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Call of Duty: Blacks Ops was released more than two months ago, and sold $1 billion in copies in just one week. However, its massive sales are apparently in spite ofa bevy of alleged bugs, glitches, and online gaming hacks, especially on PS3 and PC. Activision has said continuously that it's working to fix everything, but now a large consumer group is saying that the publisher's efforts aren't good enough.
The UK-based group is called Gamers' Voice, and says it is planning to send a detailed report to the country's Office of Fair Trading over the flurry of problemsPS3 and PC players are still facing.
"Clearly, CODBLOPS was the one of the biggest, if not the biggest release 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," reads a statement on the Gamers' Voicewebsite.
Unlike most games, Black Ops had a completely inflexible launch date. It absolutely had to go out on November 9, a symbolic date exactly one year after the previous Call of Duty was released, and the perfect spot for holiday sales.
Gamers' Voice clearly thinks Activision was probably pressured to get the game out on time and knew there were problems, but figured it could fix them after the fact.
That, the group says, is unacceptable. "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."
This highlights the issue with today's Internet-connected consoles. Last year, Tomb Raider and the Guardian of Light was released on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network without its much-hyped co-op mode. The developer patched the game after the fact, although later than it said it would, and expected customers not to bat an eye.
It's an unsettling new trend, but hopefully if Gamers' Voice's complaint resonates at all, it won't become a rampant and overpowering trend.
Jan 24, 2011
