I made a mistake. A big mistake. I admit it. I shouldn’t have. I still did. I bought the game officially in a store. Sorry. Won’t happen again. Bethesda is now on my “Don’t Buy” list and Sony is close.
What happened. A year ago, I bought Fallout 3 in a shop. It’s a German uncut version. I’d actually preferred the cut version; the splatter effect is probably some nice piece of FX code but blood doesn’t give me much. Can’t have that. I’m in Switzerland and I can’t do as I please. On top of that, it seems my shop sold me the Austrian version. It’s German, too, but different. Somehow. I don’t know. I’m just a stupid gamer. The main difference is that when I buy the addons in Sony’s PSN, then I get something that doesn’t work with my game. Because I must have the Swiss version. Since I’m in Switzerland. And I bought the game in Switzerland. And I have a Swiss PSN account. I think. I don’t know. I’m just a stupid gamer.
So what happens is that I have an illegal copy of the game. Illegal as in “if you’re in Switzerland”. Why Bethesda decided to produce three German versions? I don’t know. I’m just a stupid gamer. I don’t need to know such things. Why were the DLCs available for months for Xbox but not for PS3? I don’t know. Why did everyone say that the DLCs would never come to the PS3? I don’t know. Maybe it was because Bethesda knew what would happen. Or maybe Sony treats them like their customers. I don’t know.
The net result is that I have a game which I can’t upgrade (at least not without illegally creating an Austrian account on PSN). I probably can’t buy the GOTY Editition without loosing my save games. I don’t know for sure. I’m not sure I care anymore. My blood pressure raises when I only see the game box. I buy games to relax, not to heap more problems on my plate. I don’t care who is responsible for this crap. I don’t understand why it’s more cheap for Sony to put some text in the game description (“Don’t buy this unless you have BLES-00399”) instead of checking the list of installed games. It’s also sad that Switzerland doesn’t have any laws to protect customers who buy over the Internet. Sony can put anything in the rules of the PSN and I can only weep. I can’t even sell or ebay things I buy on PSN.
Makes me wonder what happens should I ever have to move back to Germany. Will I have to buy all my games again? Or will Sony be nice and allow me to keep my Swiss PSN account even though I’ll lose my Swiss credit card? Maybe they’ll expect me to live close to the border, so I can still buy games. Or carry the PS3 over, hook it up to PSN via my mobile phone, so I can update the games I bought.
Some more frustration: Fallout 3 has left about 600 save games on my harddisk. It would take me approx. 24 hours to delete them (it’s a process that involves pressing eight buttons in the correct sequence).
Or how about this: I bought a Sony LCD TV because the PS3 can talk to my media server. I was naively assuming that the TV would work just like the console. Well, it doesn’t. I can watch photos and videos on my PS3 but not directly on the TV.
Well done. For some reason, Xbox and Wii sell better than the PS3. I wonder why. The PS3 looks so much better!
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