40 Series GPUs back in the spotlight: Should we advocate for more dialogue between consumers and developers

I posted a few weeks ago about the launch of Nvidia’s new 40 series graphics cards. The 12gb version of the 4080 was subject to news recently. According to IGN, “Nvidia is ‘unlaunching’ the 12gb 4080 after criticism” (https://www.ign.com/articles/nvidia-is-unlaunching-the-12gb-rtx-4080-after-criticism). Nvidia claims that the card was not named right as ‘having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing” (see IGN article linked).

(image from: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/40-series/rtx-4080/)

I think this story serves as a good example of a company, in this case Nvidia, responding to customer criticism. The video game context today is much different than what it once was. Video games can go through massive updates/changes and form communities of players within them. We’ve seen Minecraft be an example of this. I’d like to suggest that this phenomena, especially in the online multiplayer context, requires publishing companies and developers to continuously monitor and make improvements to their game. Quite often this process necessitates dialogue between the makers of the game and the players.  I’m curious what others think of this issue. For example, is it more apt to characterize games as “services” and the players as “users,” should the law govern this relationship, if so, to what extent?

The relationship between developer/publisher and the player is something I’m incredibly interested in and have decided to explore as part of my term paper.