Bethesda refusing to refund Fallout 76 (at least for one person)

[Thaldor]

Source: Spiel Times

 

Everybody by now knows how "well" Fallout 76 has been taken and so it's just normal that people are demanding refunds. Apparently one redditor asked for a refund from Bethesda and while the initial asnwer was:

Quote

Greetings!

Thank you for contacting the Bethesda Customer Support Team.

Unfortunately, we do not have the ability to begin processing that refund for you right at this moment. There is nothing to worry about though. We’ll begin processing the refund as soon as we can and we’ll reach back out to you via email to let you know once we’ve started that process.

Thank you for your continued interest and support!

Warm Regards,
Bethesda Customer Support

Next day Bethesda support had decided to turn their vehicle and answered:

Quote

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting the Bethesda Support Team. Customers who have downloaded the game are not eligible for a refund. We apologize for the inconvenience. If there is anything else we can assist you with please reply to this email for further assistance. Thank you for your patience.

Kind Regards,
Bethesda Support

 

The question seems to be that Bethesda directly says in their return policy:

Quote

If you want to download digital content within the 30-day cancelation period, you must agree to waive your cancelation rights.

So, if you paid for the digital copy and installed it, you have lost your right for a refund. This is pretty normal with digital codes and they are still in the grey area of consumer rights laws and will probably stay there until someone takes some company to a court to test wether or not you can return used digital codes (At least Valve was careful when some EU countries reviewed their consumer protection laws to digital era that Steam started to offer refunds without questions if game was owned less than 2 weeks and played less than 2 hours and if you have a good reason those are very flexible limits, ie. you can return games that you have played a lot more than 2 hours like NMS).

 

Personaly I was suprised that Fallout 76 wasn't available on Steam like everyother Bethesda game, but now I can understand [folio hat activated] I could swear that Bethesda knew that Fallout 76 might not be taken well and had learned from few other "promise-big-deliver-poop" games that selling a game through Steam would cause a massive amount of refunds. I personally think there should be an option to return digital games, because NMS and apparently now Fallout 76 are a thing, $60€ and the game is not worth even half of it and you're stuck with it because the company promised you the heavens and stars and delivered a pile of poo (this is why I don't pre-order anything and usually buy everything from sales, at least I'm not buying a pig in a bag).

[MkaiL]

Reminds me of this guy, also returning fallout apparently.

 

[Canada EH]

18 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

grey area of consumer rights laws and will probably stay there until

our governments get some claws and stops pocketing money from corp's

[ARikozuM]

I wish I had a trillion dollars. I'd live off ramen and litigations with every corporation. 

[SolarNova]

This is where individual country consumers right come into play.

 

in the UK, if digital content, of any type is found to be faulty defective, not fit for purpose, or otherwise not as advrtised, the consumer can return it. The seller has 1 opotunity to repair or replace, after which time the buyer can insist for a full refund by law.

 

So in Fallout 76's case in the UK, you can by law get a refund as the game is buggy as hell. Write down a list if need be, go to the seller show them the list, that seller has a legal obligation to ether repair (they cant) or replace (they can try but it wont help) one time, after that they have to refund.

 

This is ofcourse refering to hardcopies. Not digital downloads in which if ur prompted to, u waive ur right.

[Thaldor]

7 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

This is where individual country consumers right come into play.

-snip-

In Finland we have full return right for 14 days after receiving the item if it was bought indirectly (by phone, post, internet), no matter if it was defective, didn't fit or you just didn't like it. But apparently no one has tried it with digital codes because many Finnish stores seem to have "digital codes cannot be returned if used" on their sites.

 

That hardcopy part is very kinky today since way too many games for PC come "empty", they might have DVD in them containing the game (and/or the service the game uses) but to play the game you need to activate it in Steam, Uplay, Origin or some other service where you download the game. Console games are different story somehow still, but that's kind of hard case because even though you might have bought hardcopy, it still might not be a hardcopy.

[LyondellBasell]

Me: Good. Hopefully this makes people angry enough to stop buying pre-orders.

 

Narrator: It didn't.

[corrado33]

Question: What's wrong with Fallout 76? All the videos I've seen do occasionally show graphical glitches, but otherwise it just seems like a lackluster game? Bethesda advertised a multiplayer Fallout game, what they gave was an... albeit rushed... Fallout game.

[KuJoe]

1 hour ago, Thaldor said:

Personaly I was suprised that Fallout 76 wasn't available on Steam like everyother Bethesda game

I think Bethesda already commented on this, Fallout 76 will be released on Steam but Bethesda didn't want Valve eating into their initial launch profits so they released it on their own platform first with a Steam release expected in a few months once the orders slow down.

[KuJoe]

4 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Question: What's wrong with Fallout 76? All the videos I've seen do occasionally show graphical glitches, but otherwise it just seems like a lackluster game? Bethesda advertised a multiplayer Fallout game, what they gave was an... albeit rushed... Fallout game.

My friends and I love the game, it's one of the best games we've ever played together and we'll still play it for 6+ hours straight without getting bored. With that being said, if you go watch any of the VODs on Twitch of any of us playing the game we complain quite a bit about how it feels like an early access game because of minor issues that are annoying (but not game breaking). Even with all of the complaining though, it's still an excellent game and even though I bought the Tricentennial edition I'd still buy the Power Armor edition if they even re-release it.

 

In fact, now that I've brought up money, I'm a bit disappointed in their "microtransactions" (I put it in quotes because you don't need to spend real money to get the items in the store)... the store is very limited and not a whole lot worth buying even though I'd like to show my support.

[corrado33]

1 minute ago, KuJoe said:

My friends and I love the game, it's one of the best games we've ever played together and we'll still play it for 6+ hours straight without getting bored. With that being said, if you go watch any of the VODs on Twitch of any of us playing the game we complain quite a bit about how it feels like an early access game because of minor issues that are annoying (but not game breaking). Even with all of the complaining though, it's still an excellent game and even though I bought the Tricentennial edition I'd still buy the Power Armor edition if they even re-release it.

 

In fact, now that I've brought up money, I'm a bit disappointed in their "microtransactions" (I put it in quotes because you don't need to spend real money to get the items in the store)... the store is very limited and not a whole lot worth buying even though I'd like to show my support.

Like what kind of issues? Just bad framerates? (Admittedly this was an issue for fallout 4 as well IIRC) I know some people are complaining of the "stash" being too small, but that's not gamebreaking.

[KuJoe]

13 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Like what kind of issues? Just bad framerates? (Admittedly this was an issue for fallout 4 as well IIRC) I know some people are complaining of the "stash" being too small, but that's not gamebreaking.

We've hit some "laggy" issues before where framerates would drop but nothing major.

 

We do get some graphical issues like items flying around or getting stuck to the wall, items disappearing when you drop them on the ground, enemies not being where they're supposed to be on screen making them impossible to hit (like the mob will be in front of you but your unable to hurt them while they're attacking you from behind but there's nothing there), other players not showing up on screen, duplicate items displaying for certain people, and stuff like that.

 

We also see a lot of UI bugs where you can't click on menus or accept invites from certain players.

 

Then there's the "things that should be fixed but technically aren't bugs" category where Bethesda coded it that way but it doesn't make sense and ruins the experience like when you go to sell/scrap items in your inventory every time you do it rearranges the inventory so you end up selling/scrapping something you didn't want to or when you login and find your base was removed because it was "too close" to another base but when you look around there's no base within miles.

 

Lastly there's the issues like stash/inventory space, since day 1 I've been 100% maxed out on my inventory, stash, and base budget even after getting rid of a lot of important items so that's really annoying and I spend at least a quarter of my streams doing inventory management. The lack of Push To Talk is really annoying if you want to play and stream at the same time.

 

The lack of guides or documentation is rough, but trial and error makes the game more fun IMO.

 

If you go on the FO76 subreddit a lot of people are experiencing game ruining bugs, but thankfully all of mine have been either comedic or annoying.

[ZacoAttaco]

This is insane, Bethesda should be charged with false advertising then. This product is not complete. It's a good reminder NOT TO PRE-ORDER. The only time I pre-ordered was for 'Batman: Arkham Knight', on PC. Horrible experience.

[KuJoe]

5 minutes ago, ZacoAttaco said:

This is insane, Bethesda should be charged with false advertising then. This product is not complete. It's a good reminder NOT TO PRE-ORDER. The only time I pre-ordered was for 'Batman: Arkham Knight', on PC. Horrible experience.

What game breaking bugs have you run into? How many hours do you have in the game?

[ZacoAttaco]

8 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

What game breaking bugs have you run into? How many hours do you have in the game? 

In Fallout 76? I haven't even played it. I've seen more than enough coverage to stay far away from it.

[corrado33]

23 minutes ago, ZacoAttaco said:

This is insane, Bethesda should be charged with false advertising then. This product is not complete. It's a good reminder NOT TO PRE-ORDER. The only time I pre-ordered was for 'Batman: Arkham Knight', on PC. Horrible experience.

False advertising how?

 

What... EXACTLY did they advertise that they didn't deliver on?

[KuJoe]

Just now, ZacoAttaco said:

In Fallout 76? I haven't even played it. I've seen more than enough coverage to stay far away from it.

Oh, your loss. It really is one of the best games I've ever played.

[Misanthrope]

Ok...I think it might be time to just forget about future Elder Scrolls games and throw support behind the current modding efforts because they're sinking to new levels of scum previously undiscovered.

 

Also Leonard was streaming early about a possible Lawsuit against them over Fallout 76, probably frivolous or immediately settled but they're pissing people off so damn much they might be done even while sitting on massive franchises.

[Misanthrope]

1 hour ago, corrado33 said:

Question: What's wrong with Fallout 76? All the videos I've seen do occasionally show graphical glitches, but otherwise it just seems like a lackluster game? Bethesda advertised a multiplayer Fallout game, what they gave was an... albeit rushed... Fallout game.

It's far past "graphical glitches" it just doesn't shows that well on videos: game is basically unplayable with fully broken quests. There's also widespread performance issues (again, not as easy to show them on video in a dramatic way like a visual glitch) and plus looks to be quite honestly just fucking retarded: Like even Call of Duty games seem to have more "Roleplaying" elements than this one.

[corrado33]

1 minute ago, Misanthrope said:

It's far past "graphical glitches" it just doesn't shows that well on videos: game is basically unplayable with fully broken quests. There's also widespread performance issues (again, not as easy to show them on video in a dramatic way like a visual glitch) and plus looks to be quite honestly just fucking retarded: Like even Call of Duty games seem to have more "Roleplaying" elements than this one.

I mean... almost every Bethesda game has had broken quests. That's why you play it on pc so you can use the console to cheat your way out of the broken quests. Looking "fucking retarded" is not a reason to say they didn't deliver on what they promised. 

 

So far all I've heard is people complaining because the quests are slightly boring, the lack of NPCs, and some performance issues. Which, you could argue, were issues with most Bethesda games on launch....

[KuJoe]

3 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

It's far past "graphical glitches" it just doesn't shows that well on videos: game is basically unplayable with fully broken quests. There's also widespread performance issues (again, not as easy to show them on video in a dramatic way like a visual glitch) and plus looks to be quite honestly just fucking retarded: Like even Call of Duty games seem to have more "Roleplaying" elements than this one.

I'm glad my experience isn't like that, I'd be pissed if my game was that broken.

[Misanthrope]

2 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

I'm glad my experience isn't like that, I'd be pissed if my game was that broken.

Aye. Also I think that this is also a big disconnect in the type of people that would go for RPGs and the kind of games Bethesda has been pushing for literally decades and the crowd that goes for modern open world online games.

 

Like a lot of the conflict you are seeing I feel is because 76 is more geared towards somebody that has been playing things like Farcry or GTA Online for a while not for people who spend years perfecting textures and perverted porn mods like Bethesda's most vocal audience.

[KuJoe]

6 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Aye. Also I think that this is also a big disconnect in the type of people that would go for RPGs and the kind of games Bethesda has been pushing for literally decades and the crowd that goes for modern open world online games.

 

Like a lot of the conflict you are seeing I feel is because 76 is more geared towards somebody that has been playing things like Farcry or GTA Online for a while not for people who spend years perfecting textures and perverted porn mods like Bethesda's most vocal audience.

The lack of NPCs was the biggest issue for me, but there's still vendors and robots you can interact with so it's not out of the realm of possibility for NPCs to be added down the road. I personally can't wait until Bethesda lets us run our own servers, that's what I'm looking forward to and will gladly pay any amount they want to charge.

[Misanthrope]

Just now, KuJoe said:

The lack of NPCs was the biggest issue for me, but there's still vendors and robots you can interact with so it's not out of the realm of possibility for NPCs to be added down the road. I personally can't wait until Bethesda lets us run our own servers, that's what I'm looking forward to and will gladly pay any amount they want to charge.

Is that actually happening, like announced or hinted at all? That'd be news to me but I haven't been following too much.

[KuJoe]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

Is that actually happening, like announced or hinted at all? That'd be news to me but I haven't been following too much.

Bethesda said it would be a few months but there's no word on whether you can run them on your own hardware or rent them (similar to what Microsoft did with Minecraft). They did say that server owners can adjust the PVP settings so it will open up a lot more options for players who just want PVE or want a more hardcore PVP.