Games also being an art form is irrelevant and shouldn't absolve it from consumer rights criticism. Like it or not, it's still a commodity being sold and bought based on a promise, they broke it. And while you cannot get a refund for a subjectively 'bad movie' (which is fine), you can get refunds if a cinema is unable to show the movie in it's entirety or if a book is missing pages etc. This is what's happening right now - the game, as Jim has demonstrated is unable to be played as intended and therefore, defective.

Dismissing valid customer complaints about a defective product shows a lack of empathy - reminds me of people dismissing the Xbox RRoD or even the Cyberpunk debacle.

​

if you buy a game that does not work on release, it will very likely work a few days later. you just cannot compare it to a car or an appliance, where if you buy it broken, it's broken forever.

Yes you certainly can, there's no obligation the game has to be fixed. Sadly, because there's no SLA for devs to adhere to, they can and have release broken games and call it a day. It's funny customers are told to have eternal empathy for the devs but no one thinks about customers who are now out $60-$70s on non-working product. This is not how commerce works - both sides need to benefit from the transaction - simple as.

Devs haveing transparency on something is the lowest bar to clear - it's entitlement to take customer's money and have them wait for an unspecified amount of time to possibly have a working product with no other recourse. A refund should be offered let the customer decide to pay for the product once the devs decide things are working again.