We, The Gamers – The Gamer Bill of Rights
Saturday 30 August 2008 @ 12:23 pm | By Ivan 'Nahu' LozanoIf you're new here and you like what you see, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, and browse around for more fun stuff. Thanks for visiting!
Ever felt like your experience with a game was so bad that your basic dignity as a gamer was put at stake? Stardock and Gas Powered Games feel your pain, in fact, they feel it so much they think we deserve better. So they went ahead and wrote the Gamer Bill Of Rights which grants 10 basic rights that every gamer should inherently be entitled to. These are as follows:
- Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.
- Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
- Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.
- Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
- Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will adequately play on that computer.
- Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their express consent.
- Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
- Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
- Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
- Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.
Stardock and Gas Powered Games are adhering to these principles with every game they create and are looking to gather industry support in what would eventually become a consortium that would watch over the industry and ensure that you, as a gamer, get a fair deal. The boys over at EDGE are having a through discussion about this and I strongly suggest you at least glance over it. We’ve been getting the short end of the stick more and more in the last couple of years, its about time something like this happened.
Now if only we could get the same for anime DVDs and video game movie adaptations…
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Abraham 'Velcor' Duarte
Amy Fairchild
Ben 'FBINinja' Schmidt
Chris 'Taco' Martinkovic
David 'KidKobun' Bruno
Random J
tskiller
Vekter
Someone should tell these guys that a “Gamer’s Bill of Rights” has already been written…
Though it has to do with game design itself, and not all this… periphera.
This has to be the stupidest thing ever.
You have the right to give the company your money or not. Simple as that.
No doubt your wallet is the best way to vote, but there are gamers now that were born with games that came out incomplete and with power-crazy anti-piracy systems. This merely puts some of the most common complaints under a same flag, led by the industry itself.
The bill of rigths motif is just that, a motif. In the end this is an industry-led movement to ensure the quality of products being made. Pray tell, how is that stupid?
Indeed, the simple binary action of “purchase or not purchase” does certainly tell SOMETHING to the developers… but it’s a very vague message, with many many possible meanings.
This is a direct message to developers saying exactly what it is that players desire in a game. In EVERY game, for that matter.
@ 4 & 9: Im looking at you, Steam!
You should check this out too:
http://www.cracked.com/article_16196_7-commandments-all-video-games-should-obey.html
Unless bigger companies adopt these platforms this is just a waste of space. However I applaud the attempt. The most effective results are those gamer questionnaires asking how to improve developer games. Either way it still comes down to adoption.
We demand the right to camp outside the developers homes and sort through their garbage