Apologies for the double post. (Aside - GOG, please let us delete posts! Hard to correct a Subject line since we aren't allowed and can't delete own threads)

It looks like Valve has heeded the hatred and reversed the tide on Earth 2066 under Early Access, and refunded customer money.

I expect Jim Sterling will give us an excellent video in one of the next Jimquisitions, if not one of his rare mid week updates. I look forward to it!

Link

yes it was already posted by you. :p you made a doublepost.

Whadda?

It had been posted here before. =P

See the edited first post in the other thread. I hate mispellings in Subjects for some reason, so recreated.

Can't edit the Subject and can't delete the thread either. Something already addressed by others on the Forum Experiences thread.

As far as I can tell anyone who bought this game is a schmuck who deserves money being picked out of his pocket.

Not to be confused with Earth 2160.

True, IMHO 2160 was almost as good as 2150, still quite a nifty game,

When Jim Sterling drew my attention to the game (2066) I was initially surprised at the genre it fell into. I tend to never look at the early access games, so going on name alone I would have thought it was part of the same series, even though the rest all ended in a decade, so to speak (50, 60,), as far as I know.

That's an interesting point about "early access" being used to con customers with incomplete games having descriptions suggesting more than is present; but it seems like the real issue is Steam's lack of quality control. Hopefully GOG will proceed with considering it's own early access possibilities, that's one thing GOG stands out on - quality control.

Valve really need to implement these user-curated systems they keep talking about if they're going to keep letting so much bullshit into the store.

Yes that's the thing being repeated again and again lately (and this is a good initiative) : Dear GOG, keep being an a'ight service, we will keep on throwing cash in your direction, however hairy your metaphorical legs are.

A tad late but good move from steam, kudos.

Off course, the arbitrarity of refunds in cases that aren't flat out scams still needs to be adressed.

I'm not sure a store that sells games like Master of Orion 3 or Might & Magic 9 can really make much of a claim about having good quality control. ^^
Not to mention there are also a few games that are pretty broken for many users, like Interstate 76.

And tbh, I don't really care about quality control, or the utter lack of it on most online stores.
From my point of view the responsibility of making sure you don't buy awful or broken games lies on you as a consumer. It's not that hard to do a bit of research before buying a game, really, and considering tastes in games are highly subjective, I don't like the idea of stores being very selective about what they sell.

Declining games as unworthy due to subjective appraisal is uncool, I agree with you there, and in some instances GOG is rumored to reject games on subjective reasons (perception of low sales, developer not marketing, etc). Games for sale should offer seemingly fair content and with consistent advertisement. I think it possible to develop objective criteria for what a publisher (GOG) would allow in (hypothetical) early access for consumer protection. It's up to consumers to research before they buy, but vendors should also be accountable to fair ethics - not just slapping whatever is up for grabs on the shelves.

GOG's money back guarantee and catalogue free of obvious buggy releases shows me they ensure games are operational regardless of content (and GOG has some turds on their store). Interstate '76 may be an exception in that it's incompatible with more modern systems; but to GOG's credit the game card clearly shows that it will only work on Windows XP or Vista so there's no deception or unexpected dysfunction.