well the problem with ati cards can be fixed fairly easily. I have a ATI card and i fixed teh problem in 2 min, just extreact that file and delete the packed version, presto.
Developers have the right to release any product they want, and i guess as you said consumers have the right to " (not) read reviews or do anything else to find out how great a game is in terms of stability".
Im not saying games should be released unsttable, what I am saying is that they have the full right to do so, and its not their fault if you bought the game not knowing if it was foulty or not. I could understand if you bought the game with a ATI card and they made no mention of it not running with ATI cards. If however it simply runs slowly on your computer ( meaning that the product works on your computer as they promised) that it your foult, becuase as i said you could of cheched furums to find out wheater 1gig of ram would lag or not ( BTW im sure that if you set your graphis to 640 x 800 it would run fast).
the game runs well ony any comp that meets the requirements and has pdated software and hardware. Ive never heard of a case diffrent from this. And if it didnt work, the developer has provided support, that will give you instruciton on how to make it work.
I dont understand what your arguing King Flevance. the ATi thing i got but i already mentioned that. were you or were you not able to get it running within a week?
sbear, you said "When a software manufacturer markets a game or any other software we expect it to work". As i said before, a developer has the right to sell anything they want, it works on most peoples machines. your problem seems to be fairly isolated ( ide say much less than a 1/5 as King Flevance claimed still cant thier game to work if they turned to support).
Bad programming might be the fualt of these technical difficulties, but i fial to see how taht changes anything. As i have said many times, the game came out, their were technical difficultues, it as all over many forums, like this one or the official one, or probobly even the ones onl a place like yahoo with user reviews.
if im starting to not make anymore sense it mostly becuase ive been awake scince 4 AM and its 11 PM already and my minds turning hazy
anywayas, my main point would be that there are 3 interconected iddeas at work here
1) developers, being in a capatalist society, have the right to release any product they want as long as they follow the laws, and that is as far as thier obligations go. 2) users are not forced to buy their product, and as the user agreement you agreeded to, it was your choice to buy the game. and 3) if you are not forced to buy anyhtign, and developers can release anything they want, and you have easy access to the internet ( your using it now

) and all of the internet review sites and forums,that adds up to mean that if you buy the game blindly and it dosent work, you should expect that.
Its kind of like when kids go on a family trips and buy a toy at the gift store. It rarley works but they buy it becuase it looks cool and they expect it to work simply becuase their young and naive. Any adult woul blame the kid ( hypotheticly, becuase i dont think you would actually blame a kid for buying abad toy

) for buying a toy from a place that would logicly have ****ty toys.
I should add however, that the way to change this is by boycotting, or by sending e-mails. The way to change it is to change one of the factors fo the problem, so that developers coudnt release anyhting they wanted. Make it so that there are oficial standerds a developer would relase their product by , kind of like game ratings ( like adults, mature, teens etc). but for game quility. Or boycot so the producers promises not to manifacutre the game unt8il the developers had had time to finish de-bugging their game
I should add that I think that the game, outside of the thechnical hicups during the first week, is fiarly bug free and a great game at that. Most of teh bugs are textual ( like the ones mentioned where civolopeadia entries dont match the other entires).