Ever heard of Gamers’ Voice? Well, they are essentially a consumer rights group which focuses on the games industry, and they have announced plans to report Activision UK to the Office for Fair Trading. The complaint stems from the troubled release which Call of Duty: Black Ops endured, with Gamers’ Voice citing the game’s “never-ending list of problems” as violating laws which are designed to protect consumers.
“A formal complaint will be submitted to the relevant government agencies that protect consumer rights in the UK on the week commencing 23rd Jan 2011. We will keep people updated as to the progress of this complaint,” Said Gamers’ Voice.
The official Gamers’ Voice press statement on the matter says: “Now is also probably a good time to discuss bugs in games in general. Clearly, CODBLOPS was the one of the biggest, if not the biggest releases of last year, which obviously leads to more people playing and more chances for bugs to be found. Our view is that it doesn’t matter how big a game is, it should not be released ‘unfinished’ or with bugs that make the game unplayable, which are words we have seen in a lot of emails to us recently.”
“Let us be clear though; bugs slip through the net. It’s impossible for developers to find every single bug as games are incredibly complex things to make and no amount of QA will eliminate every single error. Problems arise when, in the case with CODBLOPS, entire sections of the PS3 and PC gaming community are apparently being used as game testers for an extended period after a game’s release, yet being asked to pay for the privilege. This is not a tenable way to treat us as consumers of video games and it will not be tolerated.”
Activision has yet to comment on the planned complaint letter, but we will be watching this story closely.
Discuss the Gamers’ Voice Black Ops complaint on the MyGaming forum.
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