Well that's shit. You definitely can't hold Sony to the fire here, but it would be nice if they showed a little goodwill maybe? Likewise for EA/Bioware.
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Sony is apparently refunding PS4 owners their Anthem digital purchase due to midgame crashes and complete shutdown.
- Thread starter rocket
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Well that's shit. You definitely can't hold Sony to the fire here, but it would be nice if they showed a little goodwill maybe? Likewise for EA/Bioware.
They are, Reggie actually retired from his position so he can fully test this full time
ITT: I learned that people have no idea what is or isn't tested by platform holders, developers, and where any responsibility lies.
But they made you agree on the ToS if you want to continue using the service.
They take refunds very seriously.
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I know it may be a tough case if it's a game you like, but we shouldn't allow this to become something normal everyone's used to. Consoles have a closed architecture and there should be no room for major issues that can cause the console to shut itself off instead of going back to the dashboard.
This game needed another 6 months in the oven tbh... They just released it because it was a company goal, plus GAAS easies the release.
Wow. I didn't buy the game, but I had 4 crashes during the beta (one of them being a hard crash) and thought "ofc this is still unfinished code, they wouldn't ship a game in this state". What the hell.
Hey! Thanks for upgrading the thread, from console wars to brain wars!Damn. Really? Thanks dude. Will relay this info our customer if a crash occurs in our software next time. The more you know.
Source: Lockheed
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Damn. Really? Thanks dude. Will relay this info our customer if a crash occurs in our software next time. The more you know.
Source: Lockheed
Haha.
Serious questions though, since the two of you are seemingly knowledgeable, what are the real adverse effect(s) the numerous hard-crash this game seemingly created can cause to the PS4?
Good on Sony for issuing refunds for a broken product, but I wish publishers would go back to releasing their software in a finished state.
Without wanting to sound like an old man shouting at a cloud, I miss the days when you bought a disc and got a complete game!
I try and take a policy of buying games three months after launch, when they are patched and cheaper. But I get sucked into the hype and marketing quite often...I am weak!
Without wanting to sound like an old man shouting at a cloud, I miss the days when you bought a disc and got a complete game!
I try and take a policy of buying games three months after launch, when they are patched and cheaper. But I get sucked into the hype and marketing quite often...I am weak!
They might block the chat if you're not located in the US or have different account region.
Wait, what?! The game isn't crashing to the blue "sent error report" screen? It's hard crashing the whole system?! Has this ever happen to any other game?
Oh wow, I had this happen yesterday... I was in the middle of a mission with my friend, suddenly blue PlayStation error screen, system completely shuts down (no sleep mode). It wouldn't turn on for about a minute. I was panicking :[. Eventually I got it to turn on and it had to go into repair mode...
Man I really love this game and I don't want to stop playing but I'm playing on a freaking 500 Million LE PS4 and I don't want that thing to get bricked :((.
Man I really love this game and I don't want to stop playing but I'm playing on a freaking 500 Million LE PS4 and I don't want that thing to get bricked :((.
In a perfect world, platform holders could expand their certification process to include additional game QA on top of the developer one. But they can't reasonably be expected to do this in our imperfect world, thus, to put it simply, Sony (or any other platform holder really) can't be held responsible for the game being messy, like crashing on a regular basis (though I'm pretty sure a game crashing every five minutes would be rejected by most platform holders' certification processes).
That being said, if the game may cause stuff like consoles hard reboots/forced shutdowns (not even talking on actual bricking), then it's on the platform holder, even if obviously the developer messed up in the first place. That's one of the missions of the certification procedures. To ensure that what should be "safe from the game" remains that way.
A buggy game shouldn't be able to crash the console.
That being said, if the game may cause stuff like consoles hard reboots/forced shutdowns (not even talking on actual bricking), then it's on the platform holder, even if obviously the developer messed up in the first place. That's one of the missions of the certification procedures. To ensure that what should be "safe from the game" remains that way.
A buggy game shouldn't be able to crash the console.
Not to defend Sony but isn't that what the developer/publisher of the game should make sure doesn't happen? Anthem is a mess on any platform BioWare is finished, another company for EAs graveyard.
It's BioWare's job to make sure it doesn't happen, it's still Sony's job to double check that games being released on their platform don't have major issues.
and that TOS repeats over and over again the caveat that they'd sometimes be compelled by law to provide a refund
Seriously, people asking "hurr why game pass cert?" need to read into the cert process more. Here's an article from Rami Ismail covering it with regards to No Mans Sky: https://ramiismail.com/2016/08/patch-the-process/. Its a complex process, even more so when you consider Anthem has probably had a rocky dev schedule with cut support closer to release.
I'm not going to defend EA and Bioware here because I'm sure this game was pushed out to die so Bioware can focus on other games that EA are probably banking on, relying on peoples acceptance of other broke games to become "fixed" eventually and become profitable. It really feels like they just shoved it out the door before it was truly finished, and they'll just polish it up over the next few years at a slow pace to at least try and get the dosh spent on it out of it.
Also doesn't help that internally they've likely been juggling multiple builds, patches and otherwise due to the stupid release "schedule" held for the game. Its a total nightmare of a launch. Should have just held back a while and made sure everything was ready to fire on one day instead of trying to coax people into subbing to early access programs.
I'm not going to defend EA and Bioware here because I'm sure this game was pushed out to die so Bioware can focus on other games that EA are probably banking on, relying on peoples acceptance of other broke games to become "fixed" eventually and become profitable. It really feels like they just shoved it out the door before it was truly finished, and they'll just polish it up over the next few years at a slow pace to at least try and get the dosh spent on it out of it.
Also doesn't help that internally they've likely been juggling multiple builds, patches and otherwise due to the stupid release "schedule" held for the game. Its a total nightmare of a launch. Should have just held back a while and made sure everything was ready to fire on one day instead of trying to coax people into subbing to early access programs.
So I have to call a lawyer to get a refund for a game.. great.
based on the information in OP, it seems people are getting a refund without calling a lawyer first
Key word here is "some". For others they're screwed.
I'm going to quote myself here, because in the rush to the bottom most of the folks arguing about culpability have seemed to have missed it:
It's the physical retail equivalent of making sure the game boots and is packaged correctly, and at minimum provides a functional basic experience.
It's the physical retail equivalent of making sure the game boots and is packaged correctly, and at minimum provides a functional basic experience.
I wish a mod could just sticky or at least threadmark your reply so people could realize the truth of the matter
This applies to all games on Playstation. Sony has more responsibility in cases where they are both the platform holder and the retailer.
Edit: Wow was it really 2015 when I wrote this?
http://savygamer.co.uk/2015/07/16/on-refunds-quality-control-and-supply-chain-accountability/
I haven't had very good luck with refunds in the past from Playstation, but I think I might give this a shot. As someone that has had a game crash several times for me before that totally destroyed my external HDD(Thanks Wolfenstein 2), I'm terrified this will happen again. I haven't touched Anthem since I heard about this happening, and I won't touch it until I know it's fixed. I actually want to play the game though, so I might just wait it out, but I feel so dumb for wasting money on a game that is broken and not even close to being a finished product. You would think I would have learned by now, but nope.
How is it so bad that it forces the console to shut down? Is it a memory leak so large that it eats into the OS space causing it to crash?
Or could it be CPU threads run amok making it run too hot and the console shuts down to prevent hardware damage?
Or could it be CPU threads run amok making it run too hot and the console shuts down to prevent hardware damage?
I understand that hard crashing is really not great, and pretty concerning. But this post has been blowing up, with articles starting to be written and spread online, yet nowhere does this poster mention how it's undeniably Anthem that's bricked his console. 'Some game' always ends up bricking people's bricked consoles by coincidence of what they were playing at the time.
I'm not saying Anthem didn't cause it - it very well may have, but I'd say the evidence (or lack of) is low right now.
This isn't just a crash. It's powering down the ps4 and bricking some units.
True. Giant Bomb's review mentioned it crashing and shutting down but not bricking the console. It could be that someone had a system destined to eventually fail and Anthem pushed it over the line. Still, it's unacceptable for the game to be released in this state.
Sony issuing refunds is pretty telling since you typically have to beg them (in the US anyway)
You base that on one anon poster talking about one console with zero evidence.
The shutting down of the ps4 has been reported on many times. It even happened to Brad from Giantbomb 3 times and even prompted him for the repair it does when you power it down inappropriately. This is not just one anon.
You are certainly in the minority. I don't think the people reporting this problem have it happen all the time, otherwise they probably wouldn't be singling out Anthem. Brad said he has never had it happen before. In your case if it's happening with lots of applications then you most likely have a dodgy ps4. I've never seen or heard of regular hard crashes or ps4 shutting down because of Netflix and YT.
Powering down =/= Bricking.
First is reported on somewhat widely, but not before your post that Anthem actually bricks hardware.
Yeah. I also have it jammed on a shelf with really bad air circulation, so it could be an overheating issue.
I remember some PS4 Pro games had unlocked framerates in menus, so it would fly up to like 400fps and overheat the PS4. Maybe something like that is happening.
Hard crashes shouldn't happen at all, for most people they're extremely rare. I'm afraid your console might be defective and/or close to dying on you.