Trilarion: …
scientiae: ... I'd settle for the platform merely ensuring that the product
works as designed and advertized. Letting anyone put any code up and charging for it is wilful dereliction, IMHO.
Trilarion: The platform cannot really guarantee that unless they would conduct extensive play tests. They can more easily guarantee a money back guarantee in case the product does not work as designed and advertized and eventually even pull the product from the shop in case of too many complaints.
I would be OK with a non-curated approach, as long as I additional get tips from somewhere which 100 of the 7000+ new releases every are actually any good and interesting to me.
Well, the solution to that is to push the testing back on the developer, with a checkpoint to ensure minimum standards. So, when I want to publish my shiny new game, I have to produce output that demonstrates the game boots into whatever is the minimum configuration for say, a Windows box, and then include benchmark CPU & graphical metrics (FPS minimum & average, verified 3DMark score, etc., on that minimum system).
A checklist for each type of game, as determined by the publisher; no need for
Zork to pass graphical tests.
(Because of the dearth of trust, this is a commercial opportunity for a third party to become a trusted certifier. This is your third party that provides "tips".)
As long as the process is transparent, and complaints are escalated via the retailer to the publisher, it would be minimally intrusive.*
This is the ideal; a minimum requirement would be, as you suggest, the ability to claw back purchase price (and a bonus?, say, an aggravated penalty for egregious or deliberate fraud), but there still needs to be a gatekeeper, lest anyone publish anything and pretend they have a different sense of what a "game" is. (
E.g. Developer: What, I'm enjoying watching all the mooks trying to play it and giving me money — isn't my entertainment sufficient for it to be called a game?)
Otherwise, as I can personally attest, situations will occur like when Apple Australia refused to refund a purchase, simply because they regarded the account as vexatious. (Again? You have had eight refunds this year! No more for you! — It took an appeal to the US headquarters to overrule them. Because, y'know, I like spending money on crap that doesn't work, just to irritate Apple customer support apparatchiks, and have them ban the product and grant a refund.)
Of course, there are complications. Apple's policy of continual update is itself potentially vexatious, because it requires a continuous certification process: what hardware with which OS, etc. Again, from persoanl experience, something that works fine, now, with the current standard configuration often will not to work after an update because it assumes that both the hardware and software have been updated, as is expected (h/w) & mandated (OS) in the licence agreement. (Too bad if the device fulfills its purpose without the update.)
* What is interesting is that eBay, which used to have a brilliant dispute resolution process, now allows the offending supplier to effectively buy their (verified) negative review and neutralize it. This has the unintended consequence of granting a serial offender the ability to minimize bad publicity, and keep selling defective or fraudulent
Scheiße, by buying off those who bother to complain (which is fewer than one might expect).