UK Consumer Group Targets CoD: Black Ops

[Dynasty]

The numerous problems with the PlayStation 3 and PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops' have prompted action from UK consumer group Gamers' Voice, which is planning to report Activision to the Office of Fair Trading.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, which racked up over $1 billion for Activision after its first week on sale, has been plagued by network issues on both the PlayStation 3 and PC, and while patches have been issued the problems reportedly persist.

Gamers' Voice, an independent pressure group set up by MP Tom Watson, has since expressed its intention to report Activision UK to trading standards about the issue.

"Clearly, CODBLOPS was the one of the biggest, if not the biggest release of last year, which obviously leads to more people playing and more chances for bugs to be found. Our view is that it doesn't matter how big a game is, it should not be released 'unfinished' or with bugs that make the game unplayable," said a statement on Gamers' Voice's official site.

"Problems arrise [sic] when, in the case with CODBLOPS, entire sections of the PS3 and PC gaming community are apparently being used as game testers for an extended period after a game's release, yet being asked to pay for the privilege," it continued. "This is not a tenable way to treat us as consumers of video games and it will not be tolerated."

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/114/1145600p1.html

Can't really say I'm surprised at this, what with CoD being arguably the biggest release each year now (in sales anyway), so like you do, you go for the biggest guy you see first, in an attempt to cause a ripple effect down to other developers.

Do the issues make the game unplayable? Surely not. The game still works, it's just hit-and-miss for the MP side. People going up in arms about it just solidifies the now almost manditory MP segment of games released these days. ESPECIALLY in CoD and Halo etc.

I understand where the gamers of CoD are coming from but I dont feel all that sorry for them.

Simply because this issue, to me, has stemmed from the simple fact that Activision are crapping out CoD games each year, not stopping to check if it actually works 100% or not through testing. ''Screw the testing, just get it to somewhat work, they'll buy it anyway, we can sort the problems later.''

Now obviously they would never SAY that for ''PC'' reasons or whatever, but we wont know if they ARENT thinking it or even doing it.

But at the same time, if testing regulations are improved/added in some way, or however the system works, surely developers like Bethesda would never release a game. Oblivion, Fallout 3 and now New Vegas; some of the buggiest games Ive ever played, and Im sure the upcoming Elder Scrolls 5 will be exactly the same old tired formula using a busted engine on release until they patch the crap out of it.

Should testing be forced upon developers until the game works exactly the way the consumer will expect it to without hickups, though probably increasing the time-span between release dates (Activision and EA wont like that...), or should the bugs be let to slide and be patched once enough people complain?

Personally, I'd welcome the longer wait for a better quality game. Developers like Media Molecule that have just released LBP2 have twice now created amazing games without any real performance issues or faults, maybe one or two here or there, but otherwise they're stellar releases, and its been years since LBP.

Or do the developer's stock holders and board executives need to keep their salaries up by crapping out a new sequel every 12 months?

 

[Raziaar]

If anyone ever says CODBLOPS again I am going to pound their face.

 

[Ennui]

I usually refer to it in speech as Black Cocks.

It sounds so hilariously retarded when people called it BLOPS.

I couldn't give less of a shit about COD players being butthurt about connectivity issues. I sympathize with whoever is tasked with running the servers for a game that has probably a million people playing at any given time, and moreover I don't sympathize with Black Ops players because, frankly, the game sucks ass. The past three COD titles have run together for me, I can barely remember what distinguishes them from one another (not very much). At this point they might as well do the sports game thing and just call the next one Call of Duty 2011 and then 2012 and so on, like Madden.

 

[knut]

i sympathize with the players because they are right - they shouldn't be treated this way. i don't know how people can not be supportive of them just because the game isn't something they like. i don't fancy the cod titles all that much either, but i think it's a bit stubborn to turn a blind eye to them just because of taste. they're getting shafted and frankly, that sucks. more power to them if they get through to the devs, i say.

less segregation of the gaming community, i also say. the elitism between platforms was bad enough, and now it's coming up through games as well. it doesn't matter - studios shouldn't handle ANY game like that, i don't think it's necessarily about a cod title.

 

[Ennui]

I have played a LOT of Black Ops on PC while I was waiting for BC2 Vietnam to come out, and I only ever encountered serious connectivity issues once. I have also played a fair amount with friends on 360s and PS3s and never saw any problems there either. I am not judging it only because I dislike the game.

 

[knut]

yeaaaah see, i can dig that you and your pals haven't had any problems but the thing is, thousands of other folks have. complaints on the internet aren't just bored folk looking to kick up fuss, it's a genuine occurrence. i've played both a ton of COD4 and MW2 games just fine but a lot more with terrible issues, so it isn't difficult for me to see that other people probably have the same problem on a much larger scale.

it's contender for example, halo reach, is constantly updated and outside of your own NAT settings, it's online connectivity is great. bungie keep the game going right from launch.

 

[Bad^Hat]

I have played a LOT of Black Ops on PC while I was waiting for BC2 Vietnam to come out, and I only ever encountered serious connectivity issues once. I have also played a fair amount with friends on 360s and PS3s and never saw any problems there either. I am not judging it only because I dislike the game.

Connectivity isn't really the biggest issue most players are facing on PC. Most are simply unable to run the game at an acceptable framerate or without constant hitching, regardless of graphics settings. Myself included. The developers said they were committed to sorting this after launch, released a few completely ineffective patches (some of which actually made it worse for certain people), and then pretty much went quiet. They're not interested in fixing their shitty, broken, non-refundable game, so I'm no longer interested in giving them my cash dollars. I'm sure many others feel the same way.

 

[Laivasse]

About time consumer groups started taking game companies to task on some of the half-arsed rubbish we get fed, often stuff which wouldn't meet standards of acceptability for any other kind of consumer item. Even better that there's a political voice at the root of it, however isolated he may be.

I've never heard of MP Tom Watson before but apparently he also opposed the Digital Economy Act - the UK attempt to put unreasonable restrictions on the net in the name of copyright enforcement - and is a strong critic of Glenn Beck, so he seems all right for a Labour MP. Maybe only 80% turd.

Edit: Here's a link to the advocacy group which made the complaint. There's a faint air of amateurishness to the thing but it looks like they're making a decent start.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Heh, just after I typed the above post I noticed Steam was downloading a patch for Black Ops.

It, predictably, also did jack shit. Keep on truckin', Treyarch!

 

[GreatEmperor]

I think they were hoping for the placebo effect with that patch honestly, what did it really fix?

 

[Bad^Hat]

- Fixed an issue where Bad^Hat had 8 megabytes worth of bandwidth to spare.

 

[morgs]

About time someone did something, this game is NOT fit for sale.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

New ATI drivers and latest CODBLOPS (YW RAZZYPOO) update did the trick. Finally it's smooth as buttah. Ah well, I still play MW2 more. Different flavors - I just prefer the balance and map design IW has to offer. The fact that they JUST worked out the texture popping and constant hitches really put me off - that and the gameplay balance is a bit... Treyarch'y.

Dedicated servers are fun though. So there's a space for each on my bloated Steam lib

I understand the continued frustration though - but a think a larger part of this is the decline of QA and coordination with soft/hardware developers within the PC dev community in general. Lesser known titles aren't exactly coming out perfectly optimized these days, either (especially multi-plat releases). There's simply no standards with GFWL and Steam both aimed at bridging this gap and adding a sort of certification, ultimately only complicating things.

I think what's important here is that it's a far broader issue than Black Ops, it's really an issue with gaming in general - particularly PC Gaming and what needs to, or is being done to reduce the nearly impossible task of releasing games as complicated as they are today on such a wide variety of hardware. As diversification of hardware occurs, and more cores - multi-threaded code and having to rewrite entire portions of the game because MS uses a proprietary graphics API (and Apple uses proprietary hardware and software combinations) things just get jarbled as hell.

Yes, Black Ops and most titles suffering from similar show-stopping issues are wrongfully being marketed as working games, but a closer look at the direction of the industry reveals a (not so gradual) decline in ability to complete quality assurance for PC titles. Blizzard, for instance, never releases stable "1.0" versions of games - if they stayed in the same shape they did upon release the furor of the intarwebs would overtake the living world with aspies from around the globe.

tl:dr - PC Gaming needs certification standards and cooperation from major hardware and software companies is a necessity for this to happen.

Let's face it - you can't release a PC game anticipating the problems of the literally millions of configurations can produce. Sure, you can come close - but you'll still have those guys with eVGA boards who are boned... or the folks with Audigy 2 cards, or those people with OCZ ram... Or the guy with tweaked security settings or outdated windows. At the end of the day, PC development nowadays MUST rely on post-launch support. Console titles inexcusably are receiving similar treatment simply due to PS3/360 differences.

There's no easy answer. Having some IT knowledge helps in terms of PC game optimization... but expecting dads who played Quake 2 on their Pentium IIs to know how to post a dxdiag and edit CFG files isn't always so easy.

We're all ****ed. Gaming's over.