As has been said, Gamers have of course rights - customer's rights. There are still some left, and even though publishers and distributors like Steam, EA, or Ubisoft are very keen (and frustratingly successful) on taking them away, some of these rights are still intact.

Apart from those, Gamers have no specific rights over other customers. Stardock's "Gamers Bill of Rights" was just a fancy name for a published set of in-house quality rules. Those weren't bad rules, but the fact that Stardock themselves broke them majorly detracts from their effect.

I was talking about voters not politicians. :P And they never do stop yammering about "free markets" no matter how happy they are to demolish them.

Edit: So yes, I did mean putting it across in that phrasing.

This pretty much sums it up.

Originally, people fought pretty hard against any DRM methods tacked onto their game. A simple SecuROM activation was crossing the line and often caused consumers to raise hell. Electronic Arts wanted a recurring activation check on Mass Effect, but gamers caused quite a stir, and it was replaced with a one time check instead.

Then it seems a majority of gamers did a 180, and started embracing gaming as a service all for the sake of convenience, lured by "unlimited downloads" and achievements. They seemed to never realize their consumer rights are diminishing with these services, and have allowed corporations to control our very access to games, access which can be taken away on a whim with no recourse from the user.

Unless people speak up, I honestly don't see gamers having much of a chance in the future when it comes to rights.

As for the Gamers Bill of Rights, it is a nice idea, but the company that created that document failed to even uphold it. Even now, they are putting their games on services that do not comply with a majority of those rules.

Well, in all fairness Stardock maintained most of that bill of rights with their in-house developed games. They couldnt do much with 3rd partry games on Impulse. After they sold Impulse to Gamestop most everything changed though. People wanted hl2, that´s how Valve made steam what it is now.

I used to be against other DD's selling steam games when they started doing it, but then, figured, why not? If the publishers decided to tie their games with steamworks, why should Valve get all the business?

I wish Gamer's Gate would realize this. I don't even want my money back (I had to get it gifted in the first place as they wouldn't take my money), I just want blue coins to the value of the game so I can get another one, but they won't do it :/

Since finding people on GOG who were willing to help me get gamer's gate games in return for gogs, I've gotten about 10 games from GG, and this is the only one that clearly shouldn't even have been for sale in the first place. The others have all been great.

Pretty much the death of respect for them, no matter what they did afterward. Now they try to get media attention for patches they call DLC and no one cares.

I'm generally one of the less demanding consumers you will find but that game was a fucking disaster.

If you bug them long enough, they will do it. Also depends on who's handling your case. Ashot seems to be less amicable these days. Andreas, I haven't gotten in touch with him for a long time. Dan seems like a really decent chap, but I've only corresponded twice with him.

Thanks for the advice. It's Ashot, and he doesn't even seem to have read what I wrote in my email. He's still telling me to try and patch it and send him screen-shots, even though the game's servers have been off for over 2 years.

In other news, I just realized from this that I probably can use my Visa afterall, apparently I can just click on the "pay by paypal" button and it won't actually make me use paypal :?

edited again: so, I just tried, and it worked. Cambodia was even in the list of countries to select at the Visa screen which is very rare. Time to give them all my money.... :D