My arcticle about Remastered and Consumer Laws

Blizzard, Starcraft Remastered & Digital Consumer Rights

Common people don’t even stop to think about the Gaming industry, even people that study Digital Markets. That is partially true even for foes that have enjoyed Games or Video Games in different periods of their life’s, the truth is that “Gamers” seem to not count with the same set of Government Rules and Civil support, as legal representation to denounce the infringement of Base Lines either on the Digital Quality of Products they deliver into the market in one hand & straight forward Crime Behavior infringements in the other; to say the least the rules of the basic Consumers Right in the should apply the same as in any other scenario for the Digital slice of the Consumer Market, said set of legal rules defiantly do exist as we speak, they are just not being implemented.


If you don’t like something don’t buy, makes it sound easy enough, but we the Gamers are a purchase force to be recognized, and particular we are commonly studied in the same grounds as “beating games” or “Drug addiction”, so probably it is time to think of video games as a product where people can’t “decide” to purchased based on free will.

This article is pushed by the StarCraft Remastered experience, a game that was advertised to be a product with certain features at Release date that where not delivered, and this is not my interpretation but it’s a Crime hidden under the surface of a generation of Digital consumers that don’t know that Law represents them, most of them Childs and people from foreign countries.


How is it possible that digital companies can simply release an incomplete product, take people’s money for it, and then just never implement what was advertised to begging with, deleting official digital information that created “expectation” on certain product technical features as a “robber cleaning its boots stains” after a crime. This is simply and nothing more than a Crime. What kind of special “characteristics” a company such a Blizzard has, a company that 3 months after release of SC:R has not yet completed the described features on its own sell website and official forums, this company has yet to have an official legal demand on the matter and people should be compensated as in any other consumer crime. What is so different about digital products? Are they too hard to understand technically for the people that represent our rights?.


I don’t expect for anyone to read this, but honestly as a consumer I am very uptight to say the least as to what Digital Companies fell entitled to do with the user base in the Digital or Software market, is not Human, especially if we consider that Game Markets are inevitably changing from a Product Market, to a Service Market, nevertheless this is yet to be discussed in a serious manner by our authorities and we will speculate about it in the next paragraphs, yet we see that "playing video games" becomes a more engrained part of our idiosyncrasy and basic needs as humans as time goes on.


Would you accept for instance that the Association Responsible for Sport Broadcasting, which is a Monopoly of a Service example provide and created by me for this article means, would decide one day that it gives you only half of the Broadcast for free, or that it would take the "score screen" away, and would simply decide to stop Broadcasting one sport because “not many people are watching it”. What I am trying to say in simple words, Sports are services in the hands of corporations BUT they are not the "owners" of said services. In the specific situations of Game Developers anyone reading this must understand that they are indeed the owners and creators of whole sports that drive people life’s play with people feelings in similar ways as gabling, and moves big amounts of money one way or the other, so it’s only common sense that any practice and legislation over their products would run parallel of those that are common for Sports, Art & Education, as the freedom to play Video Games its very near to a Post Modern Human Right, and as a matter of fact, to have regulations that protects the populations from corporations that if they wished too would “Rig or Forge” the sport on their own interest as it has been done several times, I am by no mean saying this been done by Blizzard, but is has happened and it will continue happening until a clear line is made.


This is the simple economic concept of "Products that have no real substitute" and its teach on the first days of Economics or any other branch of Corporative High Level education. It is to say the least "polemic" as people have no other product that would fulfill the same need as to apply the concept of the “competitive hand of the free market”.


Can an artist that has already sold a product to a common person for a fixed amount of money, go and paint the exact same picture with a different frame and sell it to another one? what kind of Law is applicable here? what kind of ethics would you considered fair and basic?. Can a painter sell a unique paint to a museum, but then go into the museum and "modify" the painting as it’s showed in place? who is the ultimate owner of the product?. This is why understanding the difference between a "Product" & "Service" comes useful. It’s of my personal belief that “Game Digital Products & Services” that have gambling or addictive components of any sort, should have its own type of Technical-Legal Jargon, something between what is “art as a service & product ownership” with the final end of protecting the final users.


We need to understand once and for all in the XXI century that products like Video Games are serious business, and as such the ownership of said product comes with a degree of Responsibility and quality toward the final user over anything else, we could grab the history of consumer right in services and draw a parallel line. If said Game Company wishes to "Remake" an old video game owned by them, or Outsource for this mean, then is only common sense that the Government would protect the consumers in a reasonable manner, with a high end of professional that would deliver said representation to a technical point as Digital Products are complex, allowing common people to have a solid partner in Law from which one could drive the conclusion "That you can’t make people re pay for the same product, if said modifications don’t adapt to whatever use they can give it in the current market conditions", you cannot give a kind in school a book about science written in the 19 century, as it’s arguably the case for example of releasing a global competitive game with an old network implementation instead of a modern based dedicated server, or what is worst, and this is the reason for this whole deal I am writing "Promised features you are not delivering, in direct breaking of basic Customer Services & the Crime that is the use of astute strategies to harness expectations in a Market filled with children’s", it should by any means hold in any law court, and any judge that would see fit to give the legislation said antecedent from which companies Win should be placed in jail too for corruption and manipulation of “Legal Loopholes”.


So I hope that we grow up as a society and start making a big "legal compendium" of said Digital Crimes over the last years and start compensating the public in some real manner, I am sure the result can only be a better overall Market of Digital Services, especially in a world that is more and more becoming a big “system of digital systems” as we will encounter or self’s speaking to AI instead of people in banks any day now. I know for a fact that most of the people would like to bring the card of not creating a "wall into creativity", meaning that rigid laws would make companies & Digital Artist to risk themselves even less into delivering products we dream because of a legal mine field, but as I am concerned it is better to not have a product at all, that have a product that would only server the purpose of corporate greed and would slowly make our society suffer, and teach a whole generation that Software “Companies are like Gods above the law”.


I am amazed that so deep into the XXI century we haven’t already set a line to represent a slice of the market, even that line which is filled with young in nature, and is being encourage and indoctrinated by Digital Corporation, leaving a whole generation a feeling that Nobody is there to help them fight for their rights because Video Games are just that, games. What would happen in a horrible scenario when a company like Blizzard & Its publishers ACTIVITION decides to “branch” into services for public use, such as education, or management of professional Resumes from birth to death, sounds really “dystopian” and probably Blizzard is a really bad example for this last one scenario I am proposing, still we must prepare our legislation to be incredibly harsh against this, even for services that comes from outside countries that might not have the same constitutional set of rules that defends consumers over companies.