Reasons why people are upset with GamersGate

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Compilation of reasons of why people are mad.
By kesutu (slighty edited for better wording)

In no particular order:

1 - They heavily implied that all purchases of the Bethesda bundle would be honored. If they had immediately came out and said "Sorry guys, that was a pricing error, apologies", then there would be a lot less backlash. However, they issued these two twitter statements:

https://twitter.com/GamersGate/status/282458640152141824
"The Bethesda bundle is now unavailable and we will not get new serials until middle of January next year."

https://twitter.com/GamersGate/status/282458751448002560
"if you want a refund for your Bethesda bundle purchase due to the lack of serials please contact our support. Sorry for this"

These tweets heavily implied that Bethesda bundle purchases will be honored.

2 - The pricing error for the Bethesda Bundle was up for 9 hours. Many people who initially thought it was merely a pricing error eventually were convinced that it was in fact just a Christmas miracle. The logic was that if it was a pricing error the site would have either closed or fix the issue much sooner.

For anyone that argues that the price was clearly unreasonable, here is a bundle from Amazon that has a retail value of $250 and is being sold for $30 ($25 with 2K coupon, and $20 if you include the $5 promotional credit you get for purchasing.) It's not far-fetched for one to think GamersGate was actually selling at that price.

3 - A total of 7+ (many more, including less prominent ones) pricing errors have been recorded in the past week.

Bethesda New Year Collection
Borderlands 2 - Four Pack
Patrician IV Gold Bundle
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Deluxe Edition
Cargo Commander (credit to MrCastiglia)
Dead Island GOTY
The Last Remnant

This honestly seems like some sort of terrible marketing ploy. Why else would there be so many pricing errors spread out over the course of a week?

4 - They essentially break their own rules: http://www.gamersgate.co.uk/info/terms-of-use

"Prices GamersGate reserves the right to change the price and availability of any products at any time without notice; provided, however, such price change will not affect your purchase price for orders that GamersGate has already received from you and processed."

5 - It is illegal to force refunds after the completed purchase of a product (differs in countries).

6 - Things that could have happened after someone thought they'd bought the games:

Friends also bought the games in order to play together
Money was spent on extra download quota to download it all
Money was spent on PC upgrades to play the games
Money was spent on DLC
Games were not bought elsewhere while on sale (lost opportunities)
Individual games previously bought but not activated in some way were given away or traded
Trades of some kind were half completed pending the keys

This negatively impacts the consumer in a significant manner.
(Credit to yay_icade_support from Reddit)

7 - Some people have no received refunds despite having their orders cancelled.

8 - Lack of communication. The notices GamersGate has posted on their site and Facebook page lacks any sort of useful information. Consumers are essentially left in the dark. (credit to ladynadiad)

9 - They continue to sell games for which they have no stock (specifically Borderlands 2 and Bethesda games) and do not state so on the game page. (credit to Kiina)

I'm sure there are many other reasons, but these are just a few reasons why people are mad. I personally am not angry they refunded my purchase, I'm angry that they implied they would honor them, then went back on their word. These actions are not acceptable by any company. Even if this was not a marketing ploy to garner more attention to the site, do you really want to give your money to a bunch of amateurs who manage to repeatedly screw up something so basic? Next thing you know, they actually keep their accounts and passwords on an unencrypted .txt file and manage to lose it. There are many places where you can buy cheap games; GamersGate is not one of them.

TL;DR: The majority of people are upset at how GamersGate is handling the situation.

Also. IGN 15% off. Forever mad.

11 years ago*

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107 Comments

h4r5h4v3ng3r

I am wondering how many of the people affected by this whole gamers gate controversy this year had actually been a longtime customer of gamers gate (say level 4 or even 3 in their "experience" system)?

Gamers gate had no issues with honoring their price mistakes in the past however this year, it was posted all over the Internet in places like reddit and CAG and had a much wider exposure; this coupled with the fact that the loss that they were going to make from each sale (since it was below what the publisher allowed them to sell for) was going to be drastic led them to this point here (let's not forget the opportunists who bought a bunch of them to trade and the ones who bought extras to give to friends, etc). I am not saying that had the price issue not be known on such a massive scale and only their longtime customers had bought the bundle, they would not have issued refunds; they certainly would not have had this sort of backlash now though. In such situations, I generally empathize and look at the situation from my point if view had I been in GG shoes. Even if one cannot do that, answer this: would you rather have the company go bankrupt from the money they stand to loose? If you were in gamersgate's place, would you have honored the purchases even if it meant you would go bankrupt because of what you would have to pay out of your own pockets to the publishers to make up for the price difference between what it was sold for and what they told you to charge?

I do agree, however, that they went about the Bethesda bundle the wrong way wrt to their tweets. Should never have implied that refunds were optional.

Ps: wrote this in the iPhone so their may be some silly autocorrect madness going on in what I wrote.

11 years ago