But the problem with the refund is that it will cost the industry millions over the years, since people will doubtlessly abuse it. That's what I'm trying to say. I completely understand your frustrations, but a refund is not the answer, not with this kind of media. The only way to hold devs accountable is to do research before and after the game comes out, and not to pre-order things. That's the only feasible way to stop publishers from being scumbags. 

I think we both agree that publishers need to be held accountable. I just think we disagree on the method.

If everyone did this, maybe developers would approach things differently than basically having paid beta testing.  And who are we kidding?  We all know that there will be gullible people out there who will buy it day one, often pre-ordering it.  Those are the people who will do the beta testing for us. Then we hear of the massive network issues, and then the developer will either fix it, and we can buy it later.  Or they won't, and we avoided a waste of money.

No. People should be more careful when buying stuff, specially games. Don't pre-order games unless you without a doubt it's coming out polished. And it's easy to spot which games aren't polished.
Those who buy games knowing nothing about it buy them on hype alone. As consumers with bad buying habits they pay the price, which is getting bad games at full price. Specially nowadays where you get tons of info about games everyday until it releases...
Back in the day all you got were pics in a gaming magazine and a review...

I always wondered about certain things about returning games. I mean clothes, if you are unhappy with it and haven't worn it/damaged it, you can take it back and get a full refund. Buy a toaster and it breaks for no fault of your own in the first week from Argos and take it back for exchange or refund straight away. Yet with games, you can't? I dunno...

GAME's website says this on their Refunds and Returns page:
"• Faulty software, where the seal has been broken may be returned up to 3 months after the despatch date or 12 months if Preowned."

In other words, you bought MCC or Driveclub and it is faulty, take it back get a refund.

Yes, yes and yes! Did I mention "yes"?

No, no and no! You can't be both greedy and early adopter!!!   

Yes because like any other defective product you would be allowed to get a refund.

Apparently, but think deeply! Eager early adopters are, together with publishers' greed, the main reasons why games are released earlier and earlier, so they are accomplice of this guilt. They are also a necessary source of funds to pay development up to the around beta-state many games are released in and its further debugging up to the definitive version. Without their money games wouldn't ever be debugged anymore! Or at least not anymore until a new later and healthier releasing cycle is reached, so if early adopters want a refund without breaking the industry for years they must accept to become entitled to refunds only after they'll accept later releases and loger dev cycles. And this can't be done suddenly, otherwise it would leave a one year-long (at least) hole of drought, it has to be done gradually. Which means that without another great game industry crash it just won't happen, sorry.

For those who are asserting that you should hold off and wait for opinions first, before buying... If everybody did this, nobody would get the game, and thus no opinions would be made available. It's a completely non-feasible assertion.

And beyond that, releasing a decidedly buggy game at retail and then fixing it after that is using the paying customer as beta testers - rather than paying people to test their game, the people are having to pay to do the testing. And that's just plain wrong. If you make a purchase in full faith that you're getting a finished product, only to get a buggy mess, then you should be compensated for your beta testing.

Note that we're not talking about BAD games. We're talking about BUGGY, BROKEN games. Of course, all of this is just a solid demonstration that all three hardware makers should be maintaining a "seal of quality" program that allows buyers to know that the game they're buying is free of major and obvious bugs (minor glitches and rare bugs can slip through beta testing, but the major issues shouldn't happen). Nintendo appears to do this for eShop exclusive releases... but they need to do it for retail (like Sonic Boom). MS and Sony should be doing it, too.

The issue at hand is that there is currently no real incentive for devs to make sure their products are up to scratch on release. They can save time and money by skipping all of their beta testing, and instead use their customers. And while it's all well and good to go "stupid customers are buying at launch", that doesn't address the problem. There will always be stupid customers - it's why shampoo bottles have "for external use only", after all.

If developers had to refund the cost of the game in the situation in which it was truly buggy, it would provide an incentive for them to ensure their products are functional, because otherwise they go bankrupt. And if we included such a mechanism, you can bet that there would be fewer bad games, too.

Of course, the challenge is coming up with a feasible way of implementing it. But asserting that we should blame the people who buy the games at launch is really just a case of victim blaming, and does nothing to address the problem at hand. I know a few things repeated in there, but consider it "extra emphasis".

people should just learn to wait and see before blindly buying games