Minecraft XBLA players refused refund for Split-screen Issues

The XBLA version of Minecraft is getting fantastic reviews. Despite the price being higher than the average digital title and despite it being quite a bit behind what's available in the PC version of the game, it's still selling like hotcakes and people are still really enjoying it. That's the mark, I suppose, of a well-made game, and so it comes as a surprise that a small demographic of players are very, very angry.

People without access to HDTVs are unable to play in the games split-screen co-op mode. That's a small problem for those with HDTVs and it's easy to imagine that the vast majority of 360 owners are probably plugging into the TV using a HDMI cable. Still, for those on older TVs – and I'm thinking young children, just the sort of people who would want split-screen to play with siblings – it's a huge issue. 

What makes it worse is that there was absolutely no indication of this "feature" until players downloaded (and paid for) the game. From Kotaku: 

“They’re telling me that they cannot give me a refund over the item (as I still have the licence, the game works fine, etc, etc),” King said in an email. “They told me that they haven’t given a refund to anybody else (even though other people on the Minecraft forums have said they’ve managed to get a refund), so they can’t give me one… If they’d advertised it like that, I would not have bought the game.”

It's a shame that an issue like this has popped up, especially as it's a blight on an otherwise successful launch.