We’ve just heard that game developers may be forced to offer a 2 year warranty if the new EU proposals go ahead to bring video games in line with other items covered by the EU Sales and Guarantee’s directive.
Predictably, the publishers are not best pleased about this concerning development, head of Tiga, the games developer’s assosciation Richard Wilson expressed concerns that this would lead to developers "playing it safe" in order to produce 100% perfect software.
Currently the EU finds it unacceptable that the 2 year guarantee doesn’t apply to video games and would like to see the situation rectified so that the warranty would offer some consumer protection from lazy or shoddy programming.
We like the idea of having no more lazily ported games, or hastily thrown together movie tie-ins so we’re a little torn by this proposal, sure it will be good to have properly coded, guaranteed games on the shelves, but game development time can already take years.
If it goes ahead it will likely be both a curse and a blessing; the games should be better coded and more enjoyable, but the delays and cost at release is likely to be more considerable.
What do you think, should games be subject to this new EU 2 year guarantee proposal?