128 replies to this topic

[Void Angel]

Three days. That's a far cry from "they LIED to us! They knew all along, and they lied the whole time!" The lapse of 3 days between final negotiations and PGI's duty to tell everyone about a deal that hadn't been inked yet is nonexistent; prior to the signing (where all the "incriminating" quotes are from) - their hideous moral failure in letting the preorder site stay up for three long, terrible days must surely live in infamy. Truly, the age of corporate-state fascism and rampant cruelty to kittens is upon us. OR, we might need to know if there is a legal code, precedent, or portion of the pre-order contract that deals with that purported obligation in order to support the claim that contract has been "breached." Not that all breaches of contract are indefensible in the first place, but don't let me confuse you with the facts.

So, Horseman, you very well do need to cite the clause(s) of the contract which you feel were violated if you want to be taken seriously. You need to support your claim with evidence sufficient to the accusation. OR, you can continue to misrepresent the facts, engage in clear logical fallacies, and actually claim that your nonsensical accusations are "established fact." You are abusing the logical tools of grownups while you rage around the forums like a mob of angry adult children.

You disappoint me.

[Horseman]

Void Angel, on 06 August 2019 - 05:22 PM, said:

we might need to know if there is a legal code, precedent, or portion of the pre-order contract that deals with that purported obligation in order to support the claim that contract has been "breached."

That just proves you haven't been reading. PGI is a Canadian company. Canadian law applies, and with it the doctrine of good faith.
PGI even attempting to negotiate with Epic for exclusivity (which as Russ admitted has been going on for a much longer time) while making sales on terms that signing with Epic would make them unable to fulfill constituted dealing in bad faith. You're welcome.

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So, Horseman, you very well do need to cite the clause(s) of the contract which you feel were violated

So, did PGI send you - or me - a copy of your contract in writing? No. Is the contract available for reference? No.

You, meanwhile, are constantly operating on the premise that since you don't have the contract in front of you, you can claim it said anything that furthers your argument in defense of PGI's move.

Going back to a previous part of the argument... unless you can produce a section in the contract that explicitly guarantees you you'll be getting a game under the Mechwarrior license and that it will be released for PC, your own argument can be used to justify PGI rebranding the game as Rock'em Sock'em Robots and releasing it as a Nintendo 3DS exclusive. Even though you made the purchase in good faith that the game would be a Mechwarrior title released for PC.

Understand this: The only terms that are available for reference now are exactly what has been on their website when The Internet Archive copied it, and those are the terms you have to accept as given whether you like it or not.

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You disappoint me.

The feeling is mutual.

Edited by Horseman, 07 August 2019 - 12:25 AM.

[Void Angel]

No, you haven't been reading.My argument is that you need to actually prove accusations before you start reasoning from them. I haven't made any claim supporting PGI. I haven't made any defense of their actions; in fact, I've told you and others several times that I'm not telling you not to be mad at PGI. I haven't even taken the position that there wasn't a breach of contract! I've just pointed out that Breach of Contract is a specific term with a specific meaning; in order to satisfy this meaning, you need to support yourself with evidence. My position is simply that if you're making a claim, you have to provide evidence: trying to move the goal posts to another legal principle doesn't do that, nor is your subjective opinion on what constitutes legal bad faith authoritative - which is why I asked you for evidence. Which you've refused to give me on the grounds that you don't need to read the contract to know it's been violated.

The only other position I've taken here is the one you started this argument about and then began avoiding: that an epic store exclusive isn't anti-competitive. And it's not; here is no barrier to entry for other game developers, no reduction in customer's ability to choose other games. The only issue is that you have to install Epic's launcher, and you don't wanna. Fine; you don't wanna, and you can feel free to not do so and be mad at PGI over that if you want to. That's a subjective decision you're free to make, and while others might disagree, there's no way they can prove you're wrong - and there's no way that you can prove you're right. You can't seem to accept that; you require satisfaction.

This substitution of rage for reason undermines your position; it brings your entire opinion of PGI into question, too - because if you'll ignore contrary reasoning and declare that your conclusions are "established fact" that don't need to be justified with evidence... how much of your interpretation of past events are similarly slanted? That others agree with you signifies nothing; there are people who agree with each other on the Flat Earth! If you expect me to accept your views on the past when you refuse to even face facts in the now, you are destined to a lifetime of being disappointed.

[redacted]

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Void Angel, on 04 August 2019 - 04:18 PM, said:

you cannot play a PC/Mac game on a Playstation, or vice versa - Sony spent good money to make sure of that in 1999.

You mean the lawsuit against Bleem? That Sony LOST?

Edited by CMDR Sunset Shimmer, 08 August 2019 - 04:00 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

CMDR Sunset Shimmer, on 08 August 2019 - 03:57 AM, said:

You mean the lawsuit against Bleem? That Sony LOST?

At the end of the day though, who really lost? Sony may have lost in court, but Sony's persistent litigation resulted in Bleem going bankrupt and put out of business shortly after the case.

On the plus side, it established legal precedence, however it was unfortunate that Bleem was no longer in any condition to enjoy it.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

MeiSooHaityu, on 08 August 2019 - 04:08 AM, said:

At the end of the day though, who really lost? Sony may have lost in court, but Sony's persistent litigation resulted in Bleem going bankrupt and put out of business shortly after the case.

On the plus side, it established legal precedence, however it was unfortunate that Bleem was no longer in any condition to enjoy it.

Yeah, bleem went out of business, but the ruling has basically been what has protected Emulators as a non-illegal way to enjoy console games on the PC.

Thus it discredits the point being made that Sony shut down any ability to play their games on the PC platform.

[MeiSooHaityu]

CMDR Sunset Shimmer, on 08 August 2019 - 04:37 AM, said:

Yeah, bleem went out of business, but the ruling has basically been what has protected Emulators as a non-illegal way to enjoy console games on the PC.

Thus it discredits the point being made that Sony shut down any ability to play their games on the PC platform.

Interestingly enough though, I noticed that when I downloaded a PlayStation emulator years ago (I think it was ePSXe), it required a PlayStation BIOS file to operate and that had to be obtained from another source. I did find the BIOS file it needed, however I always wondered if that file was technically proprietary to Sony, and it was not legal to distribute (even though the rest of the emulator technically was).

Maybe newer emulators have a reverse engineered BIOS that isn't a proprietary copy of Sony's BIOS, or maybe it never was illegal to distribute, I am not sure. I just thought it odd that if it was legal, why wasn't it included with the emulator software?

Either way, I had a PlayStation anyway and I just used it to play my PlayStation discs on my PC anyway (like a second console).

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

MeiSooHaityu, on 08 August 2019 - 04:45 AM, said:

Interestingly enough though, I noticed that when I downloaded a PlayStation emulator years ago (I think it was ePSXe), it required a PlayStation BIOS file to operate and that had to be obtained from another source. I did find the BIOS file it needed, however I always wondered if that file was technically proprietary to Sony, and it was not legal to distribute (even though the rest of the emulator technically was).

Maybe newer emulators have a reverse engineered BIOS that isn't a proprietary copy of Sony's BIOS, or maybe it never was illegal to distribute, I am not sure. I just thought it odd that if it was legal, why wasn't it included with the emulator software?

Either way, I had a PlayStation anyway and I just used it to play my PlayStation discs on my PC anyway (like a second console).

There's a lot of legal BS-ery around how to properly get a BIOS for a console... in the case of Sony's, you're generally supposed to dump your own console's bios... and that's the work around.

But all of that is non-battletech discussion.

At the end of the day, so far as it goes with this situation. PGI lied, multiple times, to our faces, EGS exclusivity is only the latest in a rash of lies since 2012. I'm honestly wondering if Valve/GoG can sue PGI, since PGI essentially used Steam and GOG as part of their advertising for the game up until the announced EGS exclusivity.

[MeiSooHaityu]

CMDR Sunset Shimmer, on 08 August 2019 - 04:53 AM, said:

...At the end of the day, so far as it goes with this situation. PGI lied, multiple times, to our faces, EGS exclusivity is only the latest in a rash of lies since 2012. I'm honestly wondering if Valve/GoG can sue PGI, since PGI essentially used Steam and GOG as part of their advertising for the game up until the announced EGS exclusivity.

Sadly there aren't a whole lot of companies that concern themselves with ethics, and in some cases, even legality. Ethics have no decernable reprocusions and if no one can afford to challenge illegal activity in court, companies won't worry about breaking the law (look at all the fair use violations companies often commit).

PGI doesn't worry about angering a sizable portion of their community because they know Epic has their potential losses covered. PGI is probably also betting on their next title getting similar treatment, and if it doesn't, they are banking on the community forgetting about their behavior by then. I know on the surface that seems crazy, but oddly enough, gamers seem to suffer from short term memory when it comes to these things, so I can't blame PGI for believing in this.

Look how many times EA consistently messes up and decieves their customers, and yet every game is hyped and every game sells millions of pre-orders. The game launches, is any combination of buggy, MTX filled, undercooked (missing content), poorly designed, or even abandoned despite saying otherwise.

EA by FAR isn't the only company, but I am just using them as an example. ME:3, ME:A, SimCity, NFS:Payback and BattleFront II. After all that mess, Anthem still gets a ton of Pre-orders (Needed a chart to interpret all the tiers for pete sake), and then that game ends up being a disaster. After all the outrage and all the negative videos and attention, the next game from EA will sell millions of dollars in preorders.

With a track record like that, why wouldn't a publisher/dev studio think they couldn't get away with whatever they wanted.

Even smaller companies like Double Fine who burned a ton of people with Space Base DF9 is still doing just fine. Heck, they just garnered some recent controversy with Ooblets (a game they are co-publishing that went Epic exclusive) and I doubt that will hurt them down the road as well.

It stinks that many (not all, but many) companies don't think of their community, however if there is never any real risk, they aren't going to worry about it. It's just the sad truth of things. It's one thing if they HAVE to do something for financial stability or health of a game, but when they disrespect their community to save a few bucks, it is hard to sympathize. Again though, companies like PGI don't sweat it because it doesn't seem to have any real long term effects.

When their next title rolls around, PGI is banking that all this will be forgotten by the majority of people. Some will remember and even be vocal, but ultimately it will do as well as expected and things will continue to roll on as usual. :/



P.S. Just watched the latest SidAlpha video on the whole Take 2/Borderlands 3 debacle and he said something similar at the end of that video. Spooky.

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 08 August 2019 - 06:30 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

BTW, I know the previous post sounds defeatist. I'm not trying to say people should just accept this and not do anything about it, I'm just trying to say that these companies haven't had to deal with the repercussions of their actions up to this point, so they haven't had to be concerned by their own behavior yet.

By all means, do what you think is right, spread the word and the videos that highlight this behavior. I don't mean to discourage, I just mean that as of now it isn't working, but that doesn't mean it won't work in the future.

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 08 August 2019 - 06:12 AM.

[Horseman]

Void Angel, on 07 August 2019 - 05:03 PM, said:

I haven't made any claim supporting PGI. I haven't made any defense of their actions; in fact, I've told you and others several times that I'm not telling you not to be mad at PGI. I haven't even taken the position that there wasn't a breach of contract!

Except you were.

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The only issue is that you have to install Epic's launcher, and you don't wanna.

No.
The primary issue is that I - and the other pre-order byers - specifically paid for a Steam key, not an Epic one. It would have still been an issue if the new platform was one that I support, such as GOG.

The secondary issue is that PGI has admitted they were planning to render themselves unable to uphold their end of that bargain in advance (you think their agreement with Epic sprung from nothing?).

The tertiary issue is PGI outright lying to their paying customers when the FAQ concerns were raised.

The quarternary issue is that PGI has - so far - shown an unwillingness to honor the original bargain in any manner.

That Epic's platform is sub-standard, with a track record of deficient - indeed, absent until **** hit the fan - security practices and sub-standard customer service is at best a quinary issue.

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Put on your clown nose and go have that screaming fit - because your attempts at argument should be treated with the seriousness they deserve.

No.
It sounds to me like you're the one having one of those right now.

MeiSooHaityu, on 08 August 2019 - 04:45 AM, said:

Maybe newer emulators have a reverse engineered BIOS that isn't a proprietary copy of Sony's BIOS, or maybe it never was illegal to distribute, I am not sure. I just thought it odd that if it was legal, why wasn't it included with the emulator software?

Emulators that use HLE generally don't need a BIOS. LLE emulators still do because they're trying to emulate the hardware. You can read a more in-depth explanation at http://emulation.gam...level_emulation

Edited by Horseman, 08 August 2019 - 06:37 AM.

[Nesutizale]

@Horseman & Voidangle

Guys what does it do for you to have that arguement? Without beeing a lawyer yourself and beeing familiar with the case and all the contracts and stuff that is involved its pretty pointless to argue.
What do you get by continouing this? Do you win an internet for that? A nice hat or a sticker with "I won an arguement on the internet?

Let it rest and see what PGI has cooked up with MW5 when its released. Save youself time and energy cause I would say you have better things to do.

Go buy a mechpack

Edited by Nesutizale, 08 August 2019 - 06:58 AM.

[Void Angel]

CMDR Sunset Shimmer, on 08 August 2019 - 03:57 AM, said:

You mean the lawsuit against Bleem? That Sony LOST?

Did I say they won the lawsuit?

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Void Angel, on 08 August 2019 - 08:54 AM, said:

Did I say they won the lawsuit?

The way the rest of your post framed that, implied heavily that you were under that impression. yes.

[Void Angel]

Sunset, you mistake me; I'm well aware that Sony lost the lawsuit. Technically. But I also know that Bleem folded under the pressure - watched it fade from the shelves at Circuit City. It's almost exactly the same thing that happened to Netscape. Lost revenue, customer uncertainty, and the expense of fighting a giant corporation in court were too much. And that really was anti-competitive, because Sony was trying to restrict people from buying its games without buying its console - reducing game customers' ability to make choices in the market.

As for you, Horse, I've already dealt with most of the objections you raise - and your "quaternary" issues are all one thing: you don't want the Epic platform. And you can be mad about that; you can rail to the heavens for all I care - but you have to support your claims, and you and your fellows in the torch-and-pitchfork set have repeatedly refused to do so. So, you've failed to support your claim, and I've decided that you're wrong. It doesn't help that I've been watching the same crowd say the same things about a wide variety of issues for so long that the responses are literally stereotyped. I could make bingo cards. But past instances of intellectual dishonesty by a group don't make you wrong now; your own refusal to meet standards of evidence does that for you.

[Horseman]

People who live in glass houses shouldn't cast stones, Angel.

Void Angel, on 08 August 2019 - 10:24 PM, said:

As for you, Horse, I've already dealt with most of the objections you raise

You haven't and they are not yours to "deal" with in the first place.

But by claiming you've "dealt" with them you are admitting that - intentionally or not - you've been acting in defense of PGI's actions and interests (and therefore in support of PGI itself). Something that you have explicitly denied not long ago:

Void Angel, on 07 August 2019 - 05:03 PM, said:

I haven't made any claim supporting PGI. I haven't made any defense of their actions;

Void Angel, on 08 August 2019 - 10:24 PM, said:

you have to support your claims,
(..)So, you've failed to support your claim, and I've decided that you're wrong.

You have to support your claims as well, which you... also failed. Can you show me the exact section of the contract where you claim it states the delivery platform is subject to change? I've asked you for that before, and you had nothing to show so far.

When you practice intellectual dishonesty yourself, you have no standing to accuse others of doing so.

Edited by Horseman, 09 August 2019 - 02:48 AM.

[Void Angel]

Asking you for evidence to support your claim is not a claim that needs supporting evidence - so I'm not obliged to prove your claim wrong in order to ask you for evidence. What you're trying to do is demand evidence that your claim isn't wrong in order to admit your obligation to support your claims with evidence. That's exactly backwards, as well as circular.

Equivocating about the term "dealt" is asinine, as well. It means that I've already offered a rebuttal or justification for those objections - and you've not answered them, instead just re-iterating your angry diatribe in lieu of argument, or going off on tangents. It does not mean that my objections constitute an inherent advocacy of PGI. The objections you reiterated were all the same fracking issue; all of them are variations on the theme of "breach of contract." My entire objection is that you're making a claim you can't support - which makes it an opinion - and then reasoning based on that opinion as an "established fact." Kotzi did it, you're doing it, and it's dangerous, not just wrong.

That is the road to crazyville, as your descent into counter-accusations and straw men demonstrates. The only thing I've asked you to do is support your claim with relevant evidence. And you have kicked like a rabid mule, trying to turn the argument to things you think are implied by what I've said, making reference to other evidence, and accusing me of various things - all to avoid just supporting a claim you made in anger. I haven't even disagreed - they very well may be in minor breach - but even pointing that out hasn't made a difference.

There is a material difference in having a reasonable opinion that makes you angry, and generating arguments in order to keep your mad. You've crossed that line, and I'm sorry to see it.

[TLBFestus]

Prototelis, on 27 July 2019 - 10:09 AM, said:

For. A. Year.

READ: One year in internet time, which is a really long time.

I'm willing to best that 90% or more of games make the most sales in the first year of their existence. In signing up for a year EPIC locks MW5 into it's best time to be sold. Not that that matters to anyone who buys it later tho.

RUSS did it for THE MONEY. It's quite simple really, you see RussyPoo oft stated "love for the game" is actually "love for the money". He and PGI don't give one dull **** about you in the long run.

EPIC offered them a much better deal than STEAM and PGI took it. No cares about any promises made, the almighty dollar spoke and PGI opened their legs. You don't matter to them. They already know that they can spoon feed this dedicated, deluded community just about any BS or half-truth they can come up with.

MW5 will be s Single player game. You multi-player game playing bozos mean DIDDLY to them. They are counting on a splashy opening and SP gamers to pay the bills. You guys are just the badly worn out engine that keeps the machine running to produce MW5. You are just a resource that they are almost done harvesting.

When you really think about it, Russ, PGI and EPIC were meant to be together.
For all the wrong reasons..........

Edited by TLBFestus, 10 August 2019 - 06:04 PM.

[Bombast]

TLBFestus, on 10 August 2019 - 06:03 PM, said:

I'm willing to best that 90% or more of games make the most sales in the first year of their existence.

Excluding the occasional indie game that gets a "Press Release" sometime after it's technical release, most games make their money in the first 1-6 months. A year after release the developers are basically just collecting pocket change (This is why you don't see many developers complaining about Steam mega-sales devaluing their games. Once they reach that point, the people willing to pay full price are largely gone anyway).

Interesting thing though, there's an exception - Platform rereleases. Because people are often willing to pay a lot of money to own the same game over multiple platforms. Skyrim really abused this, and there's already people on this very forum talking about keeping their pre-orders, playing the game, and the rebuying it on Steam.

The video game economy is so jacked.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Here's what get's me... if what Russ was saying is true, Epic "Guaranteed" them 1 million in sales.

Let me ask, how does a storefront GUARANTEE that? Unless they plan on buying 1million copies themselves... in which case wouldn't that be essentially boosting the numbers to make it LOOK like the game is selling better than it really has?

Isn't that potentially illegal?