The last
few weeks have been an interesting time in the AAA game industry.
Interesting as in the ancient Chinese curse, “may you live in
interesting times.”
EA
releases Battlefield V, and most gamers barely notice. It's lousy
sales numbers compounded by their former Executive Vice President in
charge of Worldwide Studios, Patrick Söderlund, who stated “If you
don't like it, don't buy it”. Then he took his multimillion dollar
bonus and quit. Well, it seems that's what gamers did. They didn't
buy it. EA's stock price has plummeted by almost 50% this year...
Blizzard,
now Blizzard-Activision, dropped the ball twice in a row. First
during their own conference, BlizzCon, where they announced a Diablo
mobile game after leading fans to believe they had a proper game in
the works. The devs on stage then double down and sarcastically asked
the crowd: “Don't you all have phones?” Blizzard was booed at
their own con...
Then, the
announcement breaks that Diablo 3 is being released on the Nintendo
Switch, Nintendo's new console / hand held combo device. To
celebrate, Blizzard announces a competition where you can win a
Switch with Diablo 3. Nice prize, the Switch is fairly expensive. To
enter all you had to do was take a picture and upload it, but the
picture had to be of you playing Diablo 3 on the Switch... So to win
the prize, you already had to own the prize.
Now on to
Bethesda, dear Bethesda. Their last couple of months have not been
good. First Fallout 76 launches to less than positive reviews, then a
furor erupts when Bethesda refuses to give refunds on digital
versions of the game. But, there are no physical copies. Even if you
went and bought it from a physical store it was a case with a
download code in it. So people start talking civil suit, as in
several places (like the EU) it's illegal to withhold a refund within
reasonable terms.
Then the
bag controversy pops up. The Collectors Edition (or power armor
edition) of Fallout 76 was advertised to come with, amongst other
things, a sturdy canvas bag. People got a cheap thin nylon bag
instead. When they complained to customer service they got answers
like, “Sorry, the canvas bags were too expensive to make,” and
“We're not planning to do anything about it”. To no ones surprise
people were furious. To make matters worse, the Collectors Edition
was left on the Bethesda store unchanged for days after the story
broke. Now, if it had truly been impossible to make the canvas bags,
they should have changed the ad, but it remained.
Of course
this is blatant false advertising, which is extremely illegal. Some
lawyer at Bethesda must have gotten through to the decision makers
because they announced that everyone who bought the collectors
edition will get a canvas bag as soon as they are produced. All they
had to do was contact customer service with their details so that
Bethesda can send them the new bags. Simple, right?
Well, no,
because Bethesda's CS pages apparently flipped completely and allowed
a small number of random people access to the personal information of
everyone who responded. Eight pages of real names, addresses, screen
names, type of credit cards (but not complete CC numbers), etc. In
internet parlance Bethesda doxxed a lot of their already angry
customers. To make it even worse, these people could affect the
tickets, as if they worked at Bethesda. The problem is fixed now, but
there's a saying about barn doors and bolting horses.
All this
leaves me wondering what is going on in the AAA game space? How can
companies like this screw up so monumentally? What's next?
That's me
for this week, join me again next time for more Eccentric Spheres and
until then, have a calm and successful week!
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