There is no specific law, because it is basic accessory/secondary obligation. (In general, there are no laws so specific as this.)

You have a distribution deal for a product (or, more specifically, licensing rights for a game). Any update on that software must be delivered to any license owner. And as the distributors are actually the contractual partners of license owners (the buyers/us), the creator must provider the distributor either with the possibility of making that update or provide them themselves, so that the distributor is "unburdened" by any claim.

A patch is a fix for faulty software. ANY buyer of such software has the right to the fix. There is some grey area where new content or maintenance work begins(which is usually not covered by your license) and a fix ends. As games are not "procedural software applications", but "buy 'em and play them as they are" arguing that patching is maintenance not covered by the original license is pretty much pointless. (Hence nobody actually selling their patches).

The whole issue is that only because your have a right, it doesn't mean you are able to draw the benefits on it. It is quite common for companies to ignore such stuff until the last possible moment (Many, many companies don't go bankrupt because they are out of work, but because they didn't get paid on time. Especially virulent in contracting business). And some small distributor is not going to press charges against a publisher, as they will simply say "f'ck off" and withdraw from the store.

Twelve? That's freaking many.

Sorry, my mistake.....17 =P


http://starruler.blind-mind.com/patches.php

If it doesn't work because it's faulty product, you should get a refund from where you bought the game. Unless you are the only one with problems...

Even if there are obligations between retailer and publisher, it's not your concern. These are their own obligations. Publisher may be responsible for providing patches to the retailer, but it doesn't make him responsible to you.

If you buy anything, the retailer is responsible to you usually. The only exceptions I can think of now are guarantees and liability for dangerous product. (for example, if there's no epilepsy warning and playing a game X would cause you a seizure - the producer is liable)

Hey there! I meant to post in this thread earlier but I got swamped with work. I'm one of the co-lead developers at Blind Mind Studios (we developed Star Ruler) so I thought I'd drop by.

Nobody should need to download the full set of 16 patches (from 1.0.0.0 to the current) where version 1.0.0.0 is now over three years old!

The earliest version available from any of our partners is version 1074, which comes with a convenient 'auto-patch' feature which downloads and installs all necessary patches automatically (via the "Check for Updates" button on the main menu). If you get Star Ruler from anyone who gives you a build under 1.0.7.4, please contact us immediately.

Nobody we know even has access to a copy of 1.0.0.0 except those we sold directly through (Steam, Direct2Drive, GamersGate) and those files should be gone by now. The only places on the web you should even be able to find a copy of pre-1.0.7.4 is through pirate networks and fileshare. Everybody else has been ordered to at the very least update to 1074 and reported that they had done so.

We've sent them an e-mail and hope to get to the bottom of that. I'm sending you a PM asking for more information. We're sorry for all the trouble -- if you encounter issues with Star Ruler we recommend that you post your request for help on our official forums at: http://forums.blind-mind.com/ in the Help and Support subforum. One of us three is almost always online and willing to help.

Since it's possible that they're selling a non-legitimate build and our patches are delta-updates (and thus incredibly sensitive to file-modification and order-of-patching) the people who sold you Star Ruler may have given you a bad copy that isn't compatible with our patches.

In any case, we'll keep you posted via PM.

Ayup, I've replied back with the original address I wrote to you at.

One of the things that I was writing to you about was that the game crashed on execution so I couldn't get it activated far enough to trip the auto-updater (you might consider making it a separate executable)

I was more of less asking if failed execution would have anything to do with the game not recognizing old SSE and if not, perhaps a Steam key to see if I could get that version to work.

I tend to like Get Games and wouldn't suspect it fault of their own but I do know that digi retailers don't do a very good job of reviewing their distribs which results in them making a flopper live in their stores every once in awhile.

That may be the case, aye. Failed execution could stem from not having the correct OpenAL or VC Redistributable installed. Both should be available in the install directory for the game under the names oalinst.exe and vcredist_x86.exe I believe. The game should've installed them automatically but in case it didn't, I'd recommend doing so with administrative privileges just to cross that off the list.

If, however, your processor does not support SSE2 instructions (which are practically impossible to not find in a post-Pentium 4 processor) then I'm afraid the game is not compatible with your processor. That's the only SSE-related problem you should encounter. If you only have a single-core processor then we recommend you turn off multithreading but the game should still run at least.

Beyond those two issues we've had plenty of odd problems in the past that users have reported: Antivirus software causing the program to fail to execute, for instance. It might come down to the specific combination of your hardware and software.

In any case, you'll find superior support on our forums than here. I'm not one of the programmers for the game so the support and knowledge I have to provide you are admittedly subpar compared to what they may be able to offer.

EDIT: And one big, glaring, possibility could just be that the game they give you doesn't work with our patches and so patching the game would actually break it. That's partly why we mandated 1074 base installs across all our distributors: so that that headache wouldn't pop up for users thanks to the auto-updater, which would know which patches to install and in what order.

Hey, I tried to send you this correction through PM twice now.

"Title of installer: blind-mind.com" is not what I wrote. This is what I wrote: "Title of installer: GetGames_StarRuler.exe"

If intentional, I'm not sure who or why would want to hide the installer name - It might just be GOG PM farting.

Aye. Showed up in my PM as one and in the e-mail notification as the other. :p
In any case, got the message now.