Poll: Frontier, Nixed Offline, and the conspiracy mindset of developer malice.

[Durendal5150]

Didn't see a thread on this, so here we go. Frontier Developments. (Developers of the upcoming Elite: Dangerous.) Recently announced that they aren't going to be including an offline mode. Singleplayer yes, offline no. They just don't feel they can make it work the way they wanted to, so it's getting culled.

The big discussion here of course is, well it said it'd be there on the kickstarter page, so they can't not put it in. "Principles" and Legalese aside, that argument's been done to death. What really worries me is the mindset of the comments I've seen on this matter.

Namely that, although Frontier have, in my opinion, been upfront about the why, the how, and the specifics, a great many commenters trot out the line that it's "Just about DRM."

Or better yet, to make sure players are exposed to in game micro-transactions. That don't exist. (They will soon! Cries the peanut gallery.)

There's this, as the title says, conspiracy theory mindset, that no matter what a developer does, the reasons are malicious. I know game devs, and have at least a toe in the door of the industry myself, and I know damned well nobody wants to pull a feature. Especially a major one. But the gaming public sometimes seems to see developers not as individuals making a product they likely care a great deal about, but as a soulless corporate facade that hates you personally and will do anything to extricate money from your still-beating heart.

I guess that disconnect worries me a great deal, and it can go the other way just as easily, as so many Triple-A publishers show us. That the producer and the consumer don't view each other as people at all.

So what is everyone's take on the E offline fiasco?
(I personally bought it for the MMO aspects and don't think they're going far enough online )

Does anyone else feel like the public at large automatically assigns malicious motives to developers? or any and all companies, for that matter?

 

[Mezahmay]

Well, as long as they provide refunds for backers who ask for them then it's fine. They changed their end of the contract, the consumer should have the right to a refund when the contract changes. If they do not provide them their refund then regardless of their intention they have done something knowing people are not pleased with due to greed. It certainly isn't due to technical considerations: Kickstarter issues refunds all the time for unsuccessful projects and creators can individually refund backer pledges even after funding concludes. I also feel the argument that if they've played any of the game up until now as a way to invalidate issuing refunds is invalid because this product is in development and has changed from the time the pledge was issued. The product being backed no longer exists and a new one that is almost the same from the same developer is now in its place.

 

[Durendal5150]

If they do not provide them their refund then regardless of their intention they have done something knowing people are not pleased with due to greed.

See, that's actually what I'm talking about. Malicious intent is simply assumed.

I agree that they should offer refunds to those interested, but I can see their argument as to not offering them to people who have already played the game. You can't do it at a retail store, why should you be able to do it online? That the final product was not exactly identical to the one proposed is...obvious, I should say? There's a "risks" section under kickstarters for exactly that reason, and that the public increasingly conflates backing a product on kickstarter for purchasing that product confounds me.

 

[Mezahmay]

If they do not provide them their refund then regardless of their intention they have done something knowing people are not pleased with due to greed.

See, that's actually what I'm talking about. Malicious intent is simply assumed.

I agree that they should offer refunds to those interested, but I can see their argument as to not offering them to people who have already played the game. You can't do it at a retail store, why should you be able to do it online? That the final product was not exactly identical to the one proposed is...obvious, I should say? There's a "risks" section under kickstarters for exactly that reason, and that the public increasingly conflates backing a product on kickstarter for purchasing that product confounds me.

If changing the direction of the single player mode of the game to always online after long being advertised as an offline experience, where is the line drawn on what other changes the developers can make and still deny a refund for backers who are now dissatisfied with the product? Why not just issue their pledges back? They don't need the £20+ pledges for funding anymore, they sell (according to their USD store values) $50 preorders on their website, $5 ship skins, and really expensive beta keys at $75 for the next three days that include other features. At this point I don't see them getting away from debacle with as good a reputation as they had before making this change.

This is still a new method of game funding that is not as easily understood regardless of a website's warning page or the dozen page long list of developer news and updates on the project page in Kickstarter. It doesn't work like full retail releases, it isn't a free to play microtransaction experience. There isn't as clear a separation between developers and consumers in this model as there is in the other two. The people who backed that project wanted to see that specific project, offline mode included. i'm not saying crowd funding is exactly the same as payment by commission where the consumers can collectively tell the devs to do it over if they get it "wrong", but this isn't that. This is the devs advertising something as a part of their game experience and saying "Nahhh. Doesn't fit with our intended vision of the game." Great. Good for you. Now your project does not fit with this minority of your consumers visions of the game either. Give them a refund, send them on their way, and all negative press is mitigated outside of forum bitching.

In its current state it's functionally a paid beta for a game that will helpfully release a full retail version in 2014. I understand why preorders can cancel their preorders. There still isn't a technical reason why they shouldn't return pledges that ask for it. There isn't a business reason why they shouldn't because even if every single £20+ pledge asked for a refund for a net loss of £199,980, they're still going to be well above their minimum pledge on top of the other ship skins and preorders on their website and potential sales for the fully released digital copy once all the Kickstarter and early access fluff is over with and the microtransactions they'll work with. Everything above that also provided either additional digital or physical media that are less easy to return and don't sum to as much of a loss as all the £20+ pledges.

 

[rcs619]

I think the important thing to remember with these sorts of alternative funding schemes are the inherent risks. Projects, especially extremely long-running and involved projects like game making change over time. They take different routes as new ideas come along, old ones are refined, or it just becomes clear that some of the original intentions won't work in practice. When you sign on to kickstart something, or to pay into a pre-release build, there's really no guarantee that the final product will be the same as the one from their original pitch. You're buying into a game to try and help support it because you believe in it, but that's no guarantee that you'll like the final product when everything is said and done. That's the risk with paying sight-unseen for something that won't be done for months or years.

Also, there really *shouldn't* necessarily be an obligation that a finished kickstarted game exactly matches the original pitch. The point of kickstarting and crowd-funding is to pitch in and help the devs make a game. It isn't a commission. Should there be measures in place to make sure that outright scamming doesn't occur? Of course. But, having the precedent around for a dev to *have* to give refunds, potentially, for every change they make to the game that differs from the initial pitch is just madness from a business standpoint, and fairly restrictive from a creative standpoint.

As for the OP, yeah, that sort of conspiracy-minded thinking is just a thing with the gaming community these days (with a lot of the internet, to be fair). Nothing is ever just... a thing. It's all malicious, and planned out, and some sort of coordinated conspiracy.

On the bright side, Elite Dangerous fans, the offline mode may have been removed, but you still have more of an actual game available to play than all the lemmings that latched onto the Star Citizen bandwagon. So there is that, at least.

 

[Mezahmay]

As for the OP, yeah, that sort of conspiracy-minded thinking is just a thing with the gaming community these days (with a lot of the internet, to be fair). Nothing is ever just... a thing. It's all malicious, and planned out, and some sort of coordinated conspiracy.

This isn't a conspiracy. Knee-jerk reaction, perhaps, but not a conspiracy. What this is is a developer advertising a key feature of the single player mode in their game for months using absolute terms without caveats in multiple forums in multiple instances. There was apparently no warning this may not happen and the way it was phrased in the newsletter made it sound like they removed this feature for the backers' enjoyment. This is the worst possible good for people who travel or work/live places with spotty internet in a gaming scene where a lot of the big releases are DRM locked. Sure, it's just "a thing", but the thing it is can be ruinous for people who were expecting to play the game they believed in and was advertised from the start as having an offline mode. Sure there's risk, sure there's the changes in game development, but this whole mess has been communicated in such a way that this feels like fraud. The fraud accusations are not lessened by the fact players who have played one of the alpha/beta builds they were given by the developers for backing are not allowed a refund.

 

[rcs619]

As for the OP, yeah, that sort of conspiracy-minded thinking is just a thing with the gaming community these days (with a lot of the internet, to be fair). Nothing is ever just... a thing. It's all malicious, and planned out, and some sort of coordinated conspiracy.

This isn't a conspiracy. Knee-jerk reaction, perhaps, but not a conspiracy. What this is is a developer advertising a key feature of the single player mode in their game for months using absolute terms without caveats in multiple forums in multiple instances. There was apparently no warning this may not happen and the way it was phrased in the newsletter made it sound like they removed this feature for the backers' enjoyment. This is the worst possible good for people who travel or work/live places with spotty internet in a gaming scene where a lot of the big releases are DRM locked. Sure, it's just "a thing", but the thing it is can be ruinous for people who were expecting to play the game they believed in and was advertised from the start as having an offline mode. Sure there's risk, sure there's the changes in game development, but this whole mess has been communicated in such a way that this feels like fraud. The fraud accusations are not lessened by the fact players who have played one of the alpha/beta builds they were given by the developers for backing are not allowed a refund.

You should probably be a little more cautious about throwing around words like fraud.

Fraud would be the game not coming out and them keeping all the money anyway. Or Elite Dangerous becoming a linear FPS instead of a 3D space-sim. Or them releasing a buggy, unplayable finished product even.

Is it disappointing that there won't be an offline singleplayer mode? Certainly. I'm sure there were some people who weren't interested in the MMO aspect (although, considering how the game has been promoted, the MMO angle seems to be the main play-style) that this is a deal-breaker for. But a game that isn't even finished yet fiddling around with its various game-modes isn't fraud. They aren't required to deliver a product that is 100% in line with their original pitch. Almost no final product is exactly the same as the first pitch. They're just required to deliver a functioning product that is true to the initial intent that they presented. When you pay for an in-development product, sight-unseen, this sort of thing is the risk you run. Games change a lot from alpha, to beta, to final release build. You don't have the right to just go and take your money back because they make a change you don't like.

There are times when a refund is warranted. Like, if a product is defective (Sword of the Stars 2 comes to mind), or an outright lie (Aliens Colonial Marines), or is actually a fraudulent product when it's released.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well it's pretty simple, they sold features that will not be done, yes backers do always carry that risk but it does not in any way absolve the devs when they don't deliver. Backers will need to bite the bullet, but the devs are the asshats that caused that situation, intentionally mind you... this isn't a scenario where they are running dry, they just plainly don't want to do it.

Also not one person in this world will ever call any of their shit malicious, nor will people who drink their Kool-Aid. You think anyone at EA, Ubisoft or Activision ever thinks their practices are malicious? Fuck no they don't, to them it's all plain good business as long as people don't get upset enough to cost them any pennies.

 

[VoidOfOne]

A developer who promises a key component of a game, only to go back and say that component is no longer going to be implemented, is nothing new. But that doesn't put Frontier above criticism, and quite frankly what they've done would merit the ire they've received, regardless of what any one else thinks. And personally, I completely understand the complaints, and I am very glad I didn't fund this game, as awesome as it sounds.

I see two points here. First, as ALWAYS: Buyer Beware. Until you are allowed to actually receive the item you purchased, you can't trust that it will come out the way it was advertised. This is true of all products. This is always the risk that people have when investing in others, as simply giving companies money doesn't guarantee success, or success as was defined from the first pitch. So, if you decide to pay for a product that has yet to be completed, be very aware that you may not get your money's worth.

The other point: If you promise something, and fail to deliver, watch out! I was interested in this game, especially seeing that it could be played offline. Since that's no longer an option, I won't pay for this game, so no skin off my nose. But considering many people are looking for offline experiences in a world where many large games require you to be online, this was looking to be a refreshing change. No more, much to the disappointment of many. I do believe a refund is warranted, however, as the product many bought no longer exists. Of course, it is up to Frontier as how to respond, and they have the right to give back the money, or to keep it. But it is thinks like this that make people lose faith in this kind of business model, which I don't think is a bad thing.

So, if this causes more people to question whether to back a game in development, then fine. It does suck that it takes these kind of events to wake people up.

 

[thewatergamer]

All I hear is some developers of a kick-starter promising a key feature, and now say "Yeah It's not going to happen guys sorry about that" and the paying backers being, justifiably, upset about them no longer delivering on a feature, I don't think that this is necessarily a DRM thing, but the backers have a right to be angry and I feel they should be entitled to a refund since a major advertised feature of the game is no longer going to ever exist

It would be like a kickstarter promising a 3 different campaign modes with wildly different stories that all end up connecting somehow, and then they turn around once they have everyone's money and say "Yeah sorry but we've scrapped that idea, we're just going to make 1 campaign and have the other 2 protagonists be side characters instead"

Maybe the developers have a reason that they can't include an offline mode, and if so I'm sure we would all love to hear it,

All I can say is, promising something in a game, collecting kickstarter money for it, and then turning around and saying "Yeah sorry but this key-feature isn't going to happen *shrug* sorry guys" looks shady as hell

 

[GloatingSwine]

All I can say is, promising something in a game, collecting kickstarter money for it, and then turning around and saying "Yeah sorry but this key-feature isn't going to happen *shrug* sorry guys" looks shady as hell

Thing is, this kind of stuff happens in videogame development all the time. Features get proposed, worked on, halfway built, and then abandoned in just about every game ever. In the olden days though you just wouldn't hear about it until maybe people reverse engineered the released product.

People think it's "shady" because they have literally no idea how a product is made.

 

[Signa]

Development issues aside, if I had backed this, I would be demanding my money back. I will not fund an always online single player game, period.

 

[Recusant]

One thing to bear in mind is that this wasn't a small thing that was removed. We're not talking "they promised us 879 levels and there are only 876!". DRM may not be the hot-button issue that it was six or seven years ago, but the fact that people have stopped talking about it doesn't make their opinions any weaker- much less their convictions. Many people feel very strongly about this sort of thing, and will go to great measures over it- SecuROM managed to physically break a CD-burner of mine, and as a result I've had Sony under a boycott for the past ten years; not a trifling matter with a company that size, with fingers in so many areas. It's not something I'd do just because I was disappointed with a single product they released. And while this feature may not have been intended solely as a DRM measure, it restricts access to the game content, and thus fulfills that function.

The other thing is, it must've been clear months and months ago that they couldn't deliver on the offline mode promise, and chose to not say anything until this week- less than a month before the game is due to come out. Had the announcement been made earlier, there'd be a lot less ill will; bad PR is hardly evidence of evil, but even if this is just a bad misjudgement of what the target audience values (as I suspect it is), behaving like a doofus isn't going to win you any friends.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

It's a shitty thing to do. But if those that have contributed care so much about this, they can ask for refund. It's their money that they gave thinking they will receive everything that's been promised in the Kickstarter campaign. They have every right to a refund. And your only real complain can be in a form of a demand for refund. It is literally that simple.

 

[Jamash]

Does anyone else feel like the public at large automatically assigns malicious motives to developers? or any and all companies, for that matter?

I don't know about the public at large because I'm not as familiar with other groups of consumers, but I definitely think that some gamers have a massive paranoid and narcissistic persecution complex in which they take any business decision made by a company as a personal, malicious slight against them personally as part of a conspiracy to impact their life.

I saw a good example of this yesterday on another message-board discussing GTA V on the PC in which one person was advocating pirating the game because it hadn't been released on PC yet and that Rockstar doesn't deserve his money because they didn't release the PC version last year and therefore "An intelligent person does not pay money to someone who purposely screws them over."

He took Rockstar's decision not to release a quick port of the last gen version of GTA V when he wanted to play the game as a malicious decision by Rockstar to screw him over and negatively affect his life... because apparently Rockstar are intimately involved in the lives of every individual PC gamer, but also really hate them at the same time and base all their decisions on how much it will disrupt the lives of PC games who they have a vendetta against.

I see this all the time with gamers, when something goes wrong with a game or system, even if it's the user's own fault, it's not just an accident or unfortunate hiccup, it's the company purposefully setting out to screw over that individual.

Some of the worst example are when Xbox Live periodically requires the user to re-enter their password, but the user has forgotten their password and had their Live account associated with a forgotten or dead throwaway e-mail address (that the user has also forgotten the log-in details for), and they haven't set up the advised secondary and tertiary security proofs, and then Xbox Support won't unlock their account to a random caller with no proof of ID or knowledge of the account... it's not their fault for not remembering their log-in details, it's Microsoft maliciously screwing them over.

It's a remarkable phenomenon and it makes me wonder, is it just a hyperbolic phrase that has gained popularity and entered the vernacular without people really realising the meaning when they decry "X has screw me over!",, or is it an unfortunate side-effect of the way certain generations have been brought up, like perhaps they believe that they're all special snowflakes who can achieve anything, therefore whenever something goes wrong, it can't be their fault but instead the malicious and deliberate machinations of an outside agency conspiring to screw them over?

 

[Mikeybb]

Does anyone else feel like the public at large automatically assigns malicious motives to developers? or any and all companies, for that matter?

But look at them!
Developers...
Shifty every last one of them.
Developing things.
Evil plots no doubt.

AND their name has 'devil' in it.

if you spell it wrong.

 

[Durendal5150]

Development issues aside, if I had backed this, I would be demanding my money back. I will not fund an always online single player game, period.

But that's the thing, it's not "An always online singleplayer game." It's an MMO with the option to turn encounters with other players off. The plan to maybe tack-on a full singleplayer element doesn't change that it was always supposed to be an MMO.

That I suppose is why the "DRM!" camp confuses me. Frothing that the always-on requirement in an /MMO/ is a nothing but DRM pushing vileness is...what? Really?

Really I don't disagree with those saying people should just ask for their money back because this isn't the product they wanted by a wide margin. I disagree with those declaring that this is a purposeful breach of trust by a malicious company seeking too, as Jamash puts it, /screw them over./

(On the side, No I don't know the formatting for italics. I don't typically forums. <.<)

 

[The Lunatic]

It was pretty much entirely Bait and switch with Elite.

They advertised one thing, and sold another.

Irreverent of what they're planning to do with it, they raised money and sold a game whilst promising features that can have a significant affect on the playability of the game.

 

[TheMightyMeekling]

TF2 changed the entire game-philosophy midway in development. People really need to learn that they are backing a pitch, not a definite product.

 

[Signa]

Development issues aside, if I had backed this, I would be demanding my money back. I will not fund an always online single player game, period.

But that's the thing, it's not "An always online singleplayer game." It's an MMO with the option to turn encounters with other players off. The plan to maybe tack-on a full singleplayer element doesn't change that it was always supposed to be an MMO.

That I suppose is why the "DRM!" camp confuses me. Frothing that the always-on requirement in an /MMO/ is a nothing but DRM pushing vileness is...what? Really?

Really I don't disagree with those saying people should just ask for their money back because this isn't the product they wanted by a wide margin. I disagree with those declaring that this is a purposeful breach of trust by a malicious company seeking too, as Jamash puts it, /screw them over./

(On the side, No I don't know the formatting for italics. I don't typically forums. <.<)

If it's a MMO, it's a MMO, and I retract what I said. You can't have a MMO without the online requirement, and therefore it's not DRM. HOWEVER, if the game is playable as a single player experience (and I don't mean adventuring solo for the hell of it) then I don't see too much difference between this and Diablo 3, which should also have offered an offline option.

I sure hope you understand the DRM frothiness when it comes to singe player games and not MMOs. I can tell you I just finished beating Descent II, which is nearly 20 years old. If it shipped with online DRM, I'd feel lucky if I could even load the game.