Gamers protest bad PC games with a new bill of rights

Computer game developer Stardock has developed what it calls a “gamer’s bill of rights”, in an attempt to assist developers in producing quality entertainment and a better gaming experience.

Computer game developer Stardock has developed what it calls a “gamer’s bill of rights”, in an attempt to assist developers in producing quality entertainment and a better gaming experience.

Stardock’s Brad Wardell told website gamasutra.com: “It’s a series of guidelines we’re trying to introduce in an effort to get our industry to be a little more standardised in how we deal with our games.”

The list includes suggestions such as: “Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.”

“On the console, you don’t release as many buggy games, because of the pain of patching on consoles, but on the PC, we’ve got to the point where we just say, ‘Eh, we’ll just patch it’. It’s wrecking our industry,” Wardell says.

He denies other developers won’t take his smaller company seriously, saying: “If we can get gamers not to put up with games that barely function until a patch comes out, or calls home every six days to make sure I’m not a pirate, that starts affecting the publisher in their pocketbooks – then they’re more likely to take this seriously.”

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