I have seen a couple of game developers that grant early access for their video games N days before release date noting that "actual game time is subject to applicable time zone differences". An example of this is COD MW3 for which I saw the above mentioned note. I have also seen someone on another forum for Starfield(which also had early access for 5 days before global release) complaining how they will only have around 4 days of game time total due to them being from Australia, but that doesn't make sense to me. Can anyone explain why game developers add these notes?
\$\begingroup\$
\$\endgroup\$
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
\$\begingroup\$
\$\endgroup\$
Simple: legal stuff
They add these notes to be sure that they can't be sued in anyway. 5 days sonds simple but what exactly is "5 days". Does it mean if the game releases on say the 7th of febuary, the early access has to start on 2nd of febuary? Does it mean 5 full days from midnight to midnight, so if the game releases at 8pm the release day would be one of the "5 days" resulting in early access having to start on the 1st instead? Does it mean 5 x 24hours? You can never be sure how a court might rule that, so you include this sentence to make sure you don't get sued by someone claiming they haven't had the promised 5 days. And having one early access buyer getting a refund for this reason would lead to an avalanch of refunds leading to loss of all the extra income you wanted to generate with the early access pack.
