Elite: Dangerous "Premium Beta" Access Costs $150

[StewShearerOld]

Elite: Dangerous "Premium Beta" Access Costs $150

Frontier Development is opening its $150 premium beta for Elite: Dangerous up to 10,000 prospective players.

Elite: Dangerous look like it's going to be a <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/127754-Elite-Dangerous-Trailer-Offers-Glimpse-of-Space-Combat>pretty cool game. That said, we're curious as to how much you'd be willing to pay to play it early? While you could probably find some enthusiastic fans who would insist that the experiences would be priceless, the game's makers at Frontier Developments have been able to come up with a number: $150. That, at least, is how much the company intends to charge the 10,000 players it plans to allow into a recently announced "premium beta."

Players who <a href=https://store.zaonce.net/elite-dangerous-cat/elite-dangerous-premium-beta.html?utm_source=PB%20Press%20Release&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Premium%20Beta>buy into the beta will gain access to single and multiplayer modes taking place in five star systems "covering a 200 cubic light year volume of space." The Premium Beta will also include automatic access to all future beta stages, all "major" DLC packs after the game's release and, of course, a copy of the game itself.

"The start of the Premium Beta phase is another exciting moment in our development," said Frontier CEO David Braben. "This is a significant and sensible step-change with which to test the next level of scaling of our cloud-based systems and servers as we move towards the very large numbers of people we will eventually have playing.

While that's all well and good, it's hard not to look at the beta and wonder why Frontier feels the need to charge players to essentially test their game in progress. Granted, the $150 price tag is a tad more affordable than <a href=https://store.zaonce.net/elite-dangerous-alpha.html>the $295 it was charging Alpha access, but even then there's just something about this that rubs me the wrong way. What do you guys think?


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[frizzlebyte]

So, they're charging people to basically work for them?

W

T

F

If this was physical work, there would be all kinds of labor law violations taking place here. No thanks.

 

[Cerebrawl]

Paying for alpha/beta has always rubbed me the wrong way. It's a service the players perform for the company. Though lately it's gotten to be more of paid demos.

But the pricing model comes from at what donation amounts that access was granted if you donated to it on kickstarter. It's not the only, or first game that's had exhorbitant alpha/beta costs, but yeah it's pretty shitty.

That said I pledged £20 to the kickstarter, and I'm eagerly awaiting my digital copy once it goes gold. They're a bit off on the delivery time though(estimation was march 2014).

 

[evilnancyreagan]

in this democracy you vote with your dollar. unfortunately, it seems there are a lot of fools with too many dollars.

 

[Eddie451]

Thought this was ridiculous, then I saw the alpha was $300... Here's a good idea, lets all pay 6 times the price of the game for 1/10th of the product. A product that we know little to nothing about with no reviews. Never trust pre-orders or paid alphas/betas anymore, too many will leave a bad taste in your mouth.

 

[Zontar]

A sucker is born every minute.

This isn't any shock to me. After Planetary Annihilators priced their Alpha for a 40$ retail game (which was supposed to reach full release 6 months ago but still hasn't) and Elder Scrolls Online had its limited edition plus the 15$ monthly fee, and that both had their defenders, nothing shocks me anymore, because developers know they can get away with it.

This is the problem in a society where half the population is of below average intellect and the means of sending messages is threw money, get enough people to throw money at something, and it will act accordingly, regardless of weather the idea is one worth attempting.

I honestly hope this project crashes and burns to send a message to others who would try it to use the same business model. Lord knows we need more to after PA and DayZ didn't fail and showed there is no logic in economics.

 

[LazerFX]

I kickstarted the game, at Alpha level (£200 - GBP). I don't regret it, as I know that I helped fund the overall process, and have greatly enjoyed playing the various releases as they've come through. Is it wrong for some people? Well - if you can't afford it, or aren't that fussed with the game, or don't want to help finance something - yes. Was it right for me? Definitely.

I honestly don't understand the hatred thrown against something that is a business choice. People don't have to support, they just need to wait for the game to be developed. The Alpha/Beta/Kickstarter process is for those who want to see the game be produced, who believe in the authors talents, and wish to submit something back into the process that gave them previous (very enjoyable) games.

Anyway - I'm off to fly my Sidewinder for a bit. There's Cobra's to take down... it's amazing how many people think they rule just because they've got a MK-III

 

[AdagioBoognish]

I think it's a perfectly acceptable way to raise money, as long as they're being honest about the content that's available to beta players. I also think it's silly, in that I would never pay that much for the privilege of playing during beta. The only way I see this hurting me is if a publisher decides to push back a release date in order to get more players to cave to temptation and buy into a beta, but if that's not happening then props to the players that feel this much loyalty to a game.

 

[Stormwaltz]

(leaving)

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I want but...

Food money Redlin, food money!

Ehhhh, I've already put in quite a lot of money into Star Citizen. I'm not saying I won't pick up Elite upon launch but I'm not made of money and I'm already going to be doing the alpha/beta test thing for SC.

As for the value of the 150 pass? Well, I suppose it depends on how much the DLC later in the life cycle of the game adds up to. If in 8 years the DLC is worth more than 150 bucks, I would say its a fair deal to buy into it now. No way to know for sure though.

 

[Daemascus]

150$?!? Why would you ever pay that much for a game that's not even out... -Looks at my Star Citizen purchases- Ooooh yeah.

 

[faefrost]

Wow! So these twits have actually figured out a way to be even more abusive to QA staff than EA? Well done! I mean this is absolutely Machiavellian. It essentially counts on a certain portion being incurably stupid. And then using those people to avoid having to pay for actual testing staff under the guise of "pay obscenely to play Beta". I can't wait to see how Jim Sterling reacts to this one?

 

[ZakCanard]

They are damned if they do and damned if they don't. The price'll be to keep it exactly in line with what the Kickstarter backers paid for their relevant tiers of access; they would have a much bigger PR catastrophe on their hands if non-backers were able to get in at premium beta (and originally alpha) access for less than what the backers put up.

 

[Tiamat666]

Daaangerous!
The game is so daaangerous!
Take away my money,
Throw away my time,
You can call me interested
But this deal's not good for me.

 

[Alterego-X]

They could probably make much more quick bucks by selling hundreds of thousands of $15 beta keys, but they want to limit the beta audience to a core fandom instead of letting too many random gamers butt in and make an early judgement about the game because they re too lazy to even realize that it is a beta.

 

[Mausthemighty]

Ehm. Isn't this old news? They are charging these high prices for 1,5 years now...

That said, these prices for testing their game rub me the wrong way. They should pay us for testing it instead of making suckers out of their loyal backers.

 

[Astalano]

The number one reason paying for a beta is intolerably stupid is confirmation bias. Yeah, you heard me.

The guy who shells out $150 for a game isn't going to be as critical of said game. He's going to look for the good bits and downplay the bad. He's not going to be objective in his evaluation of the game because he's already invested heavily in it.

Open betas for games should be FREE. Any payments before-hand should give extra benefits, but the basic experience should be free to test.

This doesn't apply to alpha. During alpha you work with a small community of loyal testers to iron out the major issues and get the game to an acceptable level. However, beta should be available to the widest possible market so that your zealous fanbase doesn't overlook stuff that it has gotten used to, but which might be incredibly annoying features for newcomers.

For example, if you make an MMO that has a rubbish tutorial, the only way that will become apparent is when you get new players in to test the game. The guys already playing know how to play and will overlook the bad tutorial completely.

Charging for a beta is just an extremely elitist thing to do and I don't agree with the way early access games are completely neglecting the large testing phase that is crucial for ironing out issues. Just because your fanbase paid for the game doesn't mean they get exclusive access to it during beta.

Keep in mind this doesn't apply to every game though. I don't think every game is entitled to an open beta. If the game wouldn't have had an open beta test under normal conditions, then keeping it relegated to the community is not a terrible idea. However, Elite is a massively multiplayer game and it NEEDS players to test it thoroughly before release.

 

[Andrew_C]

I get the impression from the various forums I frequent that a lot of the people who object to the cost of Beta Access to Eliteangerous have already spent similar amounts on spaceships in Star Citizen. But then RSI have always been far better at marketing than Frontier Developments, who suck at it to put it bluntly.

That being said, I agree that charging for alpha and beta access is not a good thing, but since Minecraft turned it into a business model, I guess we're stuck with it.