Intercept/PD needs to speak out NOW

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

3 minutes ago, VlonaldKerman said:

Am I the only one who thinks there should be no restrictions on EA games, that if EAs from big publishers suck, we shouldn’t buy them?

No need to meddle with the market. I think people are willing to pay a relatively small sum (tens of dollars) for the possibility of a good game, and that is why they do. If that’s a problem, take it up with people! They do tend to ruin everything.

Yes.

EA, again ,means constant 2 way, honest and transparent communication and it also means involving users in decision making as you build the game. 

You can’t do any of that in a big corporation with shareholders and an when you obviously stick to an internal game update agenda and when your team is required to undergo media training to keep a lid on everything. 

[Meecrob]

19 hours ago, justspace103 said:

Ya'll read the title.

Silence is allowing this community that i have been a part of and loved so much to implode with panic and doom of the death of this franchise. I am starting to agree with them. For the sake of the community, @Intercept Games@Nate Simpson need to say something beyond "we are still working on the game". At least give us closure if the worst is to come, to allow us to move on and return to KSP1. Don't let this failure define this franchise.

Honestly, why would they tell us anything? We are just going to use it as ammo against them. It's like Miranda rights: "anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of Public Opinion"

7 hours ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

Yes.

EA, again ,means constant 2 way, honest and transparent communication

NO! If publishers are going to act like children, it's our right to observe them acting like children. Don't give them any help! Let them eff up on their own and figure it out when their stocks plummet!

Why are we helping our enemy? [snip]

Edited May 8 by Vanamonde

[TLTay]

Steam needs to change EA policy to where a developer, publisher, etc with over X revenue may not release a title into EA. 

EA should ONLY be an option for those financially needing it, and not for big players to dump an incomplete product to cash out on a failed development cycle... looking at you KSP2 and CS2.

Edited May 8 by TLTay

[Fizzlebop Smith]

28 minutes ago, VlonaldKerman said:

Am I the only one who thinks there should be no restrictions on EA games, that if EAs from big publishers suck, we shouldn’t buy them?

No need to meddle with the market. I think people are willing to pay a relatively small sum (tens of dollars) for the possibility of a good game, and that is why they do. If that’s a problem, take it up with people! They do tend to ruin everything.

The issue is "proof is in the pudding" so to speak.

The scenario you suggest requires a degree of foresight, every body involved might  not possess.

I agree? An abyssmal failure may prevent future EA by same developer from succeeding.

Some people might not view that as a small sum and even if it were, that is side stepping the issue of accountability. As laws continue to push for more and more corporate rights what single action could assist the consumer in using their money to make such an impact?

I think

Allowing for refund for extenuating circumstances, like flagrant misuse of the EA platform would be a great feature.

This would of course need to be backed up with some objective statement that can be evaluated.

Depending on how they proceed will depend on whether I push for a refund. I have made a hand written letter that I am trying to clean up. It will accompany the digital version.

If they rubber stamp a 1.0 on this game.. I will reach out to customer support weekly.

 

 

 

[GluttonyReaper]

The balance with EA games has always been a bit dicey... on one hand, it's obviously not ideal for early donators to run the risk of effectively not getting what they hoped they would, especially in the face of actively disingenuous teams (see: Ant Simulator). On the other though, EA game do exist for a reason: to get games developed that would otherwise be too niche, or too experimental. It would be a massive shame I think to see it regulated into the ground - it would be a massive shame if small indie developers/studios felt it was never worth the risk of potentially bankrupting themselves or going into massive debt by issuing refunds, in the event the project actually just happened to fail through lack of funding or other unforeseen issues down the road. This seems especially hostile to the "one guy in his garage" model that made EA so popular to begin with.

Obviously, the idea of massive publishers/studios doing EA is frankly absurd. Really, it only benefits them - they get a certainly number of guaranteed sales before the game ever releases (like a kind of turbo pre-order...), if it releases at all, with likely no more risk than they would encounter going through a more traditional development. If player input is something they're really concerned about, surely they could just go down the route of having a open beta in months leading up to release, no?

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

And development is funded with... nothing, so EA is no longer something indies can aim for.

Right - I feel if optional donations were enough to keep games funded, EA as a concept never would've sprung up. It's a nice ideal, but ultimately it just means less people actually able to make games, which means less cool games for everyone. It's a lose-lose, really.

Edited May 8 by GluttonyReaper

[PDCWolf]

55 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

Poll the buyers when "Dev declares current game to be complete" to see if that's justifiable? (Maybe not even needing to clear 50% + 1 vote, as if even 40% or so say 'yes, the devs have done enough already', that's giving them a slight advantage over "being held hostage" by a simple majority)

Polls are as manipulable as people. If you had run a poll here a couple days after FS! everybody would've thought the game was fine even with the thing crumbling in front of their faces and the multiple unaddressed bug reports that leave very basic foundational issues in evidence.

In itself, that's another can of worms. Had KSP2 development continued we'd probably have all the roadmap features... at a puddle depth level and gimped so the game doesn't explode from the overhead. KSP2 currently only has thrust under warp implemented and that's already a huge issue, and they've completely failed to solve fuel flow woes, deltaV calculations, TWR and so on.

52 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

Have you read my reply?

Yes. It's my view you're not aiming at the problem. Forcing EA to be free means indies can't be funded, allowing donations means that they just can scam people off steam instead of in. I fail to see how you address that. I don't bother resolving the "how to not make donations an avenue for scams" problem because... for me that's not the problem. I'm fine with EA being buy-in, for me the problem is the developer having complete authority to just close shop and keep the money.

I believe refunds under EA should be limitless, no gameplay or ownership time limit. Since the dev can close up show at any point without fulfilling their promises, we should be able to retract our funding the moment we smell trouble.

[cocoscacao]

1 minute ago, PDCWolf said:

I fail to see how you address that

I never did, and said I didn't.

[cocoscacao]

@PDCWolf Just a minor miscommunication. You've answered my question in the last reply.

[PDCWolf]

7 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

@PDCWolf Just a minor miscommunication. You've answered my question in the last reply.

All good I hope.

[snip]

Edited May 8 by Vanamonde

[herbal space program]

10 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

I expect they probably don’t quite know yet- they are probably conducting a review of the code based to determine if the project is salvageable.

I think that's probably the answer. They're not telling us what they mean to do because they don't know yet themselves. And figuring out whether or not the game engine is fixable without just starting over is probably not something they can exactly do overnight either. Somebody with a great deal of knowledge is going to have to spend a significant amount of time going through reams of code to make that determination, and then there will have to be some kind of process of decision making  based on those findings.  Unless of course they really just mean to bin the whole thing and walk away, in which case they might just be mulling the legal ramifications of that move, but I'm still hopeful that they'll try to put a new, smaller team on the project of seeing if they can make the game work better before investing in any staff to create more content. That probably won't happen very quickly, but if it does happen I suspect they actually have a lot of content already that was nearly good to go  but for the fact that it would have unacceptably tanked performance if they had tried to roll it out with the core game as it is now. They must have been doing SOMETHING during all those years!

Edited May 8 by herbal space program

[Scarecrow71]

7 hours ago, Meecrob said:

Honestly, why would they tell us anything?

My guess is that if we are to hear anything, it will be either during or after the financial call on the 16th.

[snip]

7 hours ago, TLTay said:

EA should ONLY be an option for those financially needing it, and not for big players to dump an incomplete product to cash out on a failed development cycle

While I agree with this sentiment, I doubt it will change.  Not to mention that you have to wonder how many games in EA from big publishers/companies would never even sniff release without EA.

Edited May 8 by Vanamonde

[PopinFRESH]

57 minutes ago, TLTay said:

Steam needs to change EA policy to where a developer, publisher, etc with over X revenue may not release a title into EA. 

EA should ONLY be an option for those financially needing it, and not for big players to dump an incomplete product to cash out on a failed development cycle... looking at you KSP2 and CS2.

Steam's EA policy is specifically intended to NOT be "for those financially needing it" to complete development. It is specifically not intended to be a crowdfunding system.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/earlyaccess

What Early Access Is Not

Early Access is not a way to crowdfund development of your product.
You should not use Early Access solely to fund development. If you are counting on selling a specific number of units to complete your game, then you need to think carefully about what it would mean for you or your team if you don't sell that many units. Are you willing to continue developing the game without any sales? Are you willing to seek other forms of investment?

[K^2]

3 hours ago, Flush Foot said:

Or alternatively, "if you are backed by a <major?> publisher/label, then you need to deposit 2-3 years worth of operating expenses in an escrow-account before we allow you to put the game in EA", or

"if you are backed by a <major?> publisher/label, then you indicate to us how much 2-3 years worth of operating expenses comes to and we will hold EA-sales up to 110% of that amount in an escrow-account for 2-3 years of EA-dev-time [or 12 months past v1.0, whichever comes first] before releasing them to you"

You're kind of missing the point here. Valve provides "Early Access" label as an opt-in for developers/publishers to stick on their game as a heads up to the consumer. There is nothing stopping you from shipping the 0.1 as 1.0, saying, "Yup, that's it, that's our game, totally a finished product" to Valve, and marketing it with, "Here's a roadmap for future updates, please buy the game now so we can keep working on it," to the public. The "Early Access" is entirely voluntary. If you look at the quality of asset-flip shlock that gets uploaded as finished games to Steam, you can see that Valve is not remotely interested in doing any sort of a quality control, and creating any sort of roadblocks to getting the "Early Access" label would mean that developers and publishers simply stop using the "Early Access" label. This is strictly worse for the consumers.

The safeguards in place, and ones that absolutely could be improved, all have to do with honesty in advertising. If you were sold a product with a promise that has been violated, you do have recourse. The problem is that as things stand, getting any sort of action would require a class action lawsuit, and these are comparatively rare and hard to start. Laws acknowledging that in the digital age the consumers must have better tools for dealing with this should be put into place, and EU is at least trying a few things. None of it has to do with Valve, though.

If we were to have easier ways for consumers to enforce the implied contract established by the Early Access, we would see developers be more careful about it. For a small indy dev studio, it could mean going bankrupt if they fail, but that's the same outcome if they never hit the market. For large companies, it would introduce liability for overpromising on EA, and would result in fewer titles hitting EA, but more of them making through to a finished game. That would be a net win to the consumers.

1 hour ago, VlonaldKerman said:

Am I the only one who thinks there should be no restrictions on EA games, that if EAs from big publishers suck, we shouldn’t buy them?

I mean, yes, but it's also a little bit like saying, "People with gambling addiction just shouldn't gamble." Not all people are good with their purchasing decisions. To an extent, that's on them, but a company intentionally exploiting that is still a scummy company involved in a dishonest, and in some cases, illegal practices.

That doesn't mean Early Access or gambling shouldn't exist. It means that there has to be some regulation around it. You shouldn't be able to just promise absolutely anything you want as a future update, put it up for EA, abandon it, and run away with the money. Just like you couldn't advertise a casino by promising that everyone who walks in will leave with more winnings than losses. And again, in most cases it is technically illegal already. We have laws requiring the advertising to stick to provable statements. It's just very difficult to enforce sometimes, and having better enforcement of what people have already generally agreed are good rules for corporations to follow can only be a good thing.

Not that saying this is any sort of a plan. I fully acknowledge that it's a hard problem, and in many cases has to be weighed carefully against how much damage you're doing to potential innovation by introducing more hoops to jump through.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

1 hour ago, GluttonyReaper said:

The balance with EA games has always been a bit dicey... on one hand, it's obviously not ideal for early donators to run the risk of effectively not getting what they hoped they would, especially in the face of actively disingenuous teams (see: Ant Simulator). On the other though, EA game do exist for a reason: to get games developed that would otherwise be too niche, or too experimental. It would be a massive shame I think to see it regulated into the ground - it would be a massive shame if small indie developers/studios felt it was never worth the risk of potentially bankrupting themselves or going into massive debt by issuing refunds, in the event the project actually just happened to fail through lack of funding or other unforeseen issues down the road. This seems especially hostile to the "one guy in his garage" model that made EA so popular to begin with.

Obviously, the idea of massive publishers/studios doing EA is frankly absurd. Really, it only benefits them - they get a certainly number of guaranteed sales before the game ever releases (like a kind of turbo pre-order...), if it releases at all, with likely no more risk than they would encounter going through a more traditional development. If player input is something they're really concerned about, surely they could just go down the route of having a open beta in months leading up to release, no?

Right - I feel if optional donations were enough to keep games funded, EA as a concept never would've sprung up. It's a nice ideal, but ultimately it just means less people actually able to make games, which means less cool games for everyone. It's a lose-lose, really.

I think certain activities should come with a degree of risk.

I don't suggest we pull out the pitch forks over every perceived slight. This is largely referring to the massive breach in trust that occasionally occurs between and Early Access title and the community.

There may be a few outlier cases / where disproportionate community outrage resulted.. but I feel when things get to the point where the whole house burns down, somebody was likely playing with matches.

Since I started reading a few articles about EA specifically and indie developers doing interviews.. it's never going to get better one it's own. The sheer number of titles dropping into EA on any given day (i think) encourages more people to seek sensational articles, or disingenuous statement to stir attention.. they have to get their title onto feeds.

Especially if they are really small.. it is more important to maintain attention and relevance. This is just a feeling due to some sentiments conveyed in articles.. and no metrics to support.

But I wonder how many potential Manor Lords exist.. but weren't able to get the right attention at the right time.

Or how many "false promises" started as hopeful ideas that never were implemented.

Post Thought

This is why it most important to communicate. That two way ensure that trust remains when features are cut.. you explain why. People are much more forgiving when trust remains intact.

Edited May 8 by Fizzlebop Smith

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

2 hours ago, Meecrob said:

Honestly, why would they tell us anything? We are just going to use it as ammo against them. It's like Miranda rights: "anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of Public Opinion"

NO! If publishers are going to act like children, it's our right to observe them acting like children. Don't give them any help! Let them eff up on their own and figure it out when their stocks plummet!

Why are we helping our enemy? I've already secured KSP2 development...Guess I should open a thread on that.

Don’t drink and post lol 

[VlonaldKerman]

6 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

The issue is "proof is in the pudding" so to speak.

The scenario you suggest requires a degree of foresight, every body involved might  not possess.

I don't believe we are born with the right to our investments paying off- and an EA title is an inherently speculative purchase. It's not my fault, nor your fault, nor T2's fault if someone doesn't understand that EA's are supposed to be discounted, in part, because there is a risk the game will never actually be finished.

Moreover, introducing regulation could kill speculative projects, which some people want! You don't always know if there's a market for your game, and sometimes, launching an EA is a way of increasing market efficiency. It causes more games people want to be developed, at a cheaper average price for game studios, because they don't have to full commit!

The problem here is that there is a discrepancy between what people think they value, and what they  actually value. In fact, people are willing to pay for games they rationally know may never get completed. That doesn't stop them from being dissapointed if it doesn't pan out, but it would be wrong to say that people are regularly scammed by an EA game.

6 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

I think

Allowing for refund for extenuating circumstances, like flagrant misuse of the EA platform would be a great feature.

This would of course need to be backed up with some objective statement that can be evaluated.

Depending on how they proceed will depend on whether I push for a refund. I have made a hand written letter that I am trying to clean up. It will accompany the digital version.

If they rubber stamp a 1.0 on this game.. I will reach out to customer support weekly.

I think minimal rules like this could be okay. But it would have to be used sparingly. And, to my knowledge, things like this already happen, like in the case of "A Day Before" which was an actual scam. However, the line between people being scammed, and wasting their money (which companies are allowed to profit from), is often thin. If they call KSP 2 finished tommorrow, then I agree, there should be refunds.

5 hours ago, K^2 said:

I mean, yes, but it's also a little bit like saying, "People with gambling addiction just shouldn't gamble." Not all people are good with their purchasing decisions. To an extent, that's on them, but a company intentionally exploiting that is still a scummy company involved in a dishonest, and in some cases, illegal practices.

I agree, I just think the devil is in the details. People regularly make bad purchasing decisions, and it's tempting to extend consumer protections too far. Should we refund everyone who's purchased Balance of Nature because it does nothing? No. In fact, I would argue, that by releasing an early access and getting you hyped, I have provided a service. If the game gets cancelled and this happens over and over, and you keep buying, it would seem that you actually value this service in its own right! I think this is actually what often happens. People enjoy hype trains. There's a business model in that, and the fact that people complain when the train ends doesn't make it illegal to sell it to them.

What do people actually value about EA games? It's hard to say. Pricing, for instance, around games is ludicrous. Games are more engaging than movies, and cost a fraction of what movies do on a per-hour basis. Realistically, a lot of games could be $150. The point is, Steam in its current form has only existed for like 15 years, the video game market is changing rapidly, no one knows how to price anything.

It's a bad idea to introduce regulations at this stage. We should wait 10 years and see if people still fall for the abandonware trap, at a minimum.

5 hours ago, K^2 said:

Not that saying this is any sort of a plan. I fully acknowledge that it's a hard problem, and in many cases has to be weighed carefully against how much damage you're doing to potential innovation by introducing more hoops to jump through.

I think we agree in general, but perhaps we have different setpoints for when to let time take its course, versus introduce new rules.

 

With respect to KSP 2 specifically, I decided a long time ago that I would buy the game, even though I gave it a 50/50 chance at best of being completed. It was still worth it to me. Other people would not have considered this to be worth it, but they thought (in my view, irrationally) that everything was fine and the game was on-track. Now they're dissapointed, and many want to get bailed out of spending $50 over a year ago. I don't think there's any reason, at this stage, to do that. There was certainly no shortage of information to influence their purchasing decision, and there were many people expressing the view that turned out to be (approximately) correct in the end. This is a perfect example of a situation where no one has been scammed.

That is, unless they somehow pretend that the game is finished now. THAT would be a false statement.

[Vanamonde]

A number of comments have been removed regarding a prank. People are already upset enough. Please don't add to it with misinformation, even if intended as humor. 

[Cryptobux]

1 hour ago, VlonaldKerman said:

People enjoy hype trains. There's a business model in that, and the fact that people complain when the train ends doesn't make it illegal to sell it to them.

I agree. It's fine to sell a ticket to a hype train because everybody including the operator thinks and hopes it's going somewhere. But when the train has pulled in to a station and the operator knows it is not going to go anywhere further, that's when it's not OK to continue selling tickets.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

Damn  why does the 16th seem so far away?

I don't think I would even want to be gobbled up by a parent you watched cannibalize their child.

I have thought it was a misallocation / lack of funds for a bit. It certainly felt like the focus was one the face-lift & marketing highlights were all checked to set early access as a way of bolstering  declining internal support.

There wasn't anything under the hood bc they were too focused on landed the pre-order sales.

As far as PD speaking out. I would almost be willing to bet that some form of statement gets made.. but it isn't a genuine statement to the "community"

That I think is where the true line should be drawn for an EA title on steam. Is the loyalty peopke making the calls.. to the integrity of the game & to the community or to a group of shareholders.

If the answer is the latter.. they should sell beta keys on some other platform.

Edited May 9 by Fizzlebop Smith

[never_do]

21 hours ago, justspace103 said:

Silence is allowing this community that i have been a part of and loved so much to implode with panic and doom of the death of this franchise. I am starting to agree with them. For the sake of the community...

TBH I do not understand this kind of stuff. A lot of people here talk like "the community" is a magical thing. I have read a lot of stuff how "this community is not toxic" or something.

This community is not a static thing and changes because of external influences. Like the development of KSP2.

Honestly the amount of praise "the communitiy" is giving themselves over here is next level cringe. And feels totally out of touch with realitiy.

[VlonaldKerman]

31 minutes ago, Cryptobux said:

I agree. It's fine to sell a ticket to a hype train because everybody including the operator thinks and hopes it's going somewhere. But when the train has pulled in to a station and the operator knows it is not going to go anywhere further, that's when it's not OK to continue selling tickets.

If they have known for a long time that the game is destined for failure, then I agree, they should not have kept it available for purchase.

Luckily, even if they did, it seems like not many purchased it after the first month, so they probably swindled very few.

[dsplaisted]

12 hours ago, Apogee-23 said:

It's a real shame how little the developers are allowed to say. Instead of getting mad at the developers, I can't help but feel bad for them since the higher-ups won't let them communicate.

Hey look Dakota liked this.

[VlonaldKerman]

14 hours ago, never_do said:

TBH I do not understand this kind of stuff. A lot of people here talk like "the community" is a magical thing. I have read a lot of stuff how "this community is not toxic" or something.

This community is not a static thing and changes because of external influences. Like the development of KSP2.

Honestly the amount of praise "the communitiy" is giving themselves over here is next level cringe. And feels totally out of touch with realitiy.

The KSP “community” is one of the most passionate, engaged fanbases out there, and it was even more so before the KSP 2 phiasco.

Its not often you get a video game fandom with so many relatively smart people who like solving problems and, even from a strictly business perspective, disregarding or damaging that is a bad move.

[never_do]

6 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

The KSP “community” is one of the most passionate, engaged fanbases out there, and it was even more so before the KSP 2 phiasco.

Its not often you get a video game fandom with so many relatively smart people who like solving problems and, even from a strictly business perspective, disregarding or damaging that is a bad move.

Maybe passionate. But when I see all the drama about KSP2 there are obviously not many in "the community" who think about the financial aspects of the game.

Which should be a priority for a "smart community". There are other games where the community is more focused in making the game a financial success.

Yet in KSP the community seems to be only focused in getting their game and they simply ignore these things. Which is kind of strange given that the community is so smart.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

32 minutes ago, never_do said:

Maybe passionate. But when I see all the drama about KSP2 there are obviously not many in "the community" who think about the financial aspects of the game.

Which should be a priority for a "smart community". There are other games where the community is more focused in making the game a financial success.

Yet in KSP the community seems to be only focused in getting their game and they simply ignore these things. Which is kind of strange given that the community is so smart.

That's a very one-sided perspective. The KSP community was extremely patient over a handful of phiascos due to timely and authentic communication.

Thay trust continues well until the launch of an EA product where sales start allowing people to see what we got & it is discovered we were being snowed?

So we still buckle up for a ride & put our blinders on. Listening to a few spiels to string us up to the FS drop.

Which barely addressed any of the stuff we thought it would.

Repeated removal of bugs from lists without Amy reason

Overwhelming customer feedback regarding feature limitation Time Warp / Maneuver Node issues were silenced by white knight defenders & official statements were sidestepping the issue or pushing considerstions further back.

Streamers & Those promoting the game were disingenuous.

The creative director abandoned a series of features foundational to the experience we were led to believe would be included.

The community didn't do its part to ensure this game was a success.

Please... try scrolling through the dozens and dozens of threads with very intelligent, highly detailed & articulate dissertation on various limitations/ ways they were f*ING up.

This is IMHO one of the biggest reasons we get so much garbage pushed out in EA. So many naive and innocent people genuinely place blind faith or simply suffer endless excuses before being fed up.

 

 

Edited May 9 by Fizzlebop Smith