Perfect World Criticized in Gamer Survey
315ts.net, 9/17/08
On September 12, 315 E-Commerce Complaints (www.315ts.net) and the China Electronics Chamber of Commerce held China's first Forum on After-Sales Service for Online Game Companies in Beijing. The CECC released the results of the first study on MMORPG player complaints at the meeting, based on 4,537 complaints filed with 315ts.net involving a total RMB 5.8 mln - a complaint volume down 6.72% period-on-period from 2007.
Beijing-based game operator Perfect World (Nasdaq: PWRD) was singled out for criticism, ranking #2 by complaint volume for H1 2008 and ranking #1 for three of the top ten customer complaints, of which the top five were:
1. Account closure, accounting for 27.67% of all complaints with many gamers feeling that they had been wrongly accused of having violated game rules.
2. Account theft and the corresponding difficulty in recovering in-game property.
3. Poor customer service.
4. Server issues, accounting for 25.3% and including problems with server cards, frequently dropped connections, and sluggish server expansion, among other issues.
5. The proliferation of pirate servers was another complaint, accounting for 5.84% of complaints. Common problems with privately run servers include random account closures and capricious deletions, capricious deletion of in-game property and erroneous or fraudulent in-game transactions.
Keywords: 315 E-Commerce Complaints after-sales service China Electronics Chamber of Commerce complaint H1 2008 Internet MMORPG Perfect World PWRD online gaming