Will the Company give a refund???

[wodinoneeye]

If somebody buys Caesar 4 and they cant get it to work on their computer, will TM/Sierra/whoever guarantee a refund -- because stores in the US have their BS policies to not give refunds once the CD is unwrapped and only will give a 'replacement' (which is pointless if it wont run) ????????


From the many problems people are having it sounds very touchy as to compatibility (laptops particularly can be effecyed). Waiting for a patch 'some day over the rainbow' to possibly fix the problem makes for a poor customer relation.


If this Demo is a sample of 'robustness' of the product, I can see major user problems for the full version product.

[Ryster]

To release a demo before the release of a product, it is likely that the demo is based on beta code. Therefore problems are to be expected.

In fact a Tilted Mill representative has already stated that errors in the demo are to be reported so they can be ironed out prior to release, which would seem to confirm what I just said.

Also I don't know what it is like in the US, but in the UK we have certain rights no matter what policies the individual stores have. If you have a faulty product, you are entitled to a refund. Box opened or not.

[Keith]

If somebody buys Caesar 4 and they cant get it to work on their computer, will TM/Sierra/whoever guarantee a refund -- because stores in the US have their BS policies to not give refunds once the CD is unwrapped and only will give a 'replacement' (which is pointless if it wont run) ????????


From the many problems people are having it sounds very touchy as to compatibility (laptops particularly can be effecyed). Waiting for a patch 'some day over the rainbow' to possibly fix the problem makes for a poor customer relation.


If this Demo is a sample of 'robustness' of the product, I can see major user problems for the full version product.

More than likely you'll have to make sure that the place you buy it from gives refunds. I think Sierra will only refund you if you bought it from their game store online.

[Gizza]

Its a bit early to be asking those types of questions. Demos are always quite buggy. The code this demo is running is probably 3 or so months old. Half the problems ppl are having were probably already fixed before the release of the demo.

Devs cant just whack up a demo overnight. It does take some time to compile all the code into the executable, lock certain things out etc, so this demo was probably in dev for a month or so and wouldve at that point already been based of old code.

I would bet theyve got a version in their office running quite nicely right now, just not compiled into an installation package etc, and requires their dev tools to run.

[EmperorJay]

According to the reviewer from GameSpy, things are looking quite good in the most recent version he played.

(http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9589)

[wodinoneeye]

Its a bit early to be asking those types of questions. Demos are always quite buggy. The code this demo is running is probably 3 or so months old. Half the problems ppl are having were probably already fixed before the release of the demo.

Devs cant just whack up a demo overnight. It does take some time to compile all the code into the executable, lock certain things out etc, so this demo was probably in dev for a month or so and wouldve at that point already been based of old code.

I would bet theyve got a version in their office running quite nicely right now, just not compiled into an installation package etc, and requires their dev tools to run.



Its a very poor policy to put out a buggy demo. Basic technology issues SHOULD have been ironed out 3 months ago (the game mechanics being of more complexity have a majority of bugs). You can build a Demo in parallel with the main product if you plan correctly (and they should have been fixing shared problems as they did their internal testing).

They risk getting bad press about their quality and it may cost them alot of profits.

[Ryster]

Its a very poor policy to put out a buggy demo. Basic technology issues SHOULD have been ironed out 3 months ago (the game mechanics being of more complexity have a majority of bugs). You can build a Demo in parallel with the main product if you plan correctly (and they should have been fixing shared problems as they did their internal testing).

They risk getting bad press about their quality and it may cost them alot of profits.

Wodinoneeye, I disagree. Like has been said above, the demo would have been based on beta code from several weeks ago. Also it is impossible to test a product on every hardware platform before a game is launched. A wide scale public beta is usually the only way such problems can be avoided, but most companies (Sierrra are particularly bad for this) don't bother with such a test and release a product without widescale testing and expect US to do the testing for them. Release now, patch later has become a way of life these days and I for one am getting sick of it, but we are to blame since we accept it and let the companies get away with it.

End of rant :)