Will Ubisoft Get Sued Over Watch Dogs?

[Reverend]

The Aliens story was something different. If I remember correctly, Gearbox did nothing with the game, outsourced it, then there were too many chefs in the kitchen, then they took it back and changed everything.

Close. Gearbox was taking the money Sega was paying for development milestones and instead using most of it to fund Borderlands and barely working on A:CM. Sega found out, took the game away from Gearbox, outsourced what little had been done to TimeGate (which was completely inadequate and unprepared for the work), and had Gearbox essentially act as project managers for the TimeGate crew ... which they sucked at, and so Sega finally decided to cut its losses and release the game as-is.

What bothered me (and I think a lot of people) about that little episode wasn't so much that they put out an unfinished, buggy mess of a product, but that they went to extraordinary lengths to deceive their customers with what amounted to a fake gameplay demo ("vertical slice" my arse!) complete with taking heads gushing about the new advance enemy AI...which was frankly an outright lie.

If they'd have just cut their losses, dumped the game quietly into the bargain bins to be written off as a typically awful licensed tie-in, I could at least forgive it...but that incident has made me very wary of Gearbox to the point that I'm unwilling to buy anything they develop just on general principle.

 

[martok2112]

Pre-ordering a game is usually only more expensive if you're getting some "Super Ultra Extreme" edition of the game. (I did get the Collector's Edition for Aliens: Colonial Marines, and The Last of Us).

But just pre-ordering the game itself is not more expensive than just buying it on release. At least, not at GameStop. They have you put 5 dollars down to secure your pre-order arrival, and it goes toward the final cost of the game. But if I do pre-order a game, I usually just pay in full and wait.

Of course, again, Gearbox, Randy Pitchford, and the mishandling of A:CM by same is more than enough for me to not pre-order again. And when employees at GameStop ask me "Would you like to pre-order--?", I stop them in mid-sentence and say: "Most vehemently, no. And you can thank Randy Pitchford when your boss asks you why your personal pre-sales records are declining? In fact, tell your boss that Randy Pitchford is responsible."


Heh....on YouTube, there's some guy who put up a video, telling folks "DO NOT PRE-ORDER ALIEN ISOLATION! It's being put out by Sega, and Sega put out Aliens Colonial Marines, which sucked! Demand better from game companies!"

Well, first off (as many times many people told this guy in follow up comments), Sega did not develop the title. The title was "developed" (using the word loosely) by TimeGate, which was an outsource from Gearbox so that GB could focus on "Borderlands 2". GB misused Sega's money (and I think THAT ought to be the grounds for lawsuit. "We gave you that monetary support to create 'Aliens: Colonial Marines', not divert it to Borderlands 2, and outsource to a less than capable development company. You squandered our money for your own purposes, and failed to deliver the product we expected to put in the hands of end-users. We ended up having to distribute a sub-par video game, and have taken some losses...and flak. We feel you need to pay up, GB!"

Alien Isolation is being developed by a different company, with Sega as distributor. As anxious as I am to get this game, I will not pre-order it.

 

[FPAlpha]

Wasn't this thread about the lawsuit against Ubisoft for Assassins Creed?

 

[Solariabsg25]

Wasn't this thread about the lawsuit against Ubisoft for Assassins Creed?

What, you implying that Ubisoft think women are too girlie to be assassins??

To be honest, from my experience, most female gamers don't care what their character looks like while they're leaping off a second-storey balcony to drive hidden blades into someone's gizzard! My daughter and I are big RE6 fans, and she plays almost exclusively as Piers, so go figure!

 

[Reverend]

Pre-ordering a game is usually only more expensive if you're getting some "Super Ultra Extreme" edition of the game. (I did get the Collector's Edition for Aliens: Colonial Marines, and The Last of Us).

But just pre-ordering the game itself is not more expensive than just buying it on release. At least, not at GameStop. They have you put 5 dollars down to secure your pre-order arrival, and it goes toward the final cost of the game. But if I do pre-order a game, I usually just pay in full and wait.

As I said, pre-ordering physical copies is fine. I get that. But when they do it for digital copies...it gets more than a little silly. I mean there's no real danger of running out of stock. Even if they somehow miscalculate and don't generate enough keys to meet demand, it's simply a matter generating some more in a few hours.

That aside, what they're basically asking you to do is give them money for a product sight-unseen before even critics are allowed to see it and a lot of people have been caught out by this practice over the years. 'Aliens: CM' is just a more recent example and a particularly onerous one given how aggressively they promoted, embellished and outright fabricated--knowing full well it was a broken product--in order to secure the maximum number of pre-orders before the reviews started dropping.

Gearbox may be the ones responsible for the misappropriation of funds, but Sega supported the marketing campaign and as such neither company can be trusted, under any circumstances.

Wasn't this thread about the lawsuit against Ubisoft for Assassins Creed?

What, you implying that Ubisoft think women are too girlie to be assassins??

To be honest, from my experience, most female gamers don't care what their character looks like while they're leaping off a second-storey balcony to drive hidden blades into someone's gizzard! My daughter and I are big RE6 fans, and she plays almost exclusively as Piers, so go figure!

It's not about female gamers not being happy, it's about a lack of representation and diversity in games. In this instance it's also about the pathetic excuses they came up with to justify a four player co-op made up entirely of near identical white dudes. It's lazy and feckless and they can do better.

 

[martok2112]

Pre-ordering a game is usually only more expensive if you're getting some "Super Ultra Extreme" edition of the game. (I did get the Collector's Edition for Aliens: Colonial Marines, and The Last of Us).

But just pre-ordering the game itself is not more expensive than just buying it on release. At least, not at GameStop. They have you put 5 dollars down to secure your pre-order arrival, and it goes toward the final cost of the game. But if I do pre-order a game, I usually just pay in full and wait.

As I said, pre-ordering physical copies is fine. I get that. But when they do it for digital copies...it gets more than a little silly. I mean there's no real danger of running out of stock. Even if they somehow miscalculate and don't generate enough keys to meet demand, it's simply a matter generating some more in a few hours.

That aside, what they're basically asking you to do is give them money for a product sight-unseen before even critics are allowed to see it and a lot of people have been caught out by this practice over the years. 'Aliens: CM' is just a more recent example and a particularly onerous one given how aggressively they promoted, embellished and outright fabricated--knowing full well it was a broken product--in order to secure the maximum number of pre-orders before the reviews started dropping.

Gearbox may be the ones responsible for the misappropriation of funds, but Sega supported the marketing campaign and as such neither company can be trusted, under any circumstances.

Point well taken. Although I would say it could be (could be) possible that Sega was still supporting the marketing under the assumption of what was being shown before. But, even distributors have to have their own QA people, right? It's an interesting case.

 

[Solariabsg25]

Oh I agree totally, there is a long way to go before true gender equality in games, just look at the really practical outfits the female characters get in the Mortal kombat games for example. Aliens Colonial marines use a female character model for multiplayer games, yet in all the customisable options you can't actually have them wear a helmet for some bizarre reason.

I wonder if the backlash may force Ubisoft to creat female character models for future DLC? Won't hold my breath though!

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I don't pre-order often. I've only pre-ordered a few games, ever. I currently have the fancy edition of Persona Q on pre-order and that's it, but then I get other cool stuff for that money.

Although games, like most software, come with no warranty, I do think there is a point where a game is such a complete piece of shit that people are entitled to their money back, and if they can't get it, file a lawsuit. The original Battlecruiser 3000AD would've been a good example. Honestly surprised customers didn't sue over that one.

Deceptive advertising is still illegal, though, so if you make a game look one way and then sell an inferior-looking version at retail, people have a right to be upset.

I do think you have to be able to quantify what it is that justifies the damages. A game being released in a horribly broken state, or grossly inconsistent with released marketing materials, etc. The gaming industry has generally gotten away without being held accountable for what they produce other than people not buying future titles. I say if you release a total piece of shit and people want their money back, they should have it.

 

[Solariabsg25]

False advertising is a no-no. Much as a love A:CM would I have preferred what Pitchford showed at E3? Hell yeah!

But at least though not as good, it wasn't broken. I haven't played it, but from what I've seen the Star Trek game was a complete mess. Battlefield 4 was also very buggy, but they moved heaven and earth do get it fixed, even delaying some money-making DLC to get it sorted, and the Walking Dead game was universally panned. Don't play them myself, but I've seen youtube vids pointing out that the brand new NFL games, supposed to be bringing a new interactive experience to the game, had the same cookie-cutter animations as they have done in the previous dozen or so games in the franchise, with undetailed cardboard cut-out crowds.

Yet despite this, and numerous other examples of games not living up to the hype, thousands of people still pre-order.

Are law-suits the answer? I dunno, because a lot of hatred becomes subjective. As a prime example, if the E3 demo showed the A:CM gameplay as it was on release, is there any guarantee that the guy bringing the law suit wouldn't have bought the game after all?

But yeah, something does need to be done to bring the developers to account. Therein lies the rub - what can we do?

 

[martok2112]

But yeah, something does need to be done to bring the developers to account. Therein lies the rub - what can we do?

Well, it would be a question of fandom/support of Gearbox over the fandom/love of the Aliens property, but in the case of Gearbox, what if everyone simply boycotted buying "Borderlands:The Pre-Sequel"? It's already too late to make such a statement regarding Borderlands 2, but it wouldn't hurt to remind Gearbox/Randy Pitchford that they lied to the company's fans/supportes (to say nothing of lying to those who were simply waiting on a kick ass Aliens game), and now they'll have to bite the big weenie on "The Pre-Sequel".

 

[Solariabsg25]

I wonder if the new Borderlands will suffer from the A:CM fall-out anyway.

I have visions of Pitchford showing a demo with the crowd chanting "Show Us The Real Game! Show Us The Real Game!"

 

[Rincewiend]

I wonder if the new Borderlands will suffer from the A:CM fall-out anyway.

I have visions of Pitchford showing a demo with the crowd chanting "Show Us The Real Game! Show Us The Real Game!"

The reply to that would be "Play Borderlands 2!"
The main difference will be lower gravity in the game since it takes place on the planets moon...

 

[Owain Taggart]

Gearbox has had an interesting... history. They started out being the developer that produced the Half-Life expansions, Opposing Force and Blue Shift, and I think expansions for other games is what they did for awhile. I think I remember the reviews being rather lukewarm.

Then we have the controversy surrounding Duke Nukem Forever, and I don't know if that says anything about Gearbox itself, but counting A:CM, that would be at least two games that they took on unfinished from another developer, both of which ended in controversy. I don't know if that means they're bad at selecting projects, bad at finishing half-finished projects, or both. But it would seem to me that they should stick to their original properties and stay away from half-finished projects.

 

[ATimson]

Well, first off (as many times many people told this guy in follow up comments), Sega did not develop the title. The title was "developed" (using the word loosely) by TimeGate, which was an outsource from Gearbox so that GB could focus on "Borderlands 2". GB misused Sega's money (and I think THAT ought to be the grounds for lawsuit. "We gave you that monetary support to create 'Aliens: Colonial Marines', not divert it to Borderlands 2, and outsource to a less than capable development company. You squandered our money for your own purposes, and failed to deliver the product we expected to put in the hands of end-users. We ended up having to distribute a sub-par video game, and have taken some losses...and flak. We feel you need to pay up, GB!"

Using "A:CM" money on Borderlands 2 isn't an issue in and of itself. (Ideally, the developer should be able to create the game for less than the money they get from the publisher; otherwise, they either break even or lose money. So inevitably, if Gearbox is doing something right, that money would be used on other things.)

Not delivering the contracted product (a working game) is really the only grounds Sega has to hold anything against Gearbox.

 

[Reverend]

But yeah, something does need to be done to bring the developers to account. Therein lies the rub - what can we do?

Well, it would be a question of fandom/support of Gearbox over the fandom/love of the Aliens property, but in the case of Gearbox, what if everyone simply boycotted buying "Borderlands:The Pre-Sequel"? It's already too late to make such a statement regarding Borderlands 2, but it wouldn't hurt to remind Gearbox/Randy Pitchford that they lied to the company's fans/supportes (to say nothing of lying to those who were simply waiting on a kick ass Aliens game), and now they'll have to bite the big weenie on "The Pre-Sequel".

I've seen a lot of game boycotts over the years, but I've yet to see any of them have any real impact on sales.

The closest I've seen was Bioware releasing the ME3 extended cut DLC after the fans kicked up a major stink.

 

[martok2112]

But yeah, something does need to be done to bring the developers to account. Therein lies the rub - what can we do?

Well, it would be a question of fandom/support of Gearbox over the fandom/love of the Aliens property, but in the case of Gearbox, what if everyone simply boycotted buying "Borderlands:The Pre-Sequel"? It's already too late to make such a statement regarding Borderlands 2, but it wouldn't hurt to remind Gearbox/Randy Pitchford that they lied to the company's fans/supportes (to say nothing of lying to those who were simply waiting on a kick ass Aliens game), and now they'll have to bite the big weenie on "The Pre-Sequel".

I've seen a lot of game boycotts over the years, but I've yet to see any of them have any real impact on sales.

The closest I've seen was Bioware releasing the ME3 extended cut DLC after the fans kicked up a major stink.

Ultimately then, it's simple truth that as long as a game makes big bucks, it'll continue to thrive as a series with occasional tweaks to its formula....no matter if multitudes of gamers ended up with buyers" remorse. It's the same for movies, books...any mass-consumed media....long as the bucks are rolling in, the properties live on.

Generally, it doesn't bother me. If I don't like a game right off the bat, (usually because it's broken, or just did not live up to its promise....hello Duke Nukem Forever), I'll just take the game and demand a full refund. A:CM was at least, for me, enjoyable, as were the add ons and extra weapons. But DNF? That's the first time I was fooled by Randy Pitchford. A:CM was the second time (shame on me), but at least, to me, it didn't suck like DNF.

 

[Solariabsg25]

Regretfully, that's the truth of it.

People whine and moan about the latest outing for a franchise like EA Sports, WWE or COD, then the next year they're straight out buying the next one, believing the it has been "improved" and is a "new experience" when apart from skins, the latest rosters and perhaps slight tweaks to gameplay, nothing is changed. They'll then complain about the false promises, but a year later......