It’s like saying, Big Mac Please
Then you get a Big Mac with No Big Mac Sauce but if you come back and buy another you might get the sauce.
Keep coming back with another Title/Label and keep reading the same posting!
Beef is Beef and Pork is Pork!
Good Day Everyone
But a lot of people didn’t. They wanted that happy meal toy (Titans). Sure, they got some nuggets and fries and the fun little box, but are really let down they didn’t get the Scooby Doo action figure.
I was just playing devils advocate btw - I actually think I got way more than the sticker price worth of value. But a lot of players had higher expectations than a shiny Minecraft. They were promised and wanted Titans.
hahaha
Oh yea,
The problem I have with all of these metaphors is that none of them account for the fact that the mcdonalds said they didn’t have any toys at the time you ordered, and they told you they would let you know when they get a shipment in.
You order a Star Wars Lego kit from Amazon. When the package arrives you open it to find a MEGABLOKS starter set. You email Amazon and they say that the Legos are coming along with a return box. Weeks go by but nothing. You contact them again and they say the legos are coming, just a little back ordered, but you can keep the MEGABLOKS. So you start playing with the MEGABLOKS while you wait on your Lego set. Months go by and you email them again - no response. A year - no response. 2 years later “Well we figured you had enough fun with the MEGABLOKS that you didn’t really expect the Legos anymore”
I have been debating this and reading through the comments and I’m going to come at this from two angles … the gamer in me and the developer.
As the developer in me who makes software applications that many large corporations access daily, I have been through the development process with numerous companies… a development company technically doesn’t owe you a thing. When we roll out software, we are constantly changing it based on feedback and while we do have an internal roadmap we do not communicate our roadmap to clients. Having gone through COVID at our company over the past year we laid off over half our developers and completely threw out all of our roadmaps for every application we have and even scrapped some that our company spent several thousand on creating and developing for 3-4 years. For the devs sake I am not sure how many are actively developing… but if it is just James I could understand the delay and I don’t think he has to comment on anything. One thing our company is though, is transparent… but not all companies and/or developers are for numerous reason and I have seen both sides of the communication with one company posting roadmaps and communicating every week and another company pretty much not saying a word and just pushing out product or at least working on it.
The gamer in me, wants some form of communication at least stating the state of the company, the state of the game and the future of both. The game is great as is… I can play it in its current state for many years to come and plan to do that. I would like updates, I would like Titans… I could care less about local universes … but none of that is something I really NEED … as I said previously if you NEED an update to bring you back to the game or to continue playing it you might want to just go find another game. The last thing I want is for people to leave the game … but if you are unhappy, feel you are owed and haven’t got what you are owed then maybe it’s time to move on. I’d much rather play a game with other people that love the game as much as I do.
I do whole-heartedly hope that whatever happens appeases everyone, but sadly you can’t make everyone happy … even with the update I imagine it won’t have all content promised… it won’t change the game enough for anyone who is bored or feels there is no end game… and it won’t stop the complaints… and could even cause more … who knows… I will still continue to recommend the game,… play it 6-8 hours a day and support everyone in the community as much as I can.
Ugh… All I got were Fred and Shaggy, then I find out they’re doing Luca toys now ffs 
Lego comes out saying they are working on a new Star Wars kit. They plan for it to have an x-wing, a hangar, and three minifigs. They tell you ahead of time that you will receive each part of the set as they finish designing it and they expect to ship out the x-wing and the hangar first. This sounds great, since you are buying it mostly for the x-wing.
You’ve heard of other companies falling through on promises for kits like this, but you really believe in this one, and you think the x-wing is going to be super awesome, so you go for it.
A little while later, they let you know they have shipped the hangar, but the x-wing isn’t ready yet.
Over the next two years, they ship you two of the three minifigs, plus some other minifig they never mentioned, but still no x-wing.
You got most of the stuff they expected to provide, just not the one part you really wanted.
Some explanations would have been nice from the devs as to what is going on. We aren’t owed anything though.
That’s Rite DK
So Then I Can Say, Don’t Buy Any Other Services From This Game
Example, Gleam Club, Sovereign Worlds, Cubits ect.
We should not call croudfunding “investing” because it isn’t. When you invest into a company you get a part of the company in exchange for it. You risk losing all your money, or make a dirty profit.
Crowdfunding is just a donation with a promise for a free game. With crowdfunding you can get nothing or you can get a free game. But you never “profit” on your “investment”.
Crowdfunding has substantially more nuance than that - because it operates in a very grey area legally. Consider the franchises that have launched from companies that had the capitalization to launch those games but instead turned to a donation platform to get seed money. They offer nothing in return for failure except some perceived hit to their reputation. Additionally the company takes on very limited risk vs. if they fail to meet objectives set by a publisher, third party, etc.
It is likely that future consumer protection legislation, starting at the state level, will address crowdfunding that fails to deliver. For profit companies seeking investment and then failing to deliver on commitments is a problem in any other investment avenue, so why not crowdfunding? Because it’s largely unregulated and grey.
Ideally a company would need to consider the risks of failure to deliver before they pitched a moonshot crowdfunding pitch. The same a company would have to before they went to venture capitalists or the bank.
Someone who supports any product via crowdfunding is taking a gamble - but it is only because there isn’t sufficient consumer protection to compel appropriate risk consideration by the companies that participate.
Additionally, it does not mean that you don’t deserve the product you ostensibly paid for. If you donated for a game and it’s not what they advertised then that is a failure of the company not some moral or philosophical failure of the user.
From my understanding, the lead or CEO or whatever at Hello Games said “yeah yeah, it’s going to be an MMO!” but it’s not, and the actual devs had to say “no, actually, it’s not an MMO”. Never was, never will be. And it’s crazy because the notion that it was an MMO really travelled, because when I bought it a few months ago, I was still thinking it was an MMO.
But it’s barely able to handle co-op. As soon as your friend leaves the party, the game starts to unload all of his stuff, you can’t teleport to his base anymore, etc. You basically can’t have a co-op playstyle like “my friend owns our common base with our bank, I own this farming outpost…”, because there is no common bank system for you and your friends. It’s all super janky. You’ll only meet other players in “the Anomaly”, some kind of mini-city zone.
The experience is horrendous, the tutorial is cr@p, the early game can have you start on a toxic world where you might die in the first 2 minutes of gameplay if you don’t quickly follow the tutorial…
I recommend people to play No Man’s Sky if you have money and want to appreciate Boundless a little more. For 55€, it did that for me.
Well, Blizzard is something else entirely. When they were acquired by Activision in 2008, they were telling everyone “don’t worry, Activision has no control over our creative team”. And at some level, I wanna believe them still. But Activision gradually grabbed control over the gameplay team. Mike Morhaime, the CEO, made mistakes, for sure, but I suspect he was able to say “no” to some of Activision’s input. When Morhaime left in 2018 and was replaced by Jay Allen “You think you do but you don’t” Brack, the personnification of “the customer is wrong”. It’s funny because ever since Brack has been the CEO, 50% of the time, people say “Activision-Blizzard” instead of “Blizzard”. They say that when they did something bad.
Now, all their big names are leaving one after the other, and as someone who has been following Blizzard since he was 8yrs old, there’s maybe 2 big names that are still there. One of them is Samwise Didier, and he’s hidden in a basement working on an unannounced project.
You just have to watch something like BlizzCon 2019 or BlizzConline 2021 (from last february where they had almost nothing to show) which is now 100% a lifeless corporate show and compare it to… I dunno… BlizzCon 2010 with Chris Metzen coming on stage to explain what GEEK IS., showing all of his examples of pop-culture like D&D stuff, He-Man, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns…
Basically, this sums up the Blizzard situation :
To me, the lesson is “don’t trust devs when they tell you that their editor/producer has no control over them”. Maybe it’s true at first, but when these devs make gold, things change. That’s why I’m a bit afraid for Hypixel who are owned by Riot Games.
I got my money’s worth about a month after I payed £15 for it. I’m owed nothing. I’ve loved nearly all aspects of this game and I’ve made friends for life, who could want more.
Uh. You had it for only 17,50€? Was it something like Steam Sales?
I bought the deluxe at 60€ on 1.0 release day.
I had no knowledge of Boundless prior to getting it on PS4 a few days before the official 1.0 release. I got a game that was fully featured, with relatively few bugs, which has given me several thousand hours of enjoyment and continues to do so. I don’t feel personally owed anything.
However, I think if there was an agreement made to backers that if they donated X amount of money for x reward then that should be honoured, and fast approaching three years since launch, really should have been honoured by now.
As for titans and the hunter and other blocks, etc, I don’t feel that I’m owed any of that, because I didn’t know that stuff was due to exist at the point of me purchasing the game. Obviously, I want new features to be added and more people to buy the game, especially titans, but if it doesn’t happen then I’ve still had thousands of hours of fun for £35.
Yeah there was a sale and it was £15
Well, this is what was ‘sold’ to backers, essentially :
I was personally sold on the game when I saw this trailer which shows the prototype of a Titan at the end :
And this trailer which shows the Ground Basher and the Hunter :
Though, at the time, I didn’t know I had been teased with trailers showing features that would still not be there 3 years later. These last two trailers are still on the Youtube channel of Playstation, BTW.
I’ll say it : to me, that is borderline scummy.
Fact is that we’re close to 7 years after the crowd funding of Oort Online started, and we still don’t have the big ‘Protectors’ or Titans, and we’re still running around in dirty diapers, while meteor hunting is still the only endgame activity… and I’m still grasping at straws hoping to have MAYBE a few more blocks or props by the end of 2021.
I would be very surprised if those two videos aren’t enough evidence to win a class action lawsuit against Sony. But ■■■■ runs downhill and Wonderstruck is under Sony. Not saying that I want that nor should anyone else, but I feel like Sony would offer full refunds for the game if anyone pushed them on it (and they’d also take down the videos immediately).
Edit: And to me, its straight up false advertisement from PS Europe. That 2nd one is listed as “Gameplay Trailer” from 5 years ago showing content that isn’t even rumored to have a release date yet.
Edit Edit:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32006L0114
For the purposes of this Directive:
(a) ‘advertising’ means the making of a representation in any form in connection with a trade, business, craft or profession in order to promote the supply of goods or services, including immovable property, rights and obligations;
(b) ‘misleading advertising’ means any advertising which in any way, including its presentation, deceives or is likely to deceive the persons to whom it is addressed or whom it reaches and which, by reason of its deceptive nature, is likely to affect their economic behaviour or which, for those reasons, injures or is likely to injure a competitor;