Black Ops reported to Office of Fair Trading

[Simate]

Tuesday January 25, 02:54 PM Issues affecting the biggest-selling videogame of 2010 have prompted lobbyists to haul Activision before the authorities.



‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ was the biggest game of last year, the latest in a long-line of highly polished first-person shooters. As with its predecessors that include the ‘Modern Warfare’ off-shoot series, ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ was highly praised for its gripping solo campaign, but most important of all one of the best online multiplayer experiences on console or PC.



Since launch, however, the PlayStation 3 and PC versions of ‘Black Ops’ have suffered technical problems relating to online gameplay. Indeed the ongoing bugs and connection difficulties have become such an issue for users that gaming lobbyist group Gamer’s Voice has decided to report ‘Black Ops’ publisher Activision to the Office of Fair Trading.



Gamer’s Voice, an independent pressure group formed by Labour MP Tom Watson in 2009, is contesting that ‘Black Ops’ fails to function as advertised. Indeed the problems affecting ‘Black Ops’ online are such that this aspect of the game is “rendered almost useless.”



The list of highlighted problems in an open letter to the OFT reads:
"Sudden disconnections from online multiplayer game sessions"
"Inability to join servers that play host to multiplayer game sessions"
"Freezing of PlayStation 3 console, forcing the user to reset it"
"Main menu freezing as the game is started on the PC version"


After establishing that ‘Black Ops’ simply is “not functioning as intended”, the open letter presented to the OFT closes by saying “It is clear that Call of Duty: Black Ops for the PlayStation 3 and PC is not ‘as described’; of a satisfactory quality or fit for purpose i.e. to entertain, which was stressed at the time of its release.”


You can read “An open letter from Gamers' Voice to the OFT regarding Activision” on the Gamer’s Voice website, found at http://gamersvoice.org.uk/
It will be interesting to see how Activision responds, and ultimately find out where the responsibility lies.


http://uk.videogames.games.yahoo.com...ng-21be16.html

[lithho]

will be interesting to see if this gets any where.

[Over Carl]

Doubt it otherwise it would set an interesting precedent - we could all refund every ms product every sold

[Simate]

There was a 30 odd Meg update yesterday. I was hoping that was a possible fix but just tried to play 2 games and got connection interrupted on both so turned it off.

[Mule]

This needs to be done with fallout new vegas, considered doing it myself.

[Ginnerfreak]

Not sure if I have just been lucky... but I have never had any problems.

Only time I get an issue is if a sore loser turns off their xbox at the end of the game and they are the host.

My present total time spent paying is 3 days.

[Bald Bouncer]

Not sure if I have just been lucky... but I have never had any problems.

Only time I get an issue is if a sore loser turns off their xbox at the end of the game and they are the host.

My present total time spent paying is 3 days.

Since launch, however, the PlayStation 3 and PC versions of ‘Black Ops’ have suffered technical problems relating to online gameplay. Indeed the ongoing bugs and connection difficulties have become such an issue for users that gaming lobbyist group Gamer’s Voice has decided to report ‘Black Ops’ publisher Activision to the Office of Fair Trading.

[raelmadrid]

you can forget about ps3 online play until sony sort their shit out, think of a ps3 on cfw 3.55 as a jtag that never gets banned...

[CallmeGoose]

my online stats have been reset TWICE in 3 weeks for no apparent reason, first time i was level 32, so after many hours of regaining my stats back to that level, the console froze and the stats were reset again due to "something about bad packets between servers"

Im no longer playing the game anymore, its a waste of fucking time.

I hope something comes of this report.

[evilsatan]

I hope this gets Activision/Treyarch to sort their shit out. Apparently they have been spending time trying to fix the issues but nothing had been fixed so I gave up playing it online weeks if not months ago. The actual game wasn't great either so not played that much.

Was very disappointed of regularly being kicked, never having an open NAT unless I pissed about and even then all I could get was moderate. I have all my ports forwarded, a DMZ, static IP etc. Even lost all my campaign data because I was told it might sort the problems out.