Gametap Sucks
Simple as that. There are probably a few of you reading this who don’t know who or what Gametap is. For the uninformed, Gametap is Ted Turners desperate last-ditch attempt at coercing every last hard-earned (hah!) penny, nickel and dime out of your meager wallet. It is a program that, using the internet not unlike Valve’s own Steam, allows you to download games and play them. The hook is that gametap has a massive library. I mean, every Genesis, 32x, arcade, and even a few good pc games are in this collection. I’ll admit, this was what I was interested in at first. But then, as soon as I had it installed, I was struck by how awful, and I mean horrendous user interface. The thing is unresponsive half the time, and the other time, as in when it works, it take upwards of five seconds for everything you do to be recognized. Weak.
Another thing that blows chunks is that downloads go slow. As in really, really slow. I was getting 50 mbs max, and I don’t have that shitty of a ISP. Oh, and you can’t do anything while its downloading. Yay! Not only does it take a longass time I can’t do anything while it is! Sign me up!
Oh, and the games disappear no matter how long you play them after like three days. So you have to download them AGAIN. Fun. And all your saves are lost. Another plus. And all your settings are reset. I could go on and on, but reduced to simplest terms, don’t pay Turner Interactive for Gametap. Stop giving him your money.
February 26, 2007 at 10:58 am
[...] Evyn! is! not! happy! [...]
February 26, 2007 at 4:41 pm
What GameTap are you using?
I’ve had no problems with the interface, I can do whatever I want while downloading games (playing other GameTap games; or minimizing the window and browsing the web, playing non-GT games, etc.) and none of my downloaded games have *ever* disappeared. Nor have my settings reset.
I’m sure that any of the problems you’ve described could be easily dealt with by contacting the helpful, friendly folks at Customer Service.
Of course, you probably never thought of that…
February 26, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Holy crap. Someone actually reads my crap blog. I’m actually honored. Yeah, I’m an idiot. Please come back soon!
April 5, 2007 at 7:30 pm
First off let me say Gametap really does bite it. First off, I am NOT one of those individuals that have some ancient computer that just gets them by. I have a top-of-the line computer made for gaming. I had heard about Gametap and in December 06 thought I’d give them a try. The free month sucked me in. First off the downloads ARE SLOW!!! Then when it comes time to play the games freeze. Now the arcade style games seemed to work fine, but Myst or Tomb Raider or Atlantis… forget it. Their Beta versions of these games have more bugs in ‘em than an anthill. So needless to say I contacted their online chat for assistance with these games and they were not easily dealt with nor were they resolved. I will say though that the support staff was nice, polite all that. But I suspect they are paid poorly and are probably not able to assist customers like they should simply because they’re having to deal with more than one customer’s issues at a time. They blamed my computer, then it was Media Player 11 to blame, then it was my video drivers etc and so on. I contacted their help 4x about one or another of the games freezing, there was no solution according to the support staff. So in February I contacted them via their 1-800 number and told them I wanted to cancel my subscription. I was told sure, no problem. April 1 was my last day with Gametap, or so I thought. April 2nd and lo and behold I’m still getting automatically logged on to Gametap. So, I called up Gametap again, spoke to another rep, this time I was told my account was for sure cancelled. That was April 2nd. Today I checked my credit card statement and there was a charge from Gametap for April! Needless to say that sorta’ ticked me off so I called up my C.C. company and I’m letting them work this out with Gametap since it’s obvious those at Gametap can’t and don’t listen to someone when they want to cancel their account. Lastly, for those that are toying with the idea of joining, I would make sure their games are compatible with your system BEFORE joining. If you think that all of their games will work smoothly, forget it. At least it didn’t happen for me and I’m sure it’s the same with many others who got sucked in. All in all a very disappointing experience.
February 23, 2008 at 1:47 pm
50 mbs?
I think you need to re edit.
October 15, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Gametap is great, I can play really good games for $10 a month. They have some awesome games (baldur’s gate, icewind dales tons of old arcade games, fighting games galore, kinda old games like farcry and new enough games like Civ4) and some I would never want to play. If I use it 10 hours a month, I have made a great purchase.
tr
August 24, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I was so happy to find this blog, and agree completely. Gametap does suck! But it wasn’t always that way…when they had an actual client instead of a browser interface it was awesome. I was a long time customer, but after several attempts with technical support to get the stupid web interface working properly and my downloads to actually complete, I have given up. Please, for the love of pete, go back to the client. Downlaods were fast and gameplay was perfect. Now they have some lame excuse that they are working with there ISP to fix the download issues. I AM AN ISP!!!! If they haven’t fixed it after a year…perhaps you should find a new one!