Not hyperbolic - just very literal. The Singstar situation was presented as evidence in favour of how changes can be negative. Your reply must either be in favour of that view, or against it, such is the nature of discussion. So the interpretation of, "I'm not getting that experience," is, "this isn't a problem." The other possibility, one I overlooked, is that it was just a tangential observation not directly involved in the discussion.
Let's retread the steps.
novcze raised Singstar but didn't explain what his issue was. I was aware Singstar had slotted itself in the PS3 games list because I've seen it there but I wasn't aware of the apparent controversy surrounding it. Certainly based on my experience, and that's I'm ever going to post on, it is non-intrusive. You can see my typical experience in the video I posted. I'm not getting it be the default icon on startup, nor quitting from a game/app back to the XMB. For me, it's not intrusive. I didn't say he or anybody else was lying. novcze getting a different experience to me is certainly interesting, but doesn't change my perspective, nor does it mean I'm suggesting others are not being truthful.
Hold your horses, mister. The argument that the Government has more pressing concerns is a valid one, and one I'd possibly agree with. That's different to suggesting it's not a concerned that warrants consideration due to not having happened yet though. You go on to say, "regulate problems that exist, but not those that don't," which is contrary to decent organisation, and typical of human management.
However, it is how Government's legislate and that's what consumer protection is. Legislation.
I think we all have either first or second hand experience of corporations where the engineers/floor workers have pointed out potential issues to management, management has ignored them because it's not an issue now, and then the problem has happened and there's a mad scramble to fix it and lots of angry management blaming the workers for failing.
Managing a country under public scrutiny afforded for transparent democracy is nothing likely managing a corporation, even a large one. Take for example Microsoft's reversal of some of its Xbox One platform policies. That took from E3 to a week later.
Government doesn't and can't work like that. It's constitutionally limited by judicial processes that generally limit changes being made in anything less than around two orders of magnitude as much time. You want to pass new consumer legislation, first you need a Bill. The UK's consumer Bill of Rights has been in
public draft since June and it's not expected to reach cross-party agreement until at least the same time next year. Before it got that far it was preceded by a Green Paper set forth in
October 2011. Now if the final draft of the Bill passes through both Houses (Commons and Lords) without being sent back for amendments, a Government Department will begin drafting legislation but not before undertaking a full public consultation targeting every corner of UK who would be affected by the legislation. Consultations can run months but will set out the issue for regulation based on
factual evidence (this is a Government Commitment) and offer some very preliminary ideas for control measures. Once a consultation period is closed it can take months to sift through all the responses because there can be thousands, or tens or hundreds of thousands of responses. All need to be considered before drafting the legislation for publication, after which you have to give time for comment
again. Cost to consumers/industry and Government need to weighted too. A Department needs to own the legislation, somebody needs to enforce it.
If you're wondering why I seem to know a lot about this it's because I've done this. First the Export Control Act 2002 (which is enabling legislation), then the Export Control Order 2008 (a statutory instrument) which has the actual details in. More than eight years of work in all and that was just overhauling existing legislation!
Start to finish, drastic changes to legislation can easily take five years and when it takes five years to introduce, you have to make sure it's evidence based and covers everything because a minor amendment can take months to bring into force. To make matters harder, Government Departments have very little Parliamentary time each year in which to put forward White Papers, Green Papers, draft Bills, draft Acts and legislation (including amendments) for passing. There is already an insane amount of legislation which needs constant amendment and change so finding time means convincing your Minister that your thing is more important than all the other stuff they also need to do. There is never enough Parliamentary time for Government Departments to get everything they want through. Not even half. Less I'd wager in many departments.
And it's not just the UK that is like this. Look at any democracy and the same chains of judicial process will be found. The only things you can do quick, are things like disasters, emergencies and national defence. Everything else is slooooooow.
If there's a possibility of this being an issue, it makes sense to explore that now before it happens as it's typically easier to deal with a problem before it's happened. And we're not impinging on any governmental time yet as we're just talking about it in a forum.
Perhaps if some serious evidence comes to light, it'll be worth writing to one's MP.
I know it sounds nuts, but no. When you're drafting legislation, which is tricky enough, it helps immeasurably to have real specific examples to work from. Drafting legislation is hard without the detailed background of a real situation to analyse. For example, just a test of articulating the problem - and without the need to write in the style typical of legislation - outline in plain English a rule that would stop Sony doing what it did with the Singstar thing.
Also I'd challenge you, with a good chicken dinner at stake, to find a single example anywhere in the democratic world of regulation preceding a problem. Look at any industry you like: industrial, aerospace, energy, entertainment, communication etc. It doesn't happen, Governments no longer draft legislation to control theoretical problems, and have not for about a hundred years.
It's worth noting that I am starting work on my own game and want to plan how to handle updates and microtransactions and DLC, and want a system that's a good compromise between user experience and business sense. I'm wondering from an ethical POV that if an update to the mechanics changes the nature of the experience, is that some sort of violation of the consumer's right of ownership?
Well definitely keep an eye on the consumer Bill of Rights, linked above, because the committee drafting it want to cover all aspects of digital transactions although I don't think it'll cover the kind of things that are being suggested in this thread.
Regulation doesn't have to come from the government.
Your'e absolutely right. You can self regulate but I'm hard pushed to think of an example where consumers were well protected by an industry self-regulating, and I wish this were not the case because if it worked, Government would be a lot less busy.
