by Mortze » Sat, 16Oct22 15:36
I don't understand this line of complaints.
This kind of sites, like Chaotic's, are made on the premise that any member buying a subscription knows what's he is acquiring. It is a monthly subscription, charged every month, unless the member says otherwise. This is important because the member has always the choice of canceling his subscription anytime he wants. That's announced in the site, the member knows it. And that's also a possibility the site owner knows and accepts fully.
The site puts at the member disposal ALL the content there is, to play AND TO DOWNLOAD. This means that the member can pay a month subscription, get ALL the content, cancel and never come back again. When you say it's a rip-off, I say instead that it is a bargain. You get all the previous content for the price of one month only. Consider all the work Chaotic has put, all these yers, in making all the games that you acquire in one month only.
This is the sum of the deal. Period. You got ALL the content for 20$. Pretty cheap in my opinion.
Now, there is the option to keep being monthly charged 20$ and not getting new content. That's totally optional for the customer. If he chooses to do so he can't complain on what he deliberately and knowingly agreed on. That's hipocrisy at the least.
About the replayability of the games. When you purchase a DVD you won't enjoy watching it lot of times like you did the first time. Same for the games.
It makes me such a confusion when people DO KNOW what they pay for and still come to claim for more. When they don't get it they think they own the right to demand from the other party. They don't. The terms were clear from the start.
There hasn't been any massive complains about Chaotic's site downloading capabilities. I sure never had any issue, and here on Shark's forum I never saw any great complaints, save from isolated ones. A few doesn't make the generality as you say. If there was a serious issue with downloadings it would be known by now and Chaotic would be the first in line to try to solve them. It's his business after all.
The same could be said about his attention to members. I never had but cordial and respectfull conversations with Chaotic. His interventions on Shark's forum have always been respectfull. I ain't saying that he was or wasn't respectfull in this particular case. I'm just saying that it isn't the norm as a lone testemony might influence.
You complain about Chaotic's policies of business regarding his site and subscriptions but I can't avoid to think that Chaotic follows the same policy as 90%+ of other porn sites out there (not saying his is a porn site). There is always a monthly (with options to pay several months upfront with discounts) subscription, cancelled at will and anytime but the member, where ALL of the content gets available immediately. I'm surely not the only one that has paid a month subscription, spent hours, or several days, downloading all the content, and cancelled the next month when I got all I needed. It's the business. It's how it works everywhere. Chaotic knows it, and I'm pretty sure his subscribers know it too.
And about the bugs, I will just point out that if EA, Rockstar, Bioware, etc, release games with bugs, then a lone guy like Chaotic is ALLOWED (and expected) to release any bugged game he wants.
You'll also tell me that there isn't any motivation in keeping paying 20$/month after enjoying all the content he has on the site. Well, save for the patronage that it implies, allowing Chaotic to keep making his games, and not having to do something else to pay for his bills, I think that it's reasonable to think like that. If you want to keep paying him for him to invest in more games, and for him to release free games to the masses that can't, or won't, pay monthly like you do, then it's great. If you don't want that, it's ok too. Drop out. You'll join the masses and wait for Chaotic to have the KINDNESS and GENEROSITY of releasing free games.
Alternatively there could be another commercial system? It could. Selling each game individually, without subscription, 5$ or 10$ a game. But that is a policy that Chaotic perhaps don't want to pursue, for ethical or moral reasons or just because it implies a more complex administration of the site. You just got to respect his choice.
But I would remind that this system would also imply that you'd have to pay 5$ for EACH game on the site. I don't know how many exactly but I know there is a lot of them made by Chaotic all these years. If you wanted 20 games that would cost you 100$, the equivalent of 5 months subscription with the actual system.
There isn't any reasonability in complaining when you know and accept how it will work out from the start. Chaotic never obscured information. He never promised something he didn't delivered.