Gah, it's like emailing a bot.

Got another cut and paste reply that doesn't actually really respond to my last email to them.

"I've looked up your account, and it appears that you purchased the digital version"

Seriously? You've only just now looked at my account? Besides, it's completely missing the point. I pre-ordered the game, there was no digital/physical distinction at the time. I quoted the line from their own store page which mentions the fact that the DVD was included and they just ignored it rather than attempting to refute it or explain why it's not applicable.

Basically, people in this thread who aren't being paid to conduct customer service have put in more effort than this guy. Their customer service is pretty appalling, and I'm not saying that because they won't guve me the DVD but because they're not even paying attention, just copying and pasting "We apologize for the inconvenience." over and over.

There are several people in this thread who disagree with me and most have made intelligent points eloquently. Not Telltale's guys.

Thankfully they've not done much in a few years that I've been interested in. If they do another Monkey Island or Sam & Max game that's... actually an adventure game THEN it'll become difficult.

Anyway, I'm not giving up until they acknowledge my points or I die. If and when one of those things happens, then I'll take it from there.

I fear it's wasted time and effort, Telltale Support demonstrates absolutely no flexibility and I think it stems from the fact that they actually don't give a rat's ass about their customers, especially the ones of older titles. I've been in contact with them over a different matter and the only thing they seem to be capable of is pointing me over and over again to a specific point in their ToS which doesn't even (fully) cover/ address my issue. Other than that, they just ignore the points I make, probably because they don't have a satisfactory argument to dispute my points.

I reached the point where I blatantly said that I've regretted spending money on their store and that I won't be spending any more on them - basically that I'm done with them and their poor support and they didn't even come back with any sort of "We're sorry to hear you feel this way, blah blah blah". They're both hopeless and helpless.

Still, I admire your determination and I wish you good luck.

Cheers for the moral support!

Out of interest, what was the issue you had? Feel free to PM if you don't want to put it here.

I can't speak for HypersomniacLive, but I think it's related to this:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_what_did_just_update_thread/post2295

Well, there is this bug in the GOG version of Sam and Max Season 1 Episode 1 where an important character is invisible. This makes progressing in the game impossible if you don't find out about a possible workaround (clicking a tiny totally unrelated and otherwise unimportant area of the screen to make that character appear again). This bug is not in the original version from Telltale, only in the GOG version. I've contacted GOG support several times during a whole year to try and get this fixed and finally gave up, after GOG support told me they wouldn't fix the bug.

I've thought that GOG support was a bit lazy since Telltale had a working DRM-free version of that episode and it should be easy to get that as a replacement for the buggy version GOG has. HypersomniacLive recently contacted Telltale directly about the problem and it seems the problem is entirely on Telltales side. GOG support contacted Telltale multiple times to get that fixed, but Telltale was totally uncooperative and didn't supply them with a fix.

Hmm interesting. Where can you get Telltale's DRM-free version? I don't know of a fully DRM-free version anywhere other than here.

I thought the version you could get on DVD didn't need the on-line activation... Might have mixed this up with another game though...

Still, it shouldn't be that hard for Telltale to provide a fix if they actually wanted to.

I have Season One on DVD (German version though, distributed by JoWood but incl. original voiceovers) and it doesn't have online activation, but it has a disc check (which could be SecuRom, too).

The Telltale version has a disc check so it's obviously not the same as GOG's version. That's not to excuse Telltale's refusal to fix it though.

EDIT: Oh yeah, HypersomniacLive PM'd me and his issue isn't the same (in fact it's much worse than the one you suggest or my issue). It's becoming increasingly clear to me how little Telltale cares about it's customers, even ones who have been with them for years before their mainstream success (I don't just mean me).

... and absolute money corrupts absolutely.
mmmh .... wait ...


edit : sorry for the 4 days delay :s

This became clear to me when they spent almost 6 months fixing Puzzle Agent so it was even playable on the latest NVidia cards (at the time of release).

At least that one got fixed...

I remember that! In fact there are probably posts from me in that thread. At the time I put it down to incompetence though.

Ok, I see the discussion has progressed here. So, to clear things up, the issue I mentioned earlier is not the one DoctorGOGgles speculated, though that one was the last straw for me.

As SirPrimalform said, I PMed him, so here's the story:

I was foolish enough to buy The Great Adventure Bundle 2010 (but I had a completely different impression of this company back then) which was pulled from our accounts some time around last October, IIRC. To understand how big of a deal this is, that bundle sold close to 20,000 copies, IIRC.

When I inquired about it their support replied by saying that their license for some of the games had expired, they gave me a cdn link to download one other game and pointed me to their ToS about "digital products purchased through our site are licensed and not sold".
I told them that they misuse the term "purchase" and should be honest that their actually running a subscription service like Steam.

Most importantly, I asked them multiple times to show me where does the ToS say that when Telltale loses a license that purchased games associated to the specific expired license would be automatically pulled from our accounts, without even a timely warning.
It was like talking to a brick wall. We kept writing back and forth, but they never came up with some sort of satisfactory argument and just kept repeating themselves and pointing to that particular point of the ToS.
A few other points that came up were completely ignored - I guess they were not covered by the script they use for their replies ;-P

As I said, they're both hopeless and helpless. I guess that's what happens when you as a dev put an expiration date to your creation by exclusively working on licensed material. Cash in today and off to the next project we go; it's all about making a fast buck these days.
At first I was fairly disappointed by their astonishing change (at least what felt like one to me), but by now I've decided to just black-list Telltale and turn my back at them.

I'm actually a bit surprised that there are no related threads on their forum with people raging about this, but with all their redesign and what I've been reading about them driving long standing members away or banning them, I wouldn't rule out that any such threads were purged. But then, I also wouldn't rule out that their fans just swallowed it, maybe even showed sympathy to poor Telltale for losing the licenses.

And that's my adventure with Telltale ;(


EDIT: spelling - lol, Taletell?

Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing your name there...

The 2 months of complete silence didn't help them, or the fact that they practically admitted it was prioritized lower because not many users were impacted (that would be fine for a minor, cosmetic bug that was easily worked around, but not with a game breaking bug like this was).