To come back to Nigo's post:
We're now two weeks post launch and most 1v1 ladders have an astonishing <50 people ranked. Team games don't even make it to 100. And most ranked players have between 10-20 games. I guess saying coh3 has flopped on console is fairly clear, which is also bad news for the PC version. |
Vipper and Sky, please take the petty fights to PM. |
That not game industry standard, that's trade/industry/whatever company standard. And bare with me but if tomorrow Microsoft release an update that wreck your Windows and all data stored... I have bad news for you.
I know. I am aware. It's reinforcing my point: Companies having power over your a product you already paid for can have very detrimental effects. Also good ones, but consumers should be protected from damage.
Relic has delivered a game that works and been willing to patch every bug they find and to continue to do so for a certain time as per industry standard. From that your opinion that what they delivered doesn't meet your expectation is on you. Steam gives you 2 hours to refund and I don't know how the code of sale generally apply to this particular kind of service sold
Yes, I fully agree to this. But that's not the topic. The topic is being denied usage after purchase. You make the purchase based on the current state of the software. But later (days/months/years), the company denies you access. This can be active blocking (ban), a new patch breaking the software, bankruptcy of some intermediate service platform (Steam) or simply them generally revoking all licenses because as you said they claim to have that right in their EULA.
To my knowledge there's been few cases about that, but I am also not a lawyer and this topic has a lot of intricacies and will depend on where you live. I fortunately live in a country where I can treat EULAs as toilet paper. I can imagine though that at least at my place courts could rule against software companies, at least to some degree. Their EULAs are not engraved law, and while they obviously want to dodge as many responsibilities as possible, they legally can't. Probably at least.
but I'm pretty sure that if you buy something, use it and don't like it afterward you're not going to get much from the vendor.
Not sure what you mean by "something". Software is very different from physical goods, especially if company-side patching is either necessary or even enforced for proper usage. Software like a game can't be "used up" or damaged by the customer. At the same time the customer might get full benefit from even short-term use or could easily copy the software illegally. On the other hand, it might be difficult to judge the usability or quality of the product before purchase, something that is at least to some degree possible with physical goods. Software sales can be exploited from both sides. These laws are usually codified also in a way that a customer can have reasonable expectations about a sold good regarding usability, e.g. the hammer you bought not breaking on first normal use or software working in the first place.
A software company being able to revoke your access to the software you already paid for might be such a point as well. And that's the point of Rosbone: He technically doesn't really know the reason, because no one at Relic told him. Relic made a claim that he did wrong, but doesn't tell when, what and where. Relic has all the leverage, the only way for Rosbone to find out is to take Relic to court. Which is exactly why most law systems focus on customer protection much more than protection of the company. |
Read the EULA, they sell you a license to use a product through a service company (Steam). They can revoke it anytime if they get evidence you're not complying with the rules they set (accordingly that those rules aren't illegal themselves).
As it as been said before, Relic hasn't a history of blindness banning players so either Rosbone is playing fool by not acknowledging his own behavior either they may have various reasons and he's not sure which one of them triggered the ban.
In any cases, with what he wrote around this forum, that's probably enough to trigger an end of the license contract, something probably related to defamation of Relic/Relic's employees that you, Rosbone, we, aren't enough versed into law to judge if valid or not but that their legal service/legal adviser most likely is.
As per communicating of the reasons, Relic is fully entitled to not produce their evidences at will and only reserve them in case of legal action. AKA if Relic does so, and so the majority of major gaming companies, when banning players that's because legally it is way better for them to manage it that way.
The appealing process is most likely an internal process and the case transferred to a 3rd party group/manager who'll review it from a neutral point of view and asses if the sanction is valid. It doesn't involve the player because what they asses is their decision making based on the information they had the moment it was taken. They do not seek for more information or to give more information. If the reviewer board valid the sanction, then the sanction is confirmed, if the board invalid it then the sanction is revoked.
I'm not saying it 100% works like that at Relic, but this is the general process of appeal of sanction. If you want to know the reason behind the decision, then you must take legal action against them.
I know that today you only buy "licenses" instead of an actual copy. I'd be interested if that would actually stand up in court case, e.g. if Steam disappeared or something, since this system effectively works exactly the same way as buying a hard copy and everything in the store also suggests that you "buy the game", not a license to play. But that's another topic, so I'll leave it at that.
I don't care what Relic writes in its Eula. Relic being able to revoke the product I bought at any time without compensation or getting any information how I can dispute that, is putting me into a bad spot from the start. It's a system in which they have all the leverage and I don't. I can't just withdraw my money from their account just because they broke their game with a patch or something else that can go wrong. It's a disadvantage of their product and should be counted as their product being lower value. Most people don't care though until they get banned. The majority of bans are rightful (at least I guess/hope so), but there definitely are cases of wrong banning. The better they do their job, the less wrongful banning cases there are, but they will still be there. Relic (or any company for that matter) not providing any realistic course to appeal for a ban further lowers their product value.
The current practice of not giving any information might be industry standard, but is inherently anti consumer. I don't see why I should not criticise that system.
I don't know what factors exactly lead to Rosbone's ban. I guess him joking about the appearance of Relic employees was the trigger, maybe there's more, maybe not. I have literally no idea, I have never talked to any Relic employee ever. Which also leads to the next question: Should Relic even moderate based on behaviour on other platforms? And which platforms? And in which cases? |
Maybe it's just a manpower issue
Probably, yes. I am not blaming Relic for making misjudgements, they surely know that many decisions are in the grey area they describes. They're a company, they sell a product and allow themselves to lock out their customer from the money he spent. Knowing that they can decide wrongly, they should have appeal mechanisms especially since a Relic ban locks you out of all of their products, not only the one you got the ban for.
Their current policy is 'you got banned. We don't tell you why and for how long. If you don't like it, appeal here. We also won't tell you if we've even read that'.
I know the task is different, but that's even beneath .org standards while we're doing this all for free and the stakes are to be fair non-existant. A ban here means losing access to writing on a forum that didn't cost you anything to join.
I fully agree with Rosbone on this point. Relic should tell you the reason and duration of the ban, best case also the reported incidents that lead to the ban. Many will just screech because obviously they can never be wrong and banning them is surely always justified, but
1. In cases of false bans you can provide the context on the incidents, that might change the meaning of what you wrote.
2. In cases of people accepting their ban, only then you'll get a learning effect.
Relic's system is the most vague possible. I can't appeal if I barely know what I got banned for. At this point appealing is just hoping that the moderator has 'a better day' than before.
Tldr:
You buy a product, they sell a product, they can take the product away from you at any time, they don't provide any info or reasonable appeal procedure. That's not professional. They should change it. |
Thanks for this behind the scenes look. Very enlightening post. I always try to back the mods. You guys do this for free. And all you get for it is hate and arguments.
As Shadowlink has stated, my personal ban probably comes from years of being on the verge of being demoted. Not a black and white situation in his mind. Or probably in the persons mind who actually demoted me. And I can agree with this as a valid reason.
You guys do not have an easy job. I apologize for making it harder for you. But I do it mostly to make it fun here. Which sometimes is not reason enough for the hassle it causes.
Just a quick clarification after skipping through some posts here, since the ban and demotion often get tossed into the same pot during the discussion:
There has been no ban for Rosbone on this site (.org), "only" demotion.
A ban has been issued by Relic, resulting in a ban from Relic's games (and probably official forum?), but not on this forum. Relic can't ban anyone here on .org. |
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I agree with you that Relic should provide durations and also reasons given for bans.
As I've been a mod here for quite a while now, I can tell you from experience that the clear cut examples are few and far in between. In the game it might be team killing, on forums or game chat personal attacks or threats of violence. But those are (luckily) not the majority of issues.
There's qualitative differences of people saying the same things. Context matters a lot. What's the topic of the thread, the current discussion, the posts that are being responded to. Even previous posting behaviour. An impolite post can potentially be different if posted by someone who spent his last 100 posts insulting others than from someone with a "clean sheet". Doesn't have to be, but the chances of malicious intent vary; yet, I have also have to give both the benefit of the doubt.
Then there's external factors: Non-native English speakers using wrong words, cultural differences of both poster and moderator themselves. Subconsciously also personal opinion, even if you try to avoid that to the best of your ability. To some degree, a moderator has to take all of thit into consideration, but still assume that everyone applies some basic common sense regardless of their background.
Lastly, as you've already stated in one of the first posts: No one can know all of this stuff. Either because it's literally impossible, or pragmatic reasons like time constraints. What if there is a probably insulting post, but I only have a minute to decide? I can leave it, hoping someone else with more time can have a look. If this doesn't happen, what then? I have to make a call, and they're wrong sometimes. I can make a judgement to the best of my abilities, but I'll still misjudge from time to time. Even the best guide lines will leave a lot of space for interpretation, and mindlessly applying words from guide lines will not make good moderation, either.
This is also what happens at Relic: They see a small excerpt of a chat, no info on the players, just a few lines of text. Maybe a message that this player has been reported another time this week. While I think that they should still write "You have been banned due to insulting other players" on their message in the main menu, I guess those won't solve much, because there is still a lot of grey area involved. How often have I seen posts in CoH and other games of users complaining how they got banned, with some later on literally stating stuff among the lines of "yeah I flame others if I think they play bad but that can't be a reason". Some might be troll posts, but there's legit idiots out there. Obviously everyone thinks they're in the 10% of misjudgements or due to mod bias or whatever. Might be, but chances are: they're not. They violated some rules, but are either too dumb or unwilling to realize and take the blame. It's much easier if someone else must be wrong. Still, false decisions can happen.
This makes it even more important, especially if there's bans of products you bought, that there are appeal mechanisms. Relic not offering any of this and basically saying "don't bother writing us" is poor. They can effectively lock you out of the money you spent on their game. It should be seen as a disadvantage to their product, but people don't see it as such until they get banned themselves. |
Income:
515k x $60.00 = 31M gross (PC sales)
Xbox revenue: ??
Advertising Partnerships: ??
Expenses:
Payroll: Average 350 employees (how many are full time, part time, independent contractors)
Let's say 200 of them are salaried. (50k/employee avg. including benefits) Roughly 10m/year * 3 years of development = 30M.
Advertising: 3M budget?
Other expenses: taxes, insurance, food, water, heat, light, etc over 3 years. ???
Profit Sharing: ???
The simplifications are fair. I'd just like to add that assuming all of the sales went through Steam (some where hardware bundles though, I slightly doubt Relic got their 40$ for that), Steam usually takes a 30% share, which would bring the revenue down to ~22 million. Which in turn is also shared between Relic and Sega.
On the expenses side, not all 350 employees might have been assigned to CoH3 development or not been employed for all of the last 3 years.
Even if we take the highest estimate on steamdb, which is 942,5k owners, this is 56,55 million in revenue and ~39,5 million for Relic/Sega. This could - maybe - be a minor surplus. By firing a third of their employees, Relic themselves basically said that they didn't make enough cash to sustain their current size. |
That's not wrong.
To us, CoH is all about multiplayer, but it is not multiplayer only game, nor it is heavily monetized life service.
Multiplayer retention is of little relevance for Relic, we paid for the game and they got the money, they are not getting anymore out of us if we keep playing or not.
Retention is needed for healthy multiplayer matchmaking, not for profit.
This is not true. Yes, coh2.org has a strong bias towards multiplayer aspects of the game. Doesn't mean that player retention didn't matter. No people playing the game gives the company no incentive to further develop expansions or microtransactions for it. On the MP side these will be commanders, some face plates and what not, on the SP side new campaigns and scenarios. And new factions releases for both groups.
Having no players is also a red flag for new buyers, because apparently the game is not good and has no content. Which means no further income from the base game sale and potential other DLCs later on for the developer.
The times when the game's release and 1-2 expansions a year down the line were the only sources of income have passed long ago. The main money in gaming comes from smaller transactions. It's unclear how much focus Relic puts on those, put it is VERY clear that they deem it to be a major source of income, hence the first patch introducing the store. |
You do know that multiplayer on console costs like $10 per month worldwide on both XBOX and PS, it's like a subscription... right? MP scene will never be that big on console
Your links only tell us who purchased CoH3, plays a lot automatch AND is subscribed to XBOX Live/ PS network. That's a pretty shit tool for measure if you ask me
The console subscriptions are mostly a non-issue. There's plenty of people that have some premium subscription. We can assume as a given that there should be tons of players players that at least have access to multiplayer.
The first weekend is over. If people were that interested, they'd be able to finish a couple of games per day, and judging from normal human mentality, most will stick to 1-2 factions for the beginning: Whichever one they find the "coolest". I haven't checked after the PC launch, but I bet that every faction had a top100 after the first weekend.
Let's see what happens in the next days. But overall I'd say that this is quite disappointing, unless there is a massive surge of players transitioning from SP into MP in the next week. Nevertheless, the campaigns are not good enough to keep you hooked, so if people don't transition into MP, there will be a lot of lost revenue for Relic.
I guess reading the bad reviews on Steam didn't exactly help selling the console version either. |