation of some user friendly transfer mechanism that is free to use.

That's ok, no problem with that. BUT, imho, this doesn't apply to the concept of delievering patches (and making the gam work). Especially, if you view the points 2, 3, it doesn't say there, that this is limited to people who bought the game new (and not used). So imho, IF the company who sells the games, forces some kind of online-registration system onto people to get patches, they should be required to implement some kind of user friendly transfer mechanism for the ownership of the game. And of course, an MMO company should be required to let the new owner make a new account (and deactive the old one).

But anyway, the change is a good step in the right direction, imho.

Good for Stardock!  I stopped buying computer games, because I'm tired of being ripped off.  Knowing that I can return a game, or that I'm not going to have to spend more money trying to play it is quite an incentive to try Stardock products.