Bug-ridden games and refunds: The United States

[Deleted-188346]

To those that live in the United States and are familiar with consumer law, I am curious about what a consumer can do in this situation.

"Customer buys a console-based video game, and after X amount of days discovers that the game is not able to be completed due to a major glitch in the game. The customer looks to forums, and discovers that the majority of players are also reporting major glitches. The company appears to not be planning a patch either."

What can the customer do?
I understand that United States laws can greatly vary between states, but let's go with what could be done in the majority of states.

 

[Nathan Drake]

This would simply fall under store by store return policies. You could try to argue that the product was defective, but as far as current media is concerned, it's generally considered fine by the retailer's standard if it boots up and plays. If there was widespread complaint about it, a store may offer a special exchange policy for that item, but as far as I'm aware, that's rather rare. In the end though, you'd better hope that the store you bought the game from has a decent return policy, and that you are still within the correct time frame to return it.

From the retailer standpoint, they aren't responsible for errors on part of the developers.

 

[Deleted-188346]

This would simply fall under store by store return policies. You could try to argue that the product was defective, but as far as current media is concerned, it's generally considered fine by the retailer's standard if it boots up and plays. If there was widespread complaint about it, a store may offer a special exchange policy for that item, but as far as I'm aware, that's rather rare. In the end though, you'd better hope that the store you bought the game from has a decent return policy, and that you are still within the correct time frame to return it.

From the retailer standpoint, they aren't responsible for errors on part of the developers.

Hmm, that's interesting, but a shame for American consumers.
So, if a game was released that booted correctly but was guaranteed to crash 10 minutes into the game, customers have no way of getting a refund if the store in question does not offer refunds?

 

[Rydian]

How do you think so much shit gets sold without companies getting in trouble? Your average "AAA" titles can have a few bugs to be fair, but bugs that make the game unwinnable and have no recovery or patch (no save fix service either) are rare... but there are some examples of utterly-broken games that have been sold without some or all of the advertised features.
Here's a golden example...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rigs:_Over_the_Road_Racing

The packaging of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing states that the objective of the game is for the player to "[...] deliver illegal cargo, with cops chasing [them]"; however, in actuality, there are no police in the game or, seemingly, any objectives to complete;[3] plus, there is no load attached to the truck. The packaging also states that the player must "race trucks across the country" while delivering such cargo; however, although computer-controlled opponent vehicles do indeed appear in the game, they have no artificial intelligence, and never move from their starting position.

And here's a pretty recent one...
http://gbatemp.net/threads/the-war-z-dumped-onto-steam-unfinished-falsely-advertised.339458/
The game even got pulled from Steam once it was found out to be a scam.

At least the UK has some consumer protection laws, but unfortunately one of the only times they came into play for videogames was when Sony removed OtherOS from the PS3 (since it was a forced feature removal, either you lost OtherOS or you lost the ability to play new games), and even then it was the retailer that needed to give partial refunds (Amazon complied), not Sony...

 

[Deleted-188346]

...

Hilariously enough, both of those games have the infamous Sergey Titov as producer. You would think people would learn not to purchase his games after Big Rigs, but no.

What prompted this particular question is the new Wii U game ZombiU by Ubisoft. The game is filled with game breaking bugs, which relate particularly to poorly designed triggers. For instance:

Spoiler

- Enter area, and door locks behind you. You die from a zombie. You cannot get back, as the door is locked. Game is not able to be completed.
- Your character falls through a floor (below the entire game world) while carrying quest items. You cannot recover these items as your dead character is out of the world boundaries.
- You enter a previously explored area, and find that a trigger activates that shouldn't, and pick up a future quest item. Future quest is not able to be completed as you cannot get the "picked up quest item" to fire again. Also, you will likely fall through the floor at this point.
- As part of a quest, you defend an area, and succeed. Yet the next objective (and cutscene) doesn't fire.
- Quest items occasionally will not spawn. Ever.
- Multiplayer matches have an ability called "Lockdown" for both the survivor and Zombie King. If the Zombie King activates it, there is a chance it will never deactivate, making the match unwinnable for both players.

These complaints have been arriving in spades since the release of the game (check out their official forums and Gamefaqs), and Ubisoft has not confirmed that there is a patch being made, or that these issues are patchable. While I am able to get a refund as I live in Australia hooray, I was curious about the United States laws to see whether I could advise other affected players about the refund situation.

 

[Rydian]

Oh, yeah, if there was a refund law like this in the US for software, companies wouldn't get away with half the shit they do.

Software in the US is pretty much "You buy it and that's it", seeing as you're just technical licensing a single copy anyways.

 

[Joe88]

speaking of which has ubisoft even bothered fixing all the bugs in ac3 yet?
probably busy pumping out more dlc for it and making ac4