Konami Joins Capcom In Anti-Consumerism With Silent Hill HD Collection

In a fair trade the person making the purchase is agreeing to paying a fixed price to the seller for a good or service that meets a certain agreeable expectation. In the world of video games, gamers pay a price for the software and expect said software to function. Unfortunately, that's not really the case for gamers who bought Silent Hill HD Collection for the Xbox 360 and Konami has no plans to fix it. Anti-consumerism for the win.

Silent Hill HD Collection released back in March to a lot of fanfare and hoopla, equal parts excitement and equal parts disdain over all the technical issues and glitches that came with the game. In today's era of gaming, glitches, errors and technical issues are to be expected. Most gamers bite their tongue and wait for a patch. In the case of Silent Hill HD, Konami has unleashed a patch but only for PlayStation 3 gamers, and they have zero plans or resources to do the same for the Xbox 360.

According to Giant Bomb, Konami released an official statement on why one rendition of the game was patched and why the other will have to be relegated to the Hades of errors and glitches. Konami's official response is below, check it out...

We're not as angry as Giant Bomb so we removed the registered trademarks from the quotations, however we're a lot more jaded over here so I'm going to take this time out to textually jab Konami in the face a bit.

Look Konami, first off we're a forgiving bunch, us gamers. We buy your products at full retail price on day-one knowing that some of you do bull-crap like that day-one DLC or disc-locked content, and we put up with a lot of day-one bugs, glitches, errors and everything else that doesn't work after taking the game out of the package. However, if there's one thing that bugs me more than anything else, it's when stuff doesn't work as advertised and a company refuses to fix it, even after acknowledging that it doesn't work. Seriously, WTF?

I won't say Konami is worse than Capcom, because they aren't. I will, however, say that they're picking up on a trend lately that seems to be permeating throughout the industry, mostly by the larger publishers. Remember that glitchy mess that was Orion: Dino Beatdown? Within a week of release Spiral Game Studios was trying to churn out patches to fix that game as fast as possible. That's an indie studio for you.

Now, for those of you who don't recall, Capcom released Street Fighter X Tekken for the Xbox 360 without an advertised feature, pair-play. They completely lied about the lack of its inclusion and then later lied and said they didn't advertise it at all, even though it was in the booklet. The game also launched with tons of glitches and bugs and it even carried over into the PC version, where Capcom admitted they were doing a lazy port, even though the PC version launched two months after the home console version.

Now Konami isn't pulling red-face-turning antics like Capcom or Electronic Arts, but refusing to patch a game that people paid money for and it isn't working as advertised feels awfully anti-consumerist to me. I mean, it would be different if hackers, pirates and modders are complaining, but that isn't the case. It's just Xbox 360 gamers who probably want a working product above all else.

Could you imagine if a car dealer sold a stick and automatic version of a car to consumers but told all the stick users that the malfunctioning gear shift was something they didn't have resources to fix and they're sorry that stick users got stuck with a sucky product. That dealership would be drowned in media pitchforks and torches and prepping recourse faster than Rush Limbaugh could pop a pill and apologize to a gay minority or Jesse Jackson could get a blood transfusion to deny an illegitimate kid.

I hope gaming media doesn't give Konami a free pass on this one and hopefully the company goes ahead, pays the $40,000 patching fee and fixes the game for the Xbox 360. The company was even brazen enough to tell both Giant Bomb and Joystiq that they won't pull the game from store shelves. So be warned, if you run into glitches Konami isn't fixing it.

Xbox 360 owners might want to write, e-mail or call Konami about reconsidering a patch for the game by using the appropriate contact info right here.

(UPDATE: Konami won't be patching Silent Hill HD Collection for Xbox 360 but they are providing gamers with a free alternative from their expansive library o fgames., Read more here.)