I'm posting this here in hopes that others may copy and paste it in their own letter of similar nature to
info@activision.comTo Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to write this letter as a manner of expressing my complete dissatisfaction with your company policy of ?one patch only? regarding video games that you publish.
I have been an avid player of Starfleet Command 3 now for quite some time, and it seems that I can only stand playing the game for a matter of two-three weeks before the bugs in the game frustrate me to the point of uninstalling the game and swearing off your company?s products. There has, to date, been one beta patch released by the developer, Taldren, who is still awaiting your company to do more Quality Assurance testing on the
numerous builds of patches they have sent off to you. The game is sometimes completely unplayable in its current state, and since your company will not do any QA on the builds of the patch they send you, us gamers are left high and dry with a feeling of complete and utter abandonment by Activision.
Your one-patch policy prohibits the games we purchase from you to be continually updated in a timely manner. Your one-patch policy means that any subsequent development in programming knowledge or computer capabilities (DirextX upgrades, video card technology upgrades, etc) will never return and benefit games that your customers loyally purchased because if it was not included in the ?one patch to fix all,? then it will never be released.
I personally find this to be unacceptable. The Starfleet Command 3 game has been out since November 5, 2002, and has yet to see daylight on a final patch. What kind of message do you think that sends to people who faithfully buy your products thinking that they will be stood behind? One year, and all we have is a beta patch, that upon release back in March, your company threatened to
sue the sites that hosted it, along with the developers, because it did not fit your mold.
Taldren has shown that they care about this game and the customers who purchased it. Your company has yet to do so and unless your ?one patch to fix it all and in the contract bind them? policy changes and games are updated as new bugs are found to reflect a level of
caring about your customers, then you can count
this customer out of any future Activision purchases and I will personally recommend to my friends that if they want a functional piece of computer software with an outstanding customer experience with the gaming company itself, that they should look elsewhere other than Activision.
-Jason