@dajupe: How is it limiting? The game could be beated without it (there was even an achievement for it). It's a choice the player could make.

@nomailx: You realise the amount of shooters this gen is significantly lower than last gen? Open world is the new saturated genre

@Bread_or_Decide: The shooting was entirely optional. Heck there was an achievement to beat the game and not fire a gun.

Two paragraphs on the Hard crashes and bugs which sounds like it wasn't resolved from the original BG:EE review and still an 8/10? Ok then.

@paul136: if it it's only cosmetic without sacrificing energy/efforts elsewhere (e.g. in story or gameplay content) then fine. But there's far too many historical examples of developers slowly just gearing their game in to microtransaction machines rather than adding substantial game content - Look at Halo 5 where you can clearly see they put far more effort in their Warzone game mode (where the microtransactions has the most impact), compared to the rest of the game.

@brn-dn: Except Halo 5 had a mix of RNG and microtransactions that affected the gameplay of the Warzone game mode.

@Richardthe3rd: Well it became more service-like as more vendors decide to remove content the customer has paid for, even years after release. Publishers cannot have their cake and eat it when it comes to selling a product and modifying said product after sale without some sort of protection offered to the consumer that the bill of goods they paid for has not been adversely modified from the day of their purchase. I'm not advocating perpetual warranty but given how liquid games can be due to the nature of post-release patching, there's got to be protections against such activity otherwise the window for bait and switch is wide open.

Defective can be defined for software, given the base requirements as defined in the store page vs actual performance (or what's marketed vs what's sold). If it's been deemed that the game cannot be ran in a satisfactory manner as advertised (as well as not been played to completion) then a refund could be potentially offered. If said dispute cannot be resolved, it can be evaluated by an independent ombudsman. None of this is new or unheard of, happens with many other areas of commerce. As someone who develops and sells software to customers, I'll look in to each case and determine whether they have a case for a refund (which is beyond my legal obligations in the markets I serve). It's not always fun work but it's all part of the job I love doing.

Invoking caveat emptor is a lazy excuse and there's a reason most countries (including the US) do not consider it an adequate legal argument due to the natural power imbalance in favour of the vendor. Also EULAs are only really taken somewhat seriously in the US, (consumer laws in places like EU will override anything in the EULA).

@Smosh150: I'm sure there's a noise about the abuse in the same way as politicians make noise about voter or welfare fraud - however in those cases the statistics have shown that the impact of those issues has been pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things, and often measures attempting to combat it end up being pretty draconian and often have a net negative in the long run. (akin to spending dollars to save pennies). Valve taking that cut of sales put them very much in the crosshairs for regulation as they're now part of the transaction, so they should be held accountable for ensuring the right consumer protections are in place. It sucks for developers that Valve basically pocket the 'Steam Fee' but that's something the developers will have to take up legally with Valve without eroding consumer rights. Yes there's signage on the Greenlight/Early access but to the average consumer, it doesn't mean much - you have to make it a more deliberate process to sign up to Early access, much like the ridiculous hoops one has to jump through to get to a beta/demo these days.