Gamers' Voice to report Black Ops to OFT

Consumer rights group Gamers' Voice plans to report Activision UK to the Office for Fair Trading for the "never-ending list of problems" gamers have found within the PC and PlayStation 3 versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

A formal complaint will be submitted to "the relevant government agencies that protect consumer rights in the UK" this week, Gamers' Voice pledged.

The decision follows the publication of an open letter to Activision UK detailing the many problems found within the best-selling game of all time. Gamers' Voice claims the open letter was ignored.

In December last year developer Treyarch admitted there were problems with the PS3 version and pledged to do something about it.

"We are aware that many online players have been experiencing connectivity issues since Tuesday's patch," wrote Black Ops community manager Josh Olin on the official forum.

"Forum feedback has been tremendously helpful. In fact, we've been on the forums, monitoring feedback and in a number of cases, working with community members directly, so please keep the feedback coming.

"In the meantime, know that we're committed to doing everything we can to support the best online experience, and we're working quickly to resolve this issue."

Patch 1.04, released earlier that week, promised to fix plenty of problems - NAT issues and spawn worries among them. The unwelcome reality, however, was the exacerbation of connectivity issues in PS3 online multiplayer.

"Clearly, CODBLOPS was the one of the biggest, if not the biggest releases of last year, which obviously leads to more people playing and more chances for bugs to be found," Gamers' Voice said.

"Our view is that it doesn't matter how big a game is, it should not be released 'unfinished' or with bugs that make the game unplayable, which are words we have seen in a lot of emails to us recently."

The group added: "Problems arise when, in the case with CODBLOPS, entire sections of the PS3 and PC gaming community are apparently being used as game testers for an extended period after a game's release, yet being asked to pay for the privilege. This is not a tenable way to treat us as consumers of videogames and it will not be tolerated."

Eurogamer has asked Activision for comment.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ack-ops-to-oft