MMOs and The BBB

The BBB is the Better Business Bureau, a resource you may have heard of before.

Omali at Massive Multiplayer Fallout took a look at the Better Business Bureau web site to see what they had to say about various studios that produce massively multiplayer games.

I won’t spoil his post by repeating it all here, but there was quite a dichotomy in the ratings.  The BBB give letter grades from A to F following the academic model and most companies either got an A or an F.

Sony Online Entertainment and Blizzard Entertainment (Blizzard is actually one of the few on the list that are BBB Accredited) were among those getting an A.

Cryptic Studios and Mythic were both on the F list.

The only company in the middle of the pack was NCsoft, which received a C-.

And a pile of other companies have no rating at all.

Aside from some of the information in the profiles I’ve linked, I’m not sure that the ratings would affect my own buying decisions.

How about you?

Do these ratings surprise you, confirm your own views, or just represent another data point that may or may not affect your life?

9 thoughts on “MMOs and The BBB”

  1. Xeross

    I don’t make my decisions on a single source of information, and not being a US/CA resident I have never heared of the BBB before. Just don’t base everything of off 1 single source of information, and compare the amount of positive and negative items.

    And I normally make my gaming decisions based on what I’ve seen on a trial account (Thus I don’t play games that don’t have a trial).

    Like

  2. Adventurer Historian

    After its NGE with Star Wars, SOE will never have an A in my heart’s BBB.

    Also, a rating of F can mean alot of different things, from “the company doesn’t respond to the BBB” to “they’re flagrantly breaking the law”:

    “We strongly question the company’s reliability for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law’s licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company’s industry is known for its fraudulent business practices.”

    So, to answer your question: a data point that I don’t put much weight in.

    Like

  3. Jay Moffitt

    I’m in agreement that I would not base my decisions on the BBB ratings alone. But you can “click-through” on the ratings to find out why the companies received the ratings they do.

    If the company has received 10, 20, 50, even 100 complaints and has not responded to the complaints.. you can rest assured they will do the same with your complaint.

    Like

  4. Brian Inman

    I find the findings a little amusing. You figure blizzard has 11 million subscribers, and 1800 complaints. That is nothing. That percent is so small. Even with mythic the complaints were really not very many compared to people that have done business with them.

    Like

  8. wraith808

    From what I’ve seen, Cryptic has been pretty responsive, even refunding items which are supposed to be non-refundable. So yeah, I take these with a grain of salt.

    Like

  9. Xyd

    Agree with @Brian. Athough I’m surprised it’s that low, 1800 complaints is less than a rounding error and is, frankly, outstanding. I guess Patch Tuesday hasn’t been as frustrating to people as I thought.

    Oddly, I’ve never considered using the BBB for a software or online service purchase of any kind. For home repairs and construction, it’s proven quite valuable.

    Like

Comments are closed.