So, why exactly have developers and retailers alike decided to place themselves above accountability when it comes to aftercare with their products? And more importantly…
Will the shitty practice and poor customer service of these developers bring about...
A bad game is something like Brink or Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. Whilst they technically do live up to everything that their marketing is showing, the end result isn’t satisfying. For the most part, that isn’t a fault of the devs. They most likely tried as best they could, but were stuck with tough deadlines in publisher deals or found that it was a genre they were not best suited to. The games were completed, but they were underwhelming or disappointing. That is a bad game.
A broken game is something like the latest SimCity or Assassin’s Creed Unity. Whilst it is entirely possible that these games were pushed out in a high-pressure development cycle, the dev teams promised the world to fans of the series and then delivered unplayable garbage. SimCity was unplayable on the day if it’s release, but still cost full price regardless. And because EA had decided to make it online only, the game was in an unplayable state for many weeks and months after the launch of the game. But the money had been traded and EA were rolling in several millions of dollars for about a dozen of actual gameplay hours worldwide. Similarly, Assassin’s Creed Unity shipped for full price and was a broke and buggy mess, where textures, mechanics and cutscenes could all lead to game-breaking bugs making it impossible to progress in the game. However, Ubisoft were still asking full price for the base game, as well as still charging for DLC packs. They did wane slightly when they offered the first pack for free, but reviews of the pack showed that turned out to not be the greatest of consolation prizes.
More importantly, advertised mechanics or features that find their way onto box art that then are not functional or even included in the game at the price you pay for is similarly a breach of the Trade Descriptions Act. At the end of the day, I would not try and sell you an Iceberg Lettuce on the premise that it can play Commodore 64 games. That would be a flat-out lie.
So now we come to today’s case study: Grand Theft Auto 5 and Grand Theft Auto Online.
To quickly answer the latter question: No. It looks alright. Nothing special. But at the end of the day, the game was not sold on the graphics. No, this edition of the game was sold on two things: the first person camera mechanic and the ability to transfer your previous GTA Online save file onto the new system in time for the Heists Update.
Okay, firstly about that Heists update. Take a look at the original official trailer for Grand Theft Auto Online, which premiered before the service launched, and you tell me whether or not Rockstar should have been held more accountable for the update coming a full year after it was said to have been included in the service at launch. Only a fool would say no.
After booting the game up and installing the fucking huge update files to actually play the goddamn thing, I booted up GTA Online and went about transferring my character. Seamlessly, the game pulled up my previous character, with all the weapons, money and clothes I’d gotten for him, so I went about navigating my way back to my apartment to go and pick up one of my modified cars and…
Gone. All of them. Every single vehicle I had in my garage online had disappeared. This included my starter car, everything I had bought, stolen and modified up to my last play point, to the cars and boats I’d received for free as part of the Beach Bum pack. Just disappeared into the aether. Needless to say, I was a little shocked.
Unsure what had happened, I contacted the Rockstar Support service for answers. With this message:
Transferred my online chracter from PS3 to PS4, and whilst all of the experience, wardrobe, abilities and money were correctly carried over, my entire garage was deleted, including the very first free car you get in the game and all the free vehicles from the PS3 updates. When I try to go to reclaim them on the respective car dealer websites, it asks to charge me again, even for the free vehicles.
Not sure which vehicles I had to begin with as I hadn't played for a while, but The Hexer was one I definitely owned, and I'm being asked to pay for it again.
Obviously, this is a bit disappointing, when everything else was carried over. Anyway to fix this/reimburse cash to re-buy the cars?
Hello Mike,
We are sorry to hear that you are facing an issue with missing cars. We have gone through your account and unable to verify the cars missing. Please provide us the following details, so our Claims Department can follow up:
-Which Character Slot (1 or 2):
-An inventory of any vehicles missing:
-How many garage slots are currently open if any:
Once we are provided this information, we will gladly investigate this.
Best regards,
Todd W.
Rockstar Support
The cars and boat from the Beach Bum pack were pretty easy to find, and of course, they were free at the time, so a logical person would find it safe to assume that even just re-instating these vehicles should be easy. Next was my personal cars, which took a little longer, but I remember tearing up the roads of Los Santos in a Schyster Fusilade (My starter car), A Vapid Dominator (which was free to steal), an Elegy R8 (which remains a free car in the game), and an LCC Hexer (which I purchased in game).
So, I sent off my response:
Hi,
The character slot should be number 1, as I've only got one character.
To my knowledge, the cars that were missing were an LCC Hexer, a BF Bifta, a Canis Kalahari, a Bravado Paradise, a Pegassi Speeder boat, a Vapid Dominator, an Elegy RH8 and a Schyster Fusilade. I know there was one more car missing, but I can't remember it nor find it's name online.
I currently have 8 garage spaces left on my transferred character.
Hope that helps you with my query.
Hello Mike,
We are sorry for the issue you are facing with the missing cars. However, we have gone through your account and unable to verify the purchase or any mods done on the missing cars. Unfortunately, we are unable to help you with the refund. Apologies in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to respond.
Best regards,
Todd W.
Rockstar Support
Firstly, on the off chance that the Rockstar Support team read this (I'm totally tweeting this article to them once it’s posted. Hi, Rockstar Support! You guys are cunts. Especially you, Todd W.), I just wanted to show you that I'm not leaving a stone unturned to prove that these guys have failed and then further denied the service they've advertised on the back of the box. So, here’s the back of my boxed copy of GTA5 for PS4.
Transfer your existing Grand Theft Auto Online character and progression to Playstation 4.*
Player data transfer subject to certain limits and requirements, see rockstargames.com/gtaonline/charactertransfer for details.
What will be transferred:
Money – Earned in-game money will transfer. Purchased in-game money that has not yet been spent will only transfer within a console family (e.g. PlayStation®3 to PlayStation®4).
Rank and RP – You will have the same Rank and RP after transfer.
Game Progress – GTA Online progression will transfer including all unlocks, Contacts, Jobs, Trophies and stats.
Items and Property – Weapons/attachments, vehicles/modifications, properties, clothing and all aspects of character appearance will be transferred. Character-owned items (e.g. clothing, weapons, etc.) will remain in the character’s inventory and will not need to be repurchased in-game. Vehicles will appear in the same garage they were left in before the transfer.
Creator – Jobs made within the Creator will be transferred.
Crews – Existing Crew information will available.
Achievements and Trophies – Achievements and trophies will transfer. Additional overall Gamerscore will not be awarded for transferring achievement progress.
This is problem I'm facing. Rockstar COULD forgo all the nonsense and take a look at the purchase history of my character, or boot up my character on the PS3 and still see all of these vehicles there. But that would be work. That would be a hassle to the aftercare team. No, instead, I get a denial of contracted service. It’s a shame, really.
Rockstar would prefer to, in the paraphrased words of The Jacksons, ‘blame it on the buggy’.
If the Rockstar Support team do see this, it should be known that I tried to get in touch with you guys SEVERAL times, but you quite conveniently ignored me and gave me the automated response treatment over Twitter. The messages between me and Rockstar support over Twitter are here, here, here and here.
And for good measure, here is the email I sent Rockstar whilst writing this article.
Okay, I have tried to explain to your Twitter team multiple times now that I am unhappy with the service that has gone down here. I am not asking the impossible. I have given you all the information needed to right the situation, but it seems you are not interested in doing so.
I'm sending you a link to one of your support articles:
https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/articles/202892778-Grand-Theft-Auto-Online-Characters-and-Progression-Transfer-from-Xbox-360-or-PlayStation-3-to-PlayStation-4-Xbox-One-and-PC
In it, you'll see this quote:
"What will be transferred:
Money – Earned in-game money will transfer. Purchased in-game money that has not yet been spent will only transfer within a console family (e.g. PlayStation®3 to PlayStation®4).
Rank and RP – You will have the same Rank and RP after transfer.
Game Progress – GTA Online progression will transfer including all unlocks, Contacts, Jobs, Trophies and stats.
Items and Property – Weapons/attachments, vehicles/modifications, properties, clothing and all aspects of character appearance will be transferred. Character-owned items (e.g. clothing, weapons, etc.) will remain in the character’s inventory and will not need to be repurchased in-game. Vehicles will appear in the same garage they were left in before the transfer..."
So, according to the terms and limits that you set out on your own website, and as advertised on the back of your own game box, you haven't actually lived up to service that was advertised.
It's not an unreasonable request. The vehicles that went missing are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. All I want is for shit like this to stop to paying customers. Imagine being sold a box of Cadbury Creme Eggs, then opening them to find that the gooey centre had been taken out. You'd understandably want your money back: it's a missing part of product you were sold on the box.
That's all I want. The service I was promised. That's not a lot to ask, right?
In our new world of DLC, patches and updates, where a game can’t be a singular contained experience that you play from start to finish, publishers and developers alike have to adapt their aftercare accordingly. Shit like this gets right up my piss pipes. It’s all very well and good having the single most successful video game of all time, but it’s worth nout if you treat those customers like inconsequential cogs in an immeasurably large and complicated mechanism. As artists, you should be held accountable for your art. Like this article, if it turns out I've been a dumb twat and I fucked up somewhere, you can bet your ass that an apology blog would soon follow, because I am responsible for the words you’re reading right now.
As it stands, in this state of the industry, buggy games and poor aftercare will bring the Death of Video Games if it continues like this. How could it not? For you see, what good is a game if it is unplayable, and how good is an experience if it’s incomplete?
UPDATE - 3/4/15
Shortly after this was posted, I received the following message.
Hello Thatmikeowen,
Thank you for your patience as we worked to resolve your issue.
We have investigated your loss and have issued you a sum of GTA$3,500,000 to your Shared Bank as an accomodation for this loss.
Please accept this as resolution of your issue in full.
If you have any additional concerns, please feel free to reach out to us again.
Best regards,
Stephen S.
Rockstar Support
But the big thing here to note is that $3.5 Million is far more than the cars and their mods were worth. This has got to be the first example of when this website has actually impacted anything. Holy shit.
This is some expert damage control on behalf of Rockstar. I'd like to think they saw this article yesterday and wanted to resolve it quickly, and the amount of people who read it certainly made that a possibility. It also probably had something to do with me and Jary sending it to them directly.
@RockstarGames you guys rock, but your customer service leaves a lot to be desired http://t.co/jwbUFTTJ9J #GamersUnite
— Jary (@JaryFoulFantasy) April 2, 2015
What this experience says to the average gamer is that you had better be ready to fight your corner in order to get the service you paid for, because these companies will more often than not expect you to lie down and take their shit.
So, to conclude this lesson, know your shit, stand your ground and if you can, post a damning blog about it and have it read by a couple hundred people and you'll be fine.
Because that makes sense, right?
@ThatMikeOwen
The Editor in Chief of Foul Entertainment, Mike edits most of what you see on the site. He runs the production of our podcasts, and currently pens Pop Culture Club and The Death of Video Games.