News
Big Companies Trying to Pass Costs Onto Consumers
Cordova, TN; April 20, in the year of our Lord 2015--Family
Friendly Gaming, the industry leader in covering the family
friendly video games is noticing a disturbing trend within the
video game industry. Too many big companies are trying to pawn
off the costs onto consumers. Whether it is letting gamers
participate in the alpha testing of a game so the big video game
companies can cut costs on quality control. To the releasing
fixes of bugs after the game has been out there for months. To
the cost of downloading increasingly large games, and paying
hefty fines to the Internet Service Providers. To demands in
small print that the buyer (you) of the video game will pay
their lawyer fees if they feel the buyer (you) has infringed on
their rights. What about the rights of the consumer? Someone at
these companies has forgotten that. Because without our dollars
you do not stay in business.
Big video game companies used to have ethics, and a feeling of
moral responsibility to do right by their customers. Companies
were thankful to and for consumers. Companies treated their
customers with respect, integrity, and “the customers is always
right” mentality. The attitude has shifted. Companies act like
we are the enemy. Companies treat us like dirt, and expect us to
come crawling back to them. Companies act like we are constantly
trying to find ways to rip them off. Companies act like we are
using all of our time and efforts to put them out of business. I
do not know for certain where all of this paranoia has come
from. I expect ROMs and piracy has hurt the bottom line for some
companies. Not so much since numerous companies love to send out
bragging press releases about making record profits.
Read some of the licensing agreements that come with new video
games this day and age. Companies make all of these demands with
no input from consumers. They go so far as to claim the property
you just purchased is theirs still. If you do anything they
consider an infringement on their rights they can sue you, and
you have to pay for their lawyer costs. How insane and crazy is
that? It is bad enough that buggy and sometimes broken video
games are released on the market place. It is even worse when
companies expect us to debug their games for them - for no pay.
What are we slave labor to them? They make billions and want us
to work for them to free. Talk about lopsided, onesided, and
totally selfish. To me that is the core of this problem. The
attitude at too many large video game companies has moved from
service to selfishness.
When something does not sell it is the fault of the consumer for
not comprehending how brilliant their ideas are. When they make
billions from a product, it is their brilliance that made it
such a success. They give no credit to the underpaid media
representatives that pushed their products. They give no credit
to the millions of consumers who went along with the media
representative’s suggestion on purchasing said product. The
arrogance is astounding. The self centered nature is sickening.
I hope this horrible attitude, and perspective will shift back
to service. Because customers can only take so much before they
leave your products unsold forever. The big heads in the big
video game companies will not understand that they created their
own failure.
God bless,
Paul Bury
Family Friendly Gaming