🚀 go-pugleaf

On Aug 2, 11:50 am, Lance Corporal Hammer Schultz
<starf...@gmail.invalid> wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 10:24:37 -0400, Jim wrote:
> > I guess everyone got their video card fried by the main menu.
> >http://www.dailytech.com/Hot+Starcraft+II+is+Frying+Graphics+Cards+Bl...
>
> Okay, so the menu graphics had no cap on the framerate, and some
> people's cards overheated and were destroyed.
>
> This is most definitely *not* the fault of Blizzard.  If a card can
> run so hot as to destroy itself, that is either due to bad card
> design/poor cooling, or overclocking.

Blizzard most definitely deserves some of the blame. That post
indicates very sloppy programming on their part, filling an idle
rendering loop with as many active draws as possible instead of just
sending noops like any sane programmer would do. Most hardware in a PC
is designed to operate under a liberal definition of reasonable
operating conditions, they are not designed under the assumption that
the user or his software is actively attempting to destroy it with a
constant stream of stressful instructions. The publisher has a
responsibility to ensure that their software isn't going to damage the
computers of their millions of customers. The card manufacturer has a
responsibility to ensure it can run the thousands of properly coded
games out there, but can't protect against every piece of software
that behaves maliciously in some way.

It was also pretty much a douche move for Blizzard to immediately
shift blame to the user for not having adequate cooling. Blizzard
hasn't even examined the users' systems. They're just trying to avoid
responsibility (read: lawsuits). Then they meekly suggest changing a
couple of variables in the ini file -- which indicates to me that
someone forgot to turn off the card-killer stress-test settings before
releasing the gold master -- "if you want to". Gee, edit a couple
numbers in notepad or risk frying my video card. That's a tough one.
Too bad they didn't own up to their crappy programming mistake, might
have retained a bit of respect.

Partial blame can be assigned to the card manufacturer as well. Nobody
should get a free pass on this one. But the card manufacturers aren't
being douchebags about it.

> The people demanding that Blizzard replace their hardware are just
> whiners.

Maybe so, but that's easy to say if you weren't affected by it or if
you have a few hundred sitting around to piss away on a new video
card. Otherwise it's just as fair to say that you're insensitive and/
or elitist and that you're just taking the opportunity to revel in
other people's misery merely because you have a graphics card that
doesn't suffer from the issue (or maybe it does and you just haven't
left the main menu running long enough). Personally I'd rather listen
to the whiners. At least they have a point.