M. W.
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
March 31, 2009
Customer Service Management
SEGA
350 Rhode Island Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
To whom it may concern:
The reason for my writing of this letter is to convey to the Sega Management staff the complete infuriation of their consumer base of the Total War franchise. Aside from the almost fraudulent marketing of the Special Forces Edition (SFE), which I will not be concentrating on, the initial release of Empire Total War (ETW) was nothing short of a disaster. I myself purchased the SFE from Gamestop on the day of its release. Please see my enclosed copy of the receipt.
Initially, individuals that purchased the game through Valve’s Steam system could not download or finish downloading their product on the day of its release. This was due to some bug within the Steam system, where the files essentially would not release completely to the consumers. I’ve also read about numerous consumers that had purchased boxed versions of ETW that could not get their game to update through Steam, and thereby could not use their product after its purchase. I guess all the consumers should consider themselves lucky that Steam released a patch the day after to resolve the patch/downloading issue.
Furthermore, the game was released entirely in beta format! The huge influx of complaints on various Total War forums about consistent crashing, video memory addressing issues, graphic corruption, lag during game-play, memory leaks, sound problems, and an uncountable amount of seemingly unfinished game-play features paints a simple picture that the game’s completion before release was not a concern. To see evidence of this, the official ETW forum was limited to a maximum of <2,000 visitors per day months before ETW’s release. On the release of ETW the amount of visitors had increased to a massive >17,000 per day. A majority of the visits and posts are based on the above and countless other complaints. By visiting several other Total War forums this pattern should be easily recognizable.
In essence, the consumer was left in complete disregard, and was fooled into purchasing a defective, non-working product. This is a pattern that has been evident in the Video Game Entertainment industry for all too long and Sega and The Creative Assembly seem to be proponents of leaving their consumers in the dirt just like the rest of the publishers and developers out there.
Individuals that have been visiting the official Total War forums (totalwarforums.com) have been voicing their complaints and have been met with utter condescension and an almost a Nazi-ish response by the forum moderators. Forum threads voicing displeasure have been locked, moved, or buried to reduce the amount of bad press that this sham of a game rightly deserves. Individuals who are continually voicing their concerns are not being affirmed or acknowledged, are usually dismissed and usually end up being met with either a temporary or permanent forum ban.
Clearly, this type of response by The Creative Assembly’s Gestapo forum staff is not only demeaning, it is completely disrespectful and does not convey a concern for the customer’s well being and that their needs are being met. This comes down to the observation that the forum moderators do not have the skills to maintain decent customer relations, do not have an ounce of necessary counseling skills that are essential to maintain a good rapport with their user base, but simply exist to maintain a seemingly fascist sweep-it-under-the-rug-and-it’ll-disappear mentality. The consumers, that have legitimate issues and are being banned for repeatedly voicing them, thus cannot post their issues to the forums if they need assistance with problems that are continually arising during the patching process.
The Video Game industry needs to realize that a finished and complete end product should be the ultimate goal. The current process of selling unfinished products is completely unacceptable. It seems that publishers are under the assumption that consumers essentially have no rights, or know that they are at least not willing to pursue them through legal means. This disrespect and disregard of the video game consumer, has to end. The Uniform Commercial Code and its rejection rules for goods and services needs/has to be observed if the Game industry wants to maintain a decent relationship with its consumers.
In addition, with current Internet Service Providers moving towards limited or capped bandwidth schemes for their home based clients, downloading content will be more difficult in the future. This means that the method of releasing unfinished products that are available via digital download will have to cease to exist at some point in the future. Having your customers download the products, expecting them to do the same with hundreds of patches to make the product usable, will not be an acceptable strategy.
Ethically, I firmly believe that Sega and The Creative Assembly have duped their entire community and fans into purchasing an unfinished product solely for the purpose of increasing their capital. At this point your consumers have no guarantee that Empire Total War will ever function as it was intended to and were sold a sham product. I personally would not be surprised if several consumers are pursuing a class action suit at this point. It should also be no surprise to your industry, if in the future, your consumers resort to piracy to try your product before investing their hard earned money in your defective garbage.
Sincerely,
M. W.
Letter to Sega Management
Originally Posted by johncage
Re: Letter to Sega Management
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