This is probably a topic that's been brought up numerous times on this site, but I thought I would vent my frustrations. I've been upset for years when it comes to bad video game launches. What finally broke the camels back for me was Cyberpunk 2077. But this whole ordeal with Battlefield 2042 and EA executives admitting to knowing how buggy and unfinished the game was, and STILL releasing it, to literally blaming Halo Infinite for being in a better state than their own game was just sent me over the edge.

It feels like robbery and really should be illegal. You look at the BF2042 E3 2021 trailer and the game looks like it's running flawlessly! There's no liability to video game companies when it comes to the matter of putting out a working product. I give you money and you give me a product that works. That's how a financial transaction is supposed to happen. Then we as gamers get called "entitled" for wanting a working and functional game, and not having wasted our hard earned money. I'm a dad now. Having the time of my life too, but every so often, I like to sit down and enjoy the hobby I grew up with and has given me some of my fondest childhood memories.

Crap like this should at the very least be considered false advertisement and should honestly be susceptible to lawsuits.

Whether a game is good or not is personal preference, but it should be up to the player to decide that and not to have to force their way through the broken mess the game is in.

Imagine you go to watch a movie at the theater you paid $12 to go see, only for the screen to start flickering every few seconds, a corner of the screen isn't even displaying, and the audio is constantly jumping from 5% volume to 100% busting your ear drums. That would be an absolutely awful experience, right?! Now imagine that happening almost every single time you go to the movies. Was the movie good or bad? Idk. The movie wasn't even playing properly for me to see if it was actually good or not.

That's very similar to the kind of busted games video game companies put out, and it's insanely frustrating to see an industry that's meant to bring fun and joy to everyone be brought down like this. 

One of my favorite gaming YouTubers, The Act Man put out a good video summarizing these frustrations and what led us here.

I just want to know when will video game companies finally be held liable for KNOWINGLY lying to us and giving us a broken, unplayable mess, and charging us for it?

It does to an extent seem like Cyberpunk 2077 may have been the martyr for companies to realize we're done putting up with this, but companies are gonna company, and if they see us give an inch, they'll take a mile. 

Whenever consumer protections are given some legal teeth in the largest markets games release in. Probably never. We've seen time and again in industry after industry that the only harm that ever really results in serious consequences are those to people's bodies and investor's wallets.

It's not a crime to release low quality products. Just avoid buying them. Wait for the release, watch and read reviews before buying

I definitely understand what you mean, but I also mean stuff like this.

Cyberpunk 2077 runs “surprisingly well” on current-gen consoles according to CD Projekt’s CEO | GamesRadar+

That was clearly false advertising and openly lying to every consumer and even caused consoles to get bricked. 

Even after over a year later and patch 1.5 released, the game still has problems. And yet CD Projekt still bragged about how many pre orders they had and how many units were sold

Unfortunately, it won't happen any time soon. Even if the recent examples are the most egregious, this has been going on in gaming for well over 5 years, probably 10 or more. And then in the early 80s you had low quality and sometimes barely functioning games.

Probably never. But it would be nice if it was at least a law that when a game releases with major issues, they had to slap the warning on the cover so people knew what they were getting into. I could get behind something like that for sure.

The most they can get accused of from releasing broken games is false advertisement, especially now that everything can be patch "at some point". Both Fallout 76 and NMS got in legal trouble for their terrible launches, and it ended up in nothing for both of them.

I never pre-order games these days, Even companies I trust like Nintendo I'll wait for the reviews and impressions first. At least with CyberPunk for those that bought it early, most stores including the Playstation store allowed returns of it.

Just stop buying them, at least at launch for full price.

Last broken game I bought was cyberpunk 2077... It ran well for me on the series X but I understand that it wasn't the case for the majority of people.

I'm not buying the next cdpr game at launch as a result. I'll wait until all cyberpunk 2077 dlc launches too and get them in a bundled deal.

I haven't bought a game new since, about a year and a half later.

Very much agree.  It makes no sense to preorder most games these days.  Unless you are looking for a physical copy limited run special edition, it isn't worth it.