This post got me thinking. There is definitely a pattern here with a company that has not received the same scrutiny for its track record that others might. Here are a bunch of old stories I know about (and I'm sure there are plenty that I don't) which bear revisiting, all of which have been more or less swept under the rug.Absolutely awful situation. It baffles me that telltale seems to consistently get a free pass on pulling shit like this on its customers. The save bug, engine issues, the list goes on. We see the gushing praise in the press and they never get called out on this bollocks. At least a "We are aware of the issue and are looking into it" tweet/forum post would attempt to save face. Seems their crisis management is consistently just radio silence.
Jurassic Park:
Telltale Games employees reviewing Jurassic Park on Metacritic
TellTale Damages the Jeep of Something Awful's Boomerjinks
The Walking Dead Season 1:
Telltale is giving the silent treatment to customers experiencing game-breaking bugs
Has Telltale Games responded to the save game glitch in TWD? (They didn't)
Is Walking Dead pc saves still broke? (They are)
Now as for what's happening today, Telltale's servers simply won't let people play the game. It's telling a lot of customers that they don't own the game, even if they paid for it. Many of us didn't even intend to purchase the game with Telltale's DRM, we bought it off Green Man Gaming where both Season 1 and the 400 Days expansion came with Steam Keys. Without any fanfare, this policy was changed for Season 2 so that we ended up with Telltale's shitty DRM instead.
Some posts from the OT:
I wish I'd bought this on Steam as many of us who bought directly from Telltale cannot log into their servers to authenticate our username & password. Not that anyone outside of their forums would know this because Telltale are far too happy to post the review scores instead.
Yeah, its kind of a joke D:
I hope Telltale fixes the authentication issues soon. I'm really looking forward to playing the episode.
Apparently, in Telltale's eyes, I don't own the game now.
Having the same issue. I'm getting pretty annoyed.
Same here the forums are flooded with the same complaints no real answer from TT as of yet
There's a guy in those forums calling people that are upset about this situation "entitled, grabby whiners". We live in a demented time.
TellTale are idiots for trying to push their own system anyway. If you're gonna do DRM, at least do it good.
A mere glimpse of the chaos on the Telltale Support Forums:
With all this in mind, why does this company get a free pass when it commits a Sim City style sin for a point and click adventure game? When they're caught boosting their own ratings on Metacritic and refusing to address complaints, where is the media attention and fanfare? Why are they still considered one of the "good" companies when they treat customers the way they do?