This is incredibly good news! While, true, this only applies to the UK, it will have a world wide effect. Mainly because, game designers don't often create region based code for the structure and architecture of a game. Rather what is region coded tends to be subtitles, spoken word, ect. This will force game companies to focus more on the quality of their product or risk losing a great deal of money in the UK. This will lead to more day 1 stability and less day 1 patching. And, of course, an end to that horrid philosophy: (that we here know all to well) "Shut up about bugs, we'll patch it later." Now, companies don't have that excuse and will more than likely begin to see a great deal of returns on 'broken' games. Next, law is all about precedent. Cases from 100 years ago can still be used to show legal precedent if nothing else since has contradicted it. This sets a huge precedent for the (lazy, uncaring, and foolish) US lawmakers to craft a similar bill. However, the likelihood of this coming soon or even ever to the US is still up in the air. The UK has far more stick and stringent rules on political bribery than the US does. Large companies, like EA, might be able to prevent legislation like this in the US through 'campaign donations.
One of the major reasons why games now (as opposed to twenty years ago) are being released with so many bugs that require day one (through to day fifty-one) patching: players being impatient and wanting the game NAO!!!!!!!!!!!
I wouldn't blame that on players, if anything it's the stock holders, investors and the game publishers who want to see a return on their financial investment. Sometimes they may put a little stress on video game developers to bring a product out before it is fully ready to make money off of their investment in a target window. Releasing a game around certain target dates will increase sales.
Especially with games that have been on an annual release schedule. (I'm looking at you CoD and AC.) That's why a good handful of well established teams are going indie and/or doing crowd funding. Not as much pressure and the final product tends to come out more polished.
Guess the DCUO team will have to make sure each Episode they release won't have any single bugs, which is great for players.
They also put a lot money into the development, games especially franchises can cost into the millions if not 10's of millions these days. Dave Chapelle gave the money back. Nope, online games are regularly patched.
As SuperSoldier pointed out, DCUO is regularly patched....so that's covered: “There are two remedies under the act,” says Tutty. “The right to repair or replacement, or the right to a price reduction up to a full refund if a repair or replacement is not possible within a reasonable time. So a company could possibly say, ‘well, we’ve got a patch coming that will fix it pretty quickly’. That’s a repair." Still, it'll be interesting to see the impact on the retailers though, as they're the ones who the act applies to.
