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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technologies? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poelette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor here at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and sitting next to me as always a senior writer,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, you're dead to me. Yeah. Yeah, so Chris
Speaker 1: is reading his notes off of his brand new iPad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and your point being it's pretty Yeah, it's also heavy,
Speaker 1: So I'm going to hear to get a stand for
Speaker 1: this thing. Okay, good. I'm glad that you were able
Speaker 1: to throw in some sort of downside to it, because
Speaker 1: otherwise I might end up everything has an upside in
Speaker 1: a downcer. So you know what also takes has an
Speaker 1: upside and downside? What's that, Jonathan? Testing video games? Oh?
Speaker 1: You mean like the best job in the world. That's
Speaker 1: what some people think. But we're here to talk about
Speaker 1: what really goes on with video game testers. And you know,
Speaker 1: you see a lot of stuff online about it. There
Speaker 1: are lots of sites that, uh purport to help you
Speaker 1: become a video game tester. We'll probably talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that and uh and in a few minutes. Um.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, there's a lot of different arguments
Speaker 1: on either side. Like there's some people who will say, hey,
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. I get to make money playing
Speaker 1: video games. It's awesome. You should do it too. And
Speaker 1: then there are those who are saying, no, it's really
Speaker 1: the worst job in the world. And really, again, the
Speaker 1: truth lies between the extremes. Well, I think that the
Speaker 1: basic if you get right down to the the the
Speaker 1: core truth of it is, it's a job. It's not
Speaker 1: something where you go and play, you know, to play. Right.
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about what video game testers actually do. Now,
Speaker 1: it's their job to take a video game for you know,
Speaker 1: a video game per assignment, let's say, and to test
Speaker 1: out a certain set of uh maybe perhaps certain set
Speaker 1: of levels. Or they're told that the video game developers
Speaker 1: have just uh instituted a particular new feature and it's
Speaker 1: their job to test the feature, make sure that everything
Speaker 1: happens the way it's supposed to. Well, it's like any
Speaker 1: kind of software testing really, I mean, there when when
Speaker 1: software developer is putting together a program of some kind, uh,
Speaker 1: generally the developer is going to give it to a
Speaker 1: group of testers to see if they can break it. Essentially,
Speaker 1: that's where the the vernacular. But yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: idea is to well do everything you can to it
Speaker 1: and see if there are any bugs in it, or
Speaker 1: if there are any bugs. We need to work these
Speaker 1: out before we release this to the general public. And
Speaker 1: the developer has invested interest in doing this because if
Speaker 1: they release a a program of of any kind to
Speaker 1: the public that has a lot of problems with it,
Speaker 1: it's difficult to use. Um, people are going to complain
Speaker 1: about it. And you know, in these days when when
Speaker 1: the Internet is plenty of places for us to complain
Speaker 1: about it. Um, it's not like it's gonna go unnoticed
Speaker 1: if you if you throw a lamon out there. So
Speaker 1: the game testers, you know, the video game industry has
Speaker 1: as a multibillion dollar industry, they it's in their best
Speaker 1: interest to give it to a bunch of people to
Speaker 1: try anything and everything they can to see if they
Speaker 1: can make it break right, right, Yeah, because it can
Speaker 1: affect the sales of the video game, which that's the
Speaker 1: bottom line. You know, these video game companies are making
Speaker 1: video games, not necessarily because they really want to entertain you,
Speaker 1: but because it's a great way to make money. It's
Speaker 1: not to say that everyone who works in the video
Speaker 1: game industry is just interested in making cash, but at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, it's a business, so you
Speaker 1: do want to have that quality assurance team uh to
Speaker 1: check your your product before it ships, because you would
Speaker 1: rather know about a problem before it hits store shelves
Speaker 1: so that you can fix it rather than release something.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen it happened time and time again
Speaker 1: where a game has come out and the producers will
Speaker 1: actually say, yeah, um, you're gonna notice when you play
Speaker 1: this that this one thing doesn't really work well, but
Speaker 1: don't worry. We've got a patch coming in a month.
Speaker 1: And you're thinking, wow, that that's Unfortunately they found that
Speaker 1: bug so late in the development cycle. It's also why
Speaker 1: I don't I always think it's a better idea to
Speaker 1: tell people the game will be done when it's done,
Speaker 1: rather than to announce a release date, especially if you're like,
Speaker 1: by the end of the year, this game is coming out,
Speaker 1: because I guarantee you there's gonna be something that comes
Speaker 1: up and either they're gonna have to drop a feature
Speaker 1: from the game, or it'll go out a little buggy,
Speaker 1: or that it ends up missing its release date. Can
Speaker 1: you think of a game that misses its release date? Oh,
Speaker 1: because they would get most of the way through it,
Speaker 1: find a better gaming engine and decided to scrap the
Speaker 1: entire development of the game and started from scratch. I
Speaker 1: have a feeling you're talking about Duke Nukem Forever. That's
Speaker 1: a good example. So video game testers what they do
Speaker 1: is they test the hell out of the video game
Speaker 1: to make sure that there aren't any game breaking bugs
Speaker 1: out there. And that that's everything from running through a
Speaker 1: level the way you're supposed to to doing everything you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to do in the video game to make
Speaker 1: sure it doesn't break the game. Because I guarantee you,
Speaker 1: if you release a game, some player out there is
Speaker 1: going to try something that you know it never occurred
Speaker 1: to you when you were building the game, because you're thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: player has to get from point A to point B,
Speaker 1: and here's the pathway that the player needs to go through. Well,
Speaker 1: when you give that to real people, they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm at point A, I need to get the point B.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take this totally different route than no one
Speaker 1: ever even imagined when they were developing the game, and
Speaker 1: see if that works, what happens if I jump off
Speaker 1: this wall here right? So you you could be if
Speaker 1: you were a video game software tester, you might be
Speaker 1: asked to shoot anything and everything in the room to
Speaker 1: see what what happens, right, And if anything unusual happened,
Speaker 1: you would have to document it and you would have
Speaker 1: to be able to explain in very clear terms exactly
Speaker 1: what happened and why it was a problem. And here's
Speaker 1: another element about video game testers. Some people think the
Speaker 1: video game testers would would play a game and then say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know this, this level would be great if only
Speaker 1: you had a bad guy behind this one door instead
Speaker 1: of behind that counter, because when you put them behind
Speaker 1: the counter, it's a it's too hard to see and
Speaker 1: uh and it makes it makes this level way too hard.
Speaker 1: They don't care. That's not what you're there for. If
Speaker 1: you're a video game tester, you're not there to tell
Speaker 1: them that their game is great or their game stinks.
Speaker 1: You're there to tell them, hey, your game works or
Speaker 1: it doesn't work right right, And you may you may
Speaker 1: be asked to play let's say Level three over and
Speaker 1: over and over again to make sure that it's playable
Speaker 1: and then everything works correctly. Or you may just be
Speaker 1: told to load level three over and over, not even playing,
Speaker 1: just loading it over and over to make sure that
Speaker 1: the game doesn't crash if you load and then restore
Speaker 1: a saved gametimes in a row. Or you could be
Speaker 1: asked to turn it on and off to see how
Speaker 1: long the loading process actually takes for the game itself right.
Speaker 1: You could also be told, hey, U turn on level three,
Speaker 1: and you know we've got those in. If you've played
Speaker 1: video games, you know a lot of video games have
Speaker 1: invisible walls, which drive me nuts. I hate invisible walls.
Speaker 1: But when you come up to the edge of a
Speaker 1: level and it doesn't let you go any further, even
Speaker 1: though you can see as a character that there's more there,
Speaker 1: but there are people down there, I want to go
Speaker 1: talk to them. They might want you to check every
Speaker 1: single little space around the entire perimeter of the level
Speaker 1: to make sure you don't pass through something and and
Speaker 1: go somewhere you're not supposed to. This. This also applies
Speaker 1: to levels where there are solid walls. They may say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what I need you to walk along the
Speaker 1: perimeter of every single solid wall to make sure it
Speaker 1: is solid and that you don't accidentally pass through and
Speaker 1: go into a part of the level that you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to. And of course, uh, this is where earlier
Speaker 1: Easter Egg podcast comes into because sometimes there are you know,
Speaker 1: deliberately holes and there was invisible walls, but they're there
Speaker 1: for your reason. They don't want to make sure that
Speaker 1: there aren't any that aren't supposed I don't want to
Speaker 1: see like you somehow accidentally turned clipping off and then
Speaker 1: you're able to just walk through everything. Um. Also another
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind when you're a video game tester,
Speaker 1: like we've already pretty much I think we've runned into
Speaker 1: the ground that you're not playing the game in order
Speaker 1: to win it. Um also play straight through. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: also not necessarily playing the anything close to a final build.
Speaker 1: What you might be playing might miss tons of of
Speaker 1: functions and features, meaning that what you're what you are
Speaker 1: currently running through will have no resemblance to the final
Speaker 1: product once it's released. But um, I'm sorry, go ahead, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Um to that point into your earlier point, Uh,
Speaker 1: if from what I've read game testers basically get their
Speaker 1: hands on the earliest playable version of the game, because um,
Speaker 1: as soon as you know, they can get testing in there.
Speaker 1: You know, if they keep building and building and building
Speaker 1: and wait until the final version is done and say, okay,
Speaker 1: well we're pretty sure this is a playable build of
Speaker 1: the game, go on ahead. Well, there might be layers
Speaker 1: and layers and layers of code that depend on that
Speaker 1: buggy chunk that causes problems that they'll have to completely recode.
Speaker 1: So they need to get people uh testing those games
Speaker 1: as soon as possible to prevent you know, additional mistakes
Speaker 1: added on layer by a layer onto the uh unto
Speaker 1: the original bug. So, um, you know this isn't something
Speaker 1: that they wait until the final is done. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: not only that, but uh, the once they fix a bug,
Speaker 1: then you may have to go back and do the
Speaker 1: exact same thing you just finished doing for the last
Speaker 1: four hours, because they want to make sure that the
Speaker 1: fix they put in actually fix the problem, and they
Speaker 1: have to make sure that the fix they put in
Speaker 1: doesn't break something else which does happen. Um, here's another
Speaker 1: thing to throw out there. Besides the fact that yes,
Speaker 1: the games you're gonna play, aren't gonna necessarily resemble the
Speaker 1: final product, and yes, uh it's gonna You know, you're
Speaker 1: not really playing to win, you're playing to make short works.
Speaker 1: You don't have any real say in what kind of
Speaker 1: games you're gonna be testing. Nope, but it might be
Speaker 1: a long time between games. Um. We we actually have
Speaker 1: an article on the side about this and what I
Speaker 1: thought it was in uh uh an interesting analogy to
Speaker 1: compare them to day laborers, because it's sort of like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you you could test a game and then
Speaker 1: if the developer you work with doesn't have anything else
Speaker 1: for you right now, you're you're gonna have to find
Speaker 1: another job for a while until there's something else where,
Speaker 1: you know, find another developer to work with. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it maybe that you're thinking, oh, awesome, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: working on the next super advanced first person shooter. I
Speaker 1: can't wait. And then you find out your first assignment
Speaker 1: is to test out my little kitten, and you have
Speaker 1: to make sure that the kitten and my little kitten
Speaker 1: behaves the right way and there's no problems, and and
Speaker 1: that's your job for testing this game day and day
Speaker 1: out for the next like three days. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a little upset because the AI and my
Speaker 1: Little Kitten was awesome. Yeah. Uh, well I could never
Speaker 1: get past the part where it just started to chunk
Speaker 1: mice's mices mices at you. So for extemporaneous attempts again,
Speaker 1: we'll just count that as a fail. So we'll call
Speaker 1: that a Josh and Chuck moment. Uh. The So, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you don't have any necessarily an you say, in
Speaker 1: what kind of games you're gonna be playing? Uh? Now
Speaker 1: that all all that being said, testing video games is
Speaker 1: a very important part of the process, and it can
Speaker 1: be a way to get into the video game industry,
Speaker 1: although in order to do that, you you kind of
Speaker 1: also need to have some background at least in your
Speaker 1: school work to um, to suggest that you know, you
Speaker 1: could move on to to perhaps become a developer or
Speaker 1: an artist or you know, uh, you know, sound design
Speaker 1: or something. Um. It's it's a lot harder to move
Speaker 1: into those fields if you don't have the education to
Speaker 1: back it up. But video game testing can be a
Speaker 1: way to get into that, yes, um, and it helps
Speaker 1: to be as professional as possible, you know, tell if
Speaker 1: you're really seriously interested in this don't act, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're just happy to play the game. Say, look,
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in the development and learning more about
Speaker 1: the processes of coding and developing this game. Further, I'm
Speaker 1: really interested in user experience and making sure that the
Speaker 1: players enjoy this game. Um, and the mechanics behind it.
Speaker 1: And you know that's gonna that's gonna take you a
Speaker 1: lot farther than going who I Got the latest shooter? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the the ads online for things
Speaker 1: like especially for the web services that say that if
Speaker 1: you sign up with them, you you'll get a leg
Speaker 1: up in the industry. Um, A lot of them might
Speaker 1: suggest that you could play even from home. So now
Speaker 1: you're now you've got the ultimate fantasy. Right, You're sitting
Speaker 1: at home. You don't even have to get dressed. You
Speaker 1: just sit there, turn on the TV, start playing those games,
Speaker 1: and and you know you're living the high life. In reality,
Speaker 1: most of these video game companies require their game testers
Speaker 1: to come in and test the games, because that way
Speaker 1: they can work side by side with the developers and say,
Speaker 1: all right, well, here's the problem. Here's the situation that
Speaker 1: it comes up in uh, and uh, you know I
Speaker 1: I was able to repeat the problem, so it's clear
Speaker 1: that it's not just you know, a weird little glitch
Speaker 1: that happened the one time. Um, and usually you're working,
Speaker 1: you know, with a team of people who are working
Speaker 1: on that one game. So it's not like you are this,
Speaker 1: you know, this gamer sitting at home who just gets
Speaker 1: paid to play games. Yeah. Actually that's a that's a
Speaker 1: good point. We should talk about how much you could
Speaker 1: make as a professional game tester, and and there's really
Speaker 1: a broad range. Yeah, there is. Uh, in general, most
Speaker 1: of them are paid on an hourly basis, and that
Speaker 1: hourly basis when you start off, can be nine to
Speaker 1: twelve dollars an hour, which is not that much, especially
Speaker 1: when you keep in mind that you do not necessarily
Speaker 1: have steady work. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you can make
Speaker 1: as much as I've seen a hundred dollars an hour,
Speaker 1: but that's really for advanced to testers. It tends to
Speaker 1: be like game game tester leads, the people who who
Speaker 1: are really in charge of coordinating with the developer team
Speaker 1: and the testers to make sure that everything is is
Speaker 1: running smoothly. Um. Yeah, so if you're looking at an
Speaker 1: annual salary, I've seen ranges from everything around twenty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year, which is not that great, to uh
Speaker 1: around uh you know upboards of the eighty nine thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year, which is that's a lot of money,
Speaker 1: especially when you're thinking about testing video games. Well for me,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of money. And and you could be, Um,
Speaker 1: when I was poking around two, you could be sort
Speaker 1: of a low level tester in uh. You know, I
Speaker 1: saw that Microsoft actually has people come in and basically
Speaker 1: they'll give you a copy of the game if you'll
Speaker 1: if you're willing to try it out. I would imagine that, Uh,
Speaker 1: in those types of situations, it's like, Hey, we're going
Speaker 1: live with this, We're planning and going live with this
Speaker 1: in a week. We really want as many people to
Speaker 1: come in and play this game as possible. If you
Speaker 1: come in, we'll give you a copy of the game. Um,
Speaker 1: that's not what I would consider like professional game testers,
Speaker 1: but you know, if you're interested in trying it out,
Speaker 1: it might give you an opportunity to do that. And
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen the chance to sign up for
Speaker 1: beta testing, beta testing can open it up to the
Speaker 1: public sometimes not just you know, like some some companies
Speaker 1: will do all their beta testing. Now, beta is the
Speaker 1: build before you go gold, Yeah, which is when gold
Speaker 1: Master is basically, this is a copy of the disc
Speaker 1: that we're going to send to be duplicated, right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's. It's usually sort of the non the the
Speaker 1: version that doesn't have a name, than Alpha, than Beta,
Speaker 1: than gold Maker. M it would have to be it's
Speaker 1: the last one, so bet, but it should be UM.
Speaker 1: But so a beta test beta build is supposed to
Speaker 1: be as close to the final build as possible, although
Speaker 1: there could still be problems that the ideas that it's
Speaker 1: it is not locked into place, but it should be
Speaker 1: what you would experience when you get hold of the
Speaker 1: final copy UM in a perfect world. Anyway, in a
Speaker 1: perfect world, you would not have to make any changes
Speaker 1: to a beta copy and you would just go gold
Speaker 1: from their companies will open this up to the general public,
Speaker 1: and the reasoning behind it's pretty pretty simple. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the idea here is that you've got a lot of
Speaker 1: players who are eager to play this particular game, and
Speaker 1: you open up the beta testing to them, They're going
Speaker 1: to play the heck out of the game in a
Speaker 1: short period of time and if they see anything that's wrong,
Speaker 1: they'll let you know. Uh, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: pay them, so you no longer have to worry about
Speaker 1: testers at that point. Now, before you get to that point,
Speaker 1: you still need testers. It's not like you magically arrive
Speaker 1: at the beta build without having tested your product before
Speaker 1: that point. But it does mean that the testing process
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be in house as long. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's not as not really as as formal UM. I've
Speaker 1: beta tested a couple UM programs in the past, and
Speaker 1: generally they just ask you to send in an email
Speaker 1: whenever you have a problem. You know that you need
Speaker 1: to report. The funny thing is, I mean you know
Speaker 1: that it's not like they in on you and go, hey,
Speaker 1: so how's that testing going, right? UM? Although uh, you
Speaker 1: know it does sound informal to do this, to have
Speaker 1: the beta testers and you know, hey, you can try
Speaker 1: out the program a week before UM it goes gold
Speaker 1: and you know I'll have it three or four weeks
Speaker 1: before it's on the shelves. Well, you know, it could
Speaker 1: give you a leg up again on trying to get
Speaker 1: in the door, because some of them, even for the
Speaker 1: beta testing phase, have said, you know, have asked me,
Speaker 1: have you ever beta tested a program before? And UM,
Speaker 1: you know, if you could say, hey, I've I've beta
Speaker 1: tested five or six programs. Now I'm interested in getting
Speaker 1: in the industry that might give you the opportunity to
Speaker 1: move up to be a professional level tester. Right. And
Speaker 1: the other reason a lot of these companies do beta
Speaker 1: beta testing I should have pointed this out to a
Speaker 1: lot of them are for games that have an online component,
Speaker 1: and so you have to load test, right. You have
Speaker 1: to make sure that your servers are going to be
Speaker 1: able to handle the kind of play that players are
Speaker 1: gonna put them through, and so beta test is really
Speaker 1: important to make sure that you know the infrastructure you've built.
Speaker 1: Can actually so poor at the player base, not really
Speaker 1: the end users game so much as it is the
Speaker 1: back end of the game exact. So uh So, playtesters
Speaker 1: tend to not make too much money when they start off.
Speaker 1: They don't have a lot of saying what they get
Speaker 1: to do. Um, they're not necessarily playing games that are
Speaker 1: uh in their interest area, they're not necessarily playing them
Speaker 1: the way they would want to. Um. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, they are an integral part of video game
Speaker 1: development and can go on to to really become a
Speaker 1: bigger part of the industry. You know, I thought of
Speaker 1: another minor but really big kill joy for those who
Speaker 1: want to be professional gamers. You can't talk about it
Speaker 1: because you're gonna have to sign a nondisclosure agreement formal
Speaker 1: a formal legal agreement saying you know, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to talk about this game. Um, so you can't. It's
Speaker 1: not like you can go hang out with your buddies
Speaker 1: and go you should see this thing. You know, there's
Speaker 1: this thing on level five. You can't do that. This
Speaker 1: game has got m pchanics that that you know, our
Speaker 1: brand new and have never been seen in the video
Speaker 1: game industry. You wouldn't be able to talk about that either,
Speaker 1: or even you know, this thing is the biggest piece
Speaker 1: of junk that will ever grace the shelves, or even
Speaker 1: in some cases this thing exists. In some cases, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't even be able to mention the name of it.
Speaker 1: So so that makes it a little less fun too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but now that's not to say that video game testers
Speaker 1: never have any fun. We're just trying to to dispel
Speaker 1: some of the myths about the whole industry. Because you
Speaker 1: sit there and you think about, hey, I would love
Speaker 1: to be able to PLoP this disk in my Xbox
Speaker 1: and play all day and then get paid for it. Um. No,
Speaker 1: it's a job. Yeah, it's It's a job like other jobs,
Speaker 1: And like other jobs, there are times where you want
Speaker 1: to strangle your coworker, like when he's looking at his iPad.
Speaker 1: I'm just this is an example. No, but you know,
Speaker 1: maybe video game reviewer. Now you're talking. Actually, video game
Speaker 1: reviewers do a lot of the same stuff the video
Speaker 1: game testers, due to not just I mean they'll play
Speaker 1: through a game to play through it, but they'll also
Speaker 1: play to look for things like obvious glitches, things that
Speaker 1: break the game. I mean, video game reviewers do the
Speaker 1: same sort of stuff as well. But you don't have to,
Speaker 1: you know, go along the sides of the walls and
Speaker 1: turn it off and turn it on. No, you could
Speaker 1: if you really want to be thorough. But I don't
Speaker 1: know any video game reviewer who's that thorough. Two years
Speaker 1: after the game came out, I probably finished my review, right.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, now that now that the machines that run
Speaker 1: it are obsolete, well, uh, speaking of the machines that
Speaker 1: run it, Yes, we wanted to address something. We've had
Speaker 1: several listeners right in uh about the PlayStation three and
Speaker 1: changes that have happened to it. Yeah, because we talked
Speaker 1: about it not too long ago. Yeah, about how the
Speaker 1: military was purchasing hundreds of p S three's in order
Speaker 1: to link them together and make a supercomputer. Well, that's
Speaker 1: only possible because you could take a PlayStation three and
Speaker 1: install another operating system on it, such as Right and
Speaker 1: the Cell. The Cell processor allowed you to to link
Speaker 1: them together if you had the right software. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: Sony decided to discontinue support of the other OS feature
Speaker 1: with its most recent firmware update. So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: If you own a an old laystation three, you know
Speaker 1: this is pre Slim because the Slim didn't support the
Speaker 1: Linux operating system out of the gate. You couldn't put
Speaker 1: the Linux OS on a out of the box Slim
Speaker 1: unless you hacked it first. So Sony is essentially telling
Speaker 1: you you have a choice, your choices. You can either
Speaker 1: install the new firmware update, which will take away your
Speaker 1: ability to have another operating system on your p S three,
Speaker 1: but in return, you will be able to do things
Speaker 1: like access to PlayStation network and be able to run
Speaker 1: any games that require that particular firmware or any movies
Speaker 1: that require that particular firmware. UM or you can not
Speaker 1: update your PS three, continue the support of the other os,
Speaker 1: but you no longer have access to the PlayStation network
Speaker 1: or any games that might rely on the firmware in
Speaker 1: the future. So, no matter what, you're gonna lose functionality
Speaker 1: on your PS three. There's no way to avoid it,
Speaker 1: actually without hacking it. What are you about to say
Speaker 1: that hacking it? I was no, no, I was going
Speaker 1: to tell you this is something I found is I
Speaker 1: was as we were talking about it, was looking up
Speaker 1: video game testers and I ran across this and since
Speaker 1: we were going to talk about the PlayStation three incident.
Speaker 1: According to the blog, I'm not even sure I'm pronouncing
Speaker 1: this right, but Marison readings UM. Amazon in Britain offered
Speaker 1: one of its customers a about refund for a PlayStation
Speaker 1: three because of European Directive one slash forty four slash
Speaker 1: e C. Because ce the item must be bought exactly
Speaker 1: as the seller says and has to be fit for
Speaker 1: the purpose that the consumer needs, and the seller has
Speaker 1: to you know, know that it is according to the
Speaker 1: customer needs at the time of purchase. And I'm probably
Speaker 1: oversimplifying that, but it's you know, legal ease. Now, the
Speaker 1: thing is that Sony changed the features by changing the
Speaker 1: firmware so it was not serving the customers needs anymore,
Speaker 1: and uh, thereby altering the function of the console and
Speaker 1: making it in violation of this statute. Well, Amazon provided
Speaker 1: the refund, which it from what I can tell, probably
Speaker 1: isn't going to pass on back to Sony. But uh,
Speaker 1: this may start a precedent for people saying, this isn't
Speaker 1: what I bought and under this law, you know, you
Speaker 1: owe me money back. And Amazon is not asking for
Speaker 1: the console back. But you know, there was no report
Speaker 1: as to whether or not it was still fit for
Speaker 1: use for other purposes or whether it was just you know,
Speaker 1: recycled at that point. But yeah, they've got a partial
Speaker 1: refund because Sony said, you know, changed the firmware and
Speaker 1: the customer was no longer allowed to uh install Linux
Speaker 1: on it with that firmware updated. Place. In the case
Speaker 1: of the U S Military and the various research facilities
Speaker 1: that are around, they're using currently using the PS three
Speaker 1: as a processor. Uh, they can get around this just
Speaker 1: by not updating the firmware. And I don't see why
Speaker 1: they would update the firmware. There's no reason to do
Speaker 1: that if if they're using it as a processor other
Speaker 1: than to play games, which are not supposed to be
Speaker 1: doing on these things. Totally shocked down my argument. But
Speaker 1: it is the US military, so come on, let's be serious. Um, well,
Speaker 1: they do. They do have consoles, but generally not the
Speaker 1: ones that they're using for you know, crunching numbers, So
Speaker 1: they can get around this by not updating the firmware. However,
Speaker 1: it does mean that what they have is what they're
Speaker 1: they're stuck with, right. They're not gonna buy more PS
Speaker 1: three's now because they aren't gonna work on that system
Speaker 1: and something else. And if the PS three breaks, or
Speaker 1: when a PS three breaks, you've just lost part of
Speaker 1: your system, you know. I mean, if you can repair
Speaker 1: it yourself or you can get someone else to repair
Speaker 1: so it's working exactly the way it was before, you're fine.
Speaker 1: But you can't just purchase a new one because it's
Speaker 1: not gonna run the the the os you need. So
Speaker 1: that's a real bummer. Um, I'm not going to make
Speaker 1: a judgment here. I'm just gonna say I own the
Speaker 1: next plus three sixty. Um, well, you know it has
Speaker 1: left a lot of PlayStation three fans upset, even people
Speaker 1: who weren't doing this. Well again, anytime you take away
Speaker 1: functionality of a device that had traditionally supported a certain feature,
Speaker 1: you're gonna upset the customer base, even if those people
Speaker 1: never used that feature the But what if I wanted
Speaker 1: to exactly well, I mean, I'm the same way. I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't judge those folks. I'd be the same way
Speaker 1: if if I were told, for example, that let's say
Speaker 1: that my phone updated tomorrow and I found out that
Speaker 1: it no longer supported some feature that I had never used,
Speaker 1: I'd still be like, what, why did you take that away?
Speaker 1: That thing that I don't use? How dare you? But yeah,
Speaker 1: but it happens. It happens. I demands as fact, and Sarah,
Speaker 1: I shall see you at dawn. Um, all right, well,
Speaker 1: then be a dual boot system. Well done, Mr Pilette.
Speaker 1: On that note, I think we can wrap this up
Speaker 1: all right, guys, Well, if you have any questions about
Speaker 1: any other let's say, jobs in the tech industry, if
Speaker 1: you got the questions about that sind o, men, if
Speaker 1: you have any questions about video games, send dozen. If
Speaker 1: you have questions about tech in general, send oz in,
Speaker 1: uh puns send to Pilette and uh We'll remember. The
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: We do have an article on the site about video
Speaker 1: game testers, so you can check that out how stuff
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