Sony is apparently refunding PS4 owners their Anthem digital purchase due to midgame crashes and complete shutdown.

rocket · Mar 3, 2019

A thread up on Reddit have some claiming that they have successfully gotten a refund and that Sony's CS are aware of the situation when they brought it up during the refund process.

Refund me if old.

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheG..._is_the_only_game_that_causes_a_complete_ps4/

Sony is aware of the issue and is offering a complete refund on Anthem no questions asked. Took me 5 minutes.

Yup, worked easily. I just went to their support chat (had to wait about 10-15 mins in the "queue") and said this:

I made a digital purchase on 02/23/2019 of "Anthem™ Standard Edition" (transaction ID: XXXXXXXXXXX) for a total of $64.19. I'd like return it and get a refund for the game, please. The game is currently bricked, and broken. It is incredibly frustrating. I've gone through the support channels at EA to try to fix it and it is still broken. It has crashed my ENTIRE PS4 multiple times now when trying to play it. The game is broken on PS4, and I don't want to risk the game bricking my console to play it. It is a defective product. Every other game on my system is working fine. Can you help me get this returned and refunded, please?
And they helped right away, no problem at all. Just provided some account info after that, that they needed, and then it was refunded.

Update: A person on Reddit now claimed the game actually did bricked his console, making a thread warning ps4 owners to stop playing it: https://www.resetera.com/threads/so...es-and-complete-shutdown.103124/post-18501862

Deleted member 15428 · Mar 3, 2019

Did Sony not test this game?

Heromanz · Mar 3, 2019

Maybe sony should have a type of process that required to test each game to make sure this stuff doesn't happen.

TheInfinityGauntlet · Mar 3, 2019

Birdseye said:
Did Sony not test this game?

Why would they? It's not their game

Bleu · Mar 3, 2019

Birdseye said:
Did Sony not test this game?

that is not on sony.

Derkon · Mar 3, 2019

Birdseye said:
Did Sony not test this game?

Not Sony's fault.

Haze · Mar 3, 2019

Birdseye said:
Did Sony not test this game?

I didn't know Sony publisher Anthem

Were refunds offered for Fallout 76?

Dinobot · Mar 3, 2019

This game offers more content out of game than in game. Wow.

IDontBeatGames · Mar 3, 2019

The fact that people are "questioning why Sony didn't test this" is ridiculous, it should have been on EA/Bioware to have done all of this testing or taken the precaution to make sure their fucking game at least ran without bricking consoles.

Mauricio_Magus · Mar 3, 2019

Birdseye said:
Did Sony not test this game?

That's not their job. They do the certification stuff but I doubt it does much when it comes to this.

xrnzaaas · Mar 3, 2019

Complete PS4 shutdowns are unacceptable. Every game with such an issue should be removed from the store until it's fixed, you're literally risking bricking your console or damaging the hdd data.

In my case the only game that did this was Fallout Shelter. I immediately got rid of it after I discovered it's the game and not my hardware.

rras1994 · Mar 3, 2019

TheInfinityGauntlet said:
Why would they? It's not their game

They do - it's called a certification process and devs have to pass it to be allowed to sell on PlayStation. Devs also have to pay a lot of money to Sony to go through the certification process.

Katana_Strikes · Mar 3, 2019

Heromanz said:
Maybe sony should have a type of process that required to test each game to make sure this stuff doesn't happen.

Maybe Bioware and EA should instead, as it's their game.

ArkhamFantasy · Mar 3, 2019

Holy shit.

Bleu · Mar 3, 2019

rras1994 said:
They do - it's called a certification process and devs have to pass it to be allowed to sell on PlayStation. Devs also have to pay a lot of money to Sony to go through the certification process.

this is not what certification is about.

JusDoIt · Mar 3, 2019

Birdseye said:
Did Sony not test this game?

What a weird take.

Liam Allen-Miller · Mar 3, 2019

Birdseye said:
Did Sony not test this game?

Heromanz said:
Maybe sony should have a type of process that required to test each game to make sure this stuff doesn't happen.

They did. Stuff gets through. I have over twenty hours logged on the game with no crashes. Clearly there's something specific causing crashes that wasn't caught in test, because in general (for Anthem) people have been getting none but those who have been getting them see them insanely frequently. Hopefully Bioware can figure out what factor it is that causes it.

Hailinel · Mar 3, 2019

rras1994 said:
They do - it's called a certification process and devs have to pass it to be allowed to sell on PlayStation. Devs also have to pay a lot of money to Sony to go through the certification process.

Certification is not QA.

Jamaro · Mar 3, 2019

Man, I didn't realize it wasn't just crashing to the dashboard but completely crashing the system too. Madness, glad Sony is doing this for those who are fed up with it.

semiconscious · Mar 3, 2019

if true, this's pretty damning. has to be a first for a major release...

Kerotan · Mar 3, 2019

You know a game is utter shit when Sony offer refunds. What a shit show from EA and Bioware.

Kyougar · Mar 3, 2019

Suddenly it is not the Platform Distributors job to make sure a game releases in a playable state?

rras1994 · Mar 3, 2019

Bleu said:
this is not what certification is about.

Yes it does? Certification is to ensure the game passes a level of quality, not bricking the console would be pretty basic requirement.

Rebel1 · Mar 3, 2019

never heard it causing shutdowns....

LewieP · Mar 3, 2019

Should be an industry standard thing to have refunds for all games.

Scuffed · Mar 3, 2019

Rebel1 said:
never heard it causing shutdowns....

It happened several times to Brad from Giantbomb.

Van Bur3n · Mar 3, 2019

Whaaaaaaaaat. Hey, Microsoft, can I uh, can I get me a refund over here as well? My game is shutting me down real bad, lemme tell ya.

mrmickfran · Mar 3, 2019

This happened with No Man's Sky too right?

Kenzodielocke · Mar 3, 2019

rras1994 said:
Yes it does? Certification is to ensure the game passes a level of quality, not bricking the console would be pretty basic requirement.

Do we have reports of Anthem actually bricking consoles?

Herb Alpert · Mar 3, 2019

Well done EA

modiz · Mar 3, 2019

Kyougar said:
Suddenly it is not the Platform Distributors job to make sure a game releases in a playable state?

Suddenly it is not mainly the developer and publisher's job to make sure their game releases in a playable state?

names2hard4you · Mar 3, 2019

I've yet to get hit with any major bugs since launch tbh. With 20hrs on the clock I only got a visual bug that resolved itself after a few seconds, and getting the game stuck on a loading screen. In the grand scheme of things 20hrs may not be a lot but compared to many people I seem to have been very lucky so far

Zetran · Mar 3, 2019

Birdseye said:
Did Sony not test this game?

Heromanz said:
Maybe sony should have a type of process that required to test each game to make sure this stuff doesn't happen.

rras1994 said:
Yes it does? Certification is to ensure the game passes a level of quality, not bricking the console would be pretty basic requirement.

The game crash is not widely affected every one. And why people blaming Sony on this? Weird take. Because there have been broken game on all different platform before.

Hailinel · Mar 3, 2019

rras1994 said:
Yes it does? Certification is to ensure the game passes a level of quality, not bricking the console would be pretty basic requirement.

Again, you're confusing certification with QA.

Certification's job is not hunting down crashes. If the game doesn't crash on the certification testers in the time they spend with it, they're obviously not going to mention anything of the sort to the publisher because there's nothing to say.

rras1994 · Mar 3, 2019

Kenzodielocke said:
Do we have reports of Anthem actually bricking consoles?

Not sure but I mentioned it cus it was mentioned in OP. I assume certification is also meant to stop a game from going through onto the system if its crashing all the time. I'm just shocked that people say Sony doesn't test, that what Certification is , a test that it reaches a level of quality required for the system.

Gloomz · Mar 3, 2019

Heromanz said:
Maybe sony should have a type of process that required to test each game to make sure this stuff doesn't happen.

Why am I not surprised that some people's first reaction is "Sony this" and "Sony that".

How about Bioware / EA release a fuckin' game that runs.

Suddenly it's not the publisher / game developers job to make sure their shit works. Never change, Era.

CthulhuSars · Mar 3, 2019

Honestly Sony needs to recoup costs from Bioware/EA. Ship a broken ass game be prepared to pay out those refunds.

RedRum · Mar 3, 2019

I thought certification involved code review and testing on external systems not owned by the developer.

Smokey_Run · Mar 3, 2019

My friend ran into the shutdown problem the other night. We were in a PSN party and he just disappeared, he came back and said his system straight up shutdown playing it. I told him that's the last time I'd be playing it until that problem was fixed.

Deleted member 11370 · Mar 3, 2019

Why do people want to pin this on Sony?

Ada · Mar 3, 2019

How the fuck does a sandboxed(memory/cpu) game crash the whole system. At worse it should crash to the dashboard. They gotta be pushing the hardware to the extreme to pull that off. The game should have failed cert.

Anthony Hopkins · Mar 3, 2019

Good, refunds should be standard practice for digital games.

Cess007 · Mar 3, 2019

You would think that at this point, people would know the difference between certification and QA.

In any case, Sony should really change policies and allow refunds for all games, not only special cases.

zma1013 · Mar 3, 2019

Is it overheating the console perhaps?

ArkhamFantasy · Mar 3, 2019

Joey Ravn said:
Why do people want to pin this on Sony?

You know why.

CthulhuSars · Mar 3, 2019

I recall Sony gave out refunds for NMS when it had some pretty bad issues and save game/install issues. Perhaps there should be a conversation about digital refunds now that this and Fallout 76 happened.

Hailinel · Mar 3, 2019

rras1994 said:
Not sure but I mentioned it cus it was mentioned in OP. I assume certification is also meant to stop a game from going through onto the system if its crashing all the time. I'm just shocked that people say Sony doesn't test, that what Certification is , a test that it reaches a level of quality required for the system.

Certification's job is to make sure that games released on a platform conform to standard platform requirements. A certain level of error handling tests for common scenarios can be expected, but Certification cannot fail games for major crashes that they don't encounter during the course of their internal testing.

It's not Certification's job to ensure that your game doesn't suck.

Darkpyro2 · Mar 3, 2019

Urgh. This'll be No Man's Sky all over again. They'll do it until someone advertises it like this, and then they'll stop offering refunds outside of their policy as everyone flocks for one.

SJRB · Mar 3, 2019

People in here somehow blaming Sony for this is blowing my mind.

What world are you living in, honestly?

Lant_War · Mar 3, 2019

mrmickfran said:
This happened with No Man's Sky too right?

NMS didn't crash consoles, it was simply a different game from what was advertised. They still offered refunds to everyone though.

Sony is apparently refunding PS4 owners their Anthem digital purchase due to midgame crashes and complete shutdown.

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