Can I please talk to an official of Uber?

So all your broken promises are arbitrary and entirely defined by perspective? That's not going to hold up in court mate. Stability? PA runs fine for me. And it runs fine for lots of people.

What your personal definition of DLC or an expansion pack is doesn't really factor into this equation either. There have been a large amount of changes made, and wherever possible, those changes have been applied to the vanilla PA for free. The added content was supplied for free to people who Kickstarted the game, and at a heavy discount to people who bought the game early.

They didn't have to give it out for free. They didn't have to give anyone a discount. But they did.

FA was a large expansion, but it also had a large company behind it. Which means it had a large amount of money behind it. Uber doesn't have that luxury. Titans is still roughly equivalent to Titans. It's a new bunch of units, it's a lot of background improvement, it's at its core, the same game but with more stuff in it.

What Uber has done is essentially put up a GOTY Edition and take the standard edition down from the store.

You could absolutely play SupCom inside of FA. All you had to do was not use the new units. Sure the balance would be different but it would still be SupCom with a better UI. The fact that you couldn't crossplay doesn't mean FA is completely incompatible with SupCom.

Fair enough, I think what I was after was for you to name something that we could actually discuss, not for you to compile a whole list. As I understand it, there is a feeling you have that makes you feel like there are broken promises, I just wanted a specific case for us to talk about.

Okay, so for a kickstarter project, this is actually true. The implied promise is that the money used to fund the game actually gets put into making the game. Hmm that might actually be more than implied. Anyway, where the difference comes in is when you are talking about after Kickstarter, and after EA. If Uber makes a sale during that puriod, are they still tied to this implicit promise? I do not think that they are.

If they were, then as a company they are destined to go bankrupt, or have a game which people pay money for forever. That's the only way to support indefinite content creation for a game where each purchase is once off only.

If you think they tied to this promise after Kickstarter and EA, could you please talk a bit about why you think they are? It seems silly to me to expect all profits to be tied to the one thing.

I am afraid I am not too sure what you are trying to say here, unless if it is meant to tie in with what comes next?

Hmm, so, if they made it so that Titans was in fact incompatible with Classic, would it satisfy your requirements for it to be a standalone expansion? This is all you say here, but I think you mean more. If so I would like your thoughts on this.

It seems to me the difference between Titans and FA is that Uber has decided to also update PA with every enhancement that Titans gets. Now this IS a bit odd. What kind of standalone expansion would so obviously benefit the original game?

The next paragraph is predicated on the notion that it cannot be an expansion. I suppose it would be more worth while for you to address my questions about that assumptions first before I proceed to talk about this part. Although I am not sure why you are trying to fit it into one of these groups.

Not sure why you are brining in a philosophical reasoning about source control into this. Sounds a bit like saying a tree in the forest actually doesn't make a sound when you weren't there to hear it fall.

IF we are going to go with the fork analogy, I think this is more accurate:
PA Classic--- +---+-+-+-+-+--
PA Titans \_/_/_/_/_/___

So you have a new branch, but this branch keeps getting merged back to PA Classic, except for some bits which are Titans only, like the new unit content.

I do not agree, but that is in part because it's premise is what I am arguing against above. I will give you a chance counter on that front before proceeding.

Okay. Yes, very angry indeed.

Agreed.

You didn't answer your rhetorical question! I am interested in hearing your definition of updates. For instance, would you expect a company to keep updating PA for 50 years at no cost? Maybe 100 years? Do you agree that it is silly to expect them to do so indefinitely with the game is a pay-once model?

What are the industry standards? Is it to keep updating the game for free forever? There is not a single company that does that forever. And Uber is going to do it for much longer than most.

What have they done that is greedy? Let's say they take all their 'profit' and use that to make content for PA until they run out of money. What then? I believe that is called a not-for-profit organisation and I don't think that is what you are trying to say.

So, the assumption must be that they are in fact rolling in the dough, and that they can actually afford to make the content of PA:Titans for free without any more sales. I do not agree with this, and this relies completely on information that neither of us have.

This is emotional appeal only, appreciated but nothing to say about it as a result.

Why do we deserve content never promised to us?

This depends once again on what you believe updates to encompass.
Titans definitely is content. Should it be free content? I do not think so. I don't think even the kickstarter backers should have received it for free.

Well, that escalated quickly.....

Ok i think this would have not had been a big thing Uber Entertainment just made this a dlc and maybe made it like 10$ and boom no arguments

This might be my last reply. In which case I guess you guys win unless someone picks up the torch.

So essentially what you're saying is that lawyers define ethics, if it's legal it's ethical, and if you're not being forced, you have no responsibility.

Well, glad we settled that. /sigh

I realize I am wasting my time, but if I stop then everyone will conclude we lost because we gave up, not because it's completely futile from the outset because of pandemic empathy deficiency and social policy ignorance.

This whole debate is based ultimately on the lie of the profit motive. If I tried to explain it would seem like such an off topic diversion that you would all conclude I'm typing literally into the wrong forum.

So I'm going to try to reply, but understand, I'm not putting my heart in it, because this is a completely lost cause.

That's based on the ethical assumption that it's right to own exclusive rights to the source for effectively all time.

In a sane society there were would a reasonably short delay, after which time the code would become open and the community could carry on the project. (Much like generic medication formulae.)

Even without fixing that hideous social defect, many abandoned games can carry on for decades if they are remotely modifiable even with zero support.

I do not believe that Uber has the right to be paid ad infinitum for finite work. At some point I do expect them to stop making updates and move on to another project. But first they should be held to a basic ethical standard of finishing what you say you'll finish. They didn't even last a year. I didn't pull the dates on my avatar out of a hat.

If they can't finish with the money they've been given and they need more, then they can ask us. Donations would obviously have happened if they had been requested in good faith. Or if they couldn't get the needed funds then they can say thank you, stop working, explain, and dump the code on the crowd for forking and mods etc etc.

It's not our fault that Uber failed to parley the funds given into the product promised. It may not be their fault either. But secrecy because profit motive prevents a dialog with us. At best we get press releases and versions of "your call is important to us." We don't get to examine the work flow or the books or the code.

It's a matter of jobstack.

Completion of the primary task obviously should come before another use of the funds. How many players walked away from this game because in their opinion is was never going to be completed?

White knights need to understand that it is possible for Uber to fail and that failure does not mean zero interest in the game. It means failure to deliver a reasonable product with the money allotted. It certainly doesn't mean converting PA into a demo and sending a second bill for the full version.

I'm saying that if we permit this, we just slid another 50 feet down a rather awful slope. I'm a social policy analyst for all intents and purposes. So seeing where this is heading motivates me. (No doubt all the white knights disagree. Futile to try and change that.)

One of them yes. But the method is important. An arbitrary version check and gate would be insufficient. It would need to be like it is with FA, where the game is just so different because upgrades/changes/additions that it's non sensical to match them apples to apples.

Sure cross game compatibility would be cool, like street fighter vs mortal combat vs marvel, or Ta vs Civ But titans is not even a new game by any rational appraisal. In every sense beyond the naming it is at best a dlc grade improvement. (A pox on paid dlc.)

Actually no. They decided to cripple PA by not pushing the update fully because paywall greed. Obviously updates to titan units can't be pushed because we don't get titan units.

PA is now a demo for Titans. If I want the full game with all the units I have to buy the full version. Again. And all you guys who got the key to the pay wall without paying think it's perfectly fair.

But no body told me I was buying a time limited demo.

Because showing that this action on Uber's part is without substantive precedent is important to the ethical evaluation of their action. If this were just a clear copy of previous practice the community wouldn't be so divided. This action was designed to achieve a particular response. Part of the plan was to split us down the middle.

Paid DLC would have gotten a different kind of backlash. (Especially if they didn't give away copies to buy a layer of white knight insulation.)

Step one is defining the action. And the first step of that process is looking at history to get some context.

They gave us the unit cannon in PTE and we tested it and they told us it was coming. Why did they not do this with titan units or the other new units? Because they had this plan. And they knew better than to ask our opinion.

No.

I'd expect them to go on for as long as they are willing past the point of genuine effort proportional to the money received. At which point I'd expect/hope them to ask for more money in exchange for more updates, or gracefully and ethically close the project.

It is their greed that has no endpoint. Not our reasonable demands. You act like I'm asking them to be my dev slaves for all eternity when in fact it is they who are wanting me to be their cash cow for all eternity.

This is what I hate most about white knights. You guys act like we're the selfish ones. We're cool with finite work for finite pay. We just expect to take delivery of what we paid for at some point. Uber showing up with our delivery in a box and an invoice and a padlock for the incomplete version is as many have said (verbatim) a slap in the face.

Firstly, it's been less than a year. You are jumping the gun on "forever" to the point of wild hyperbole.

Diablo 2 was still getting updates in 2011. The last ladder reset was May of this year.

Secondly, the gaming community consensus is clearly that PA is/was unfinished. (Not just this official echo chamber.) It needs to meet that expectation before the company can start making and selling new products.

Would you feel the same way if they had named Titans PA2? Do you genuinely believe Titans is a totally new game? Did you really think PA was completed? If so, you're in the extreme minority.

You have it backwards.

We do not owe them a return on a new investment. We already made our investment and they owe us a return.

Clearly they can afford to make titans because they did.

Whether or not they can (or should) profit off of titans is a separate issue of entrepreneurial gamble. Especially when titans clearly is far closer to a content patch than even a DLC, let alone a SAE.

True, but it goes to my motivation. I'm not here because I'm greedy or lazy. I alone refute the narrative white knights generate to dismiss all of my kind. (I even have a very pretty younger girlfriend and I don't live in my parent's basement I am kinda chunky though, 6'4" 250) We are not what you say we are.

Did you receive yours free? If you think you should have paid for it then why don't you buy mine?

(Not really asking because even if you did it wouldn't change the ethical character of what Uber did.)

In any case your ideology is dogmatic in nature and clearly Uber could never meet your exceedingly forgiving standards of abuse. We'll never agree. And so this is futile.

Maybe I'll have the energy for another reply here later but I doubt it.

I'll just go back to my "cesspit of vitriol, entitlement and asininity." ~cwarner7264

(And we're the rude ones /smh)

Ethics is subjective.

That said, I think you'd agree not getting paid for an honest day's work is not ethical.

So - if I understand you correctly - most of your arguments are based on the fact that you think that the original PA isn't finished yet.

I think we can all agree that getting money for the development of an unfinished product and then selling a derivative product as finished for more money is ethically dishonest.
Additionally it is clear that a company that wants to survive needs to sell products, as long as we do not change the fundamentals of our current form of society.

So to me it looks like the real question here is if PA is finished or not and/or how Uber goes forward with the existing PA user base.

And it really looks like there is a different set of views on that. After the asteroids release there was this perception within the forum that almost all promises from the Kickstarter were done and only polish and bugfixes were missing. Well, that is what the Uber forum looked like, I don't have any information about other forums.

Without judging this it looks like there is more than one way to interpret the situation.

@bsergent:
1. As you do seem reasonable at base to me, I may ask you a question:
Do you agree that a dev doesn´t have to support a game till eternity? And with eternity, I mean "as long as the developer keeps existing".
2. Nobody knows what will now happen with PA:Vanilla after Titans is released, whether the promised ongoing base enhancements (but no new features) will be delivered or not.
BUT it´s a strong argument that the enhancements will fold it Uber already showed off that they wouldn´t drop PA once before, although many, many opponents voiced they wouldn´t...
3.You asked how Uber was able to develop Titans in the meanwhile. I cannot answer that for sure, as I was surprised a lot by the release
I guess it was a "TotalIn" and if Titans wouldn´t rock and sell good enough---good to see it does by the way---they might go for bankruptcy.
4. I see a lot of criticism from your side concerning the point how Titans has to be called, categorized, or whatever.
Are you really sure this isn´t distracting you from the important parts? Does it matter that PA is integrated in Titans instead of two seperate launchers? Isn´t that even the more comfortable way of doing it?
5. Some core stuff: PA was an ambitious concept on Kickstarter. Uber could have gone the easy way and just promised "Supcom+" instead of that they presented a ways bigger concept. Quite comparable to what CIG did with Star Citizen instead of "Freelancer+". The downside of doing things that way is that you have to gain money after you campaign ends course the costs you have to face are higher than your inital budget.
As they delivered awesome, ground-breaking, revolutionary things like Share Army (so well done it got adapted by Blizzard for StarCraft, can´t stress that point enough) and RealPlanets, they do have done something right: Not getting trapped in the circle of doing the same thing over and over again! Just like StarCitizen already has revolutionized the way we spacefight, now we know how a SpaceSimHUD has to look like and so on...
...afterwards, it took a long time and probably a lot of money to flesh out the game around such stuff. But it worked out and such overwhelming achievements have to be rewarded, don´t they?
If they got in several thousands of Dollars each day in Alpha & Beta like StarCitizen does, they wouldn´t probably have asked to charage returning customers money for Titans. But they don´t, they don´t get that constant stream of money. That´s why they have to, and that´s why it´s no problem!
6. Last thing, the argument against experimentals/superunits never was (well, at least no valid argument...) that they´d suck, but they´d be heavy to implement and hard to balance and that users weren´t sure whether Uber would be able to do them right. It´s no "shields vs. no shields"-discussion, PA with shields wouldn´t be PA anymore. (at least in my eyes)

In the amount of time taken writing and reading this thread we all probably could have earned enough money to buy PA: Titans for everyone who's butthurt about paying for content tehe.

Anywho I'm off to buy more commanders because I tried stuffing money into my CD drive when Titans downloaded but apparently that didn't go through.

"As they delivered awesome, ground-breaking, revolutionary things like Share Army (so well done it got adapted by Blizzard for StarCraft, can´t stress that point enough)"

Are you sure about that?

http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee

Sorry, didn´t know that, but then Uber clearly were the onces that brought it back to live anyways...

And a question anyways: Did it worked out nice? Were double commands handled correct? Were their any issues? Course ShareArmy is an issue-free implementation of the idea I´m interested in these points in particular!

If you genuinely think downgrading a product I paid for to demo/abandonware status is an "honest" day's work, and you think said payment should come mostly from people who already paid once for said work, then we have nothing further to talk about I guess.

/smh

Yes PA being clearly unfinished is a part of my argument but I think I've made it clear there is a great deal more to it than that on close examination.

But on this aspect of the debate, I don't think PA's status as unfinished can be rationally disputed. (Even if you did say it was finished it clearly hasn't been finished for even a third of its, now incredibly short, lifespan.)

I would certainly argue that the majority of players and third parties deem it unfinished. The very word unfinished occurs in a great deal of posts on the subject of PA generally. This is important because third party gaming press and gamer blog posts could be one of the few samples of independent opinion.

Also a great preponderance of comments on the steam titans announcement, including the very first post, are complaints based on the notion that PA is unfinished and therefore a new product is completely unjustified.

The EA movement itself makes it very hard to define a finished game anymore and I think Uber is quite consciously exploiting this ambiguity.

I'm a (crappy) modder. I've looked at the structure of the game in great detail and unfinished is definitely a word that applies at that level in my admittedly inexpert opinion. The missing but logically obvious API calls for example: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/pa-server-api-requests.61182 (Which Uber ignored for the duration the PA's life. Now we know why.)

I expected GW mode to be multiplayer (at least co-op) at some point. I expected the finished game to be far less reliant on cloud servers. The demands of self hosting are still quite high. I expected a tutorial at some point. I eventually expected build templates and launch day FA matching in all nuts and bolts areas, like stability and path finding. I'm sure there are other good arguments but you get the idea.

Perhaps most importantly I also did NOT expect the game to be abandoned in less than a year with the company still solvent. The argument of titans updates partly applying is irrelevant because clearly that's just an incidental bonus. Especially if we take it at face value that titans is in fact a new game, and not just a PA copy pasted, modded, renamed, and reposted.

Frankly in this context the existence of completion debate at all should have shut down any internal discussion of ending sales of the product. At least without discussion with the community. They sprung it on us D-day style. (T-day?)

So yeah, there are ways to interpret this data, but when it's clearly along bribery and theft lines you can see where the real problem is.

This is an unprecedented set of moves.

Uber intentionally divided us by charging some and waiving others in a very mercenary, punitive, manipulative, fashion.

Those excused from the fee form the vast majority of the people arguing the fee is justified. That would tell a third party all they need to know about which side is most biased. Exactly no one rational would ever conclude the white knight opinion in unbiased.

That's expressly why bribery is illegal in virtually all contexts where decisions are considered important.

I think a development firm should support all products they continue to sell and that they should continue to sell.

It is justified to end sale of a product at some point, but not in PA's case for reasons already stated.

Sales numbers of titans are radically untrustworthy given the extortion used on half the existing base to achieve much of those numbers and how many owners were gifted copies.

At most I suspect this is a flare up among existing owners coming back to try out the new content. Free or not.

(In anycase, I don't exist to assure Uber's continued existence. I find it amusing that the libertarian free market crowd defending Uber's apparently inalienable right to eternal life and infinite profit by any means necessary admits no provision for the entrepreneurial gamble to come up snake eyes.)

Put simply, a lack of planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

I might have donated if asked. But I feel quite literally stolen from. And I am not alone. PA is now clearly a demo for titans. They admit that by pulling it. They admit it's essentially the same game by pulling it from the store. They know that anyone who bought both would be outraged and would just get a refund on PA base.

No one rational is arguing they are genuinely different games. That is an objectively indefensible position.

Besides, if the sales were honestly so good and coming from actual new players, then where' the harm in making good with the existing player base?

Either it's not selling well among new players after all, or they are extremely greedy.

Besides again, failure to gain is not loss.

I assure you, they will not see dime one extra from me. In fact they are incurring a small loss because I will no longer maintain my mods. (How can I without a copy of the current game?) I may even pull them once it becomes clear which direction Uber will finally head in.

And of course I'll continue to make bad press for them. If bad press even exists that is. Maybe I'm being suckered. Time will tell.

It would be tolerable if titans was actually a separate new game. And not essentially a first party mod.

And they charged accordingly.

I disagree. But this goes to the off topic bits about the worship of the profit motive that I don't share. Again, I'm 100% sure I've put more work into my writing than all of uber has put into this game. I've made in my entire life maybe 200-400$ off of it. Total. And it's all free for anyone to read.

I'm not in it for the money. (Need I point to linux? Firefox?)

Frankly I have little respect for people in it for the money. And I certainly have no pity for them. They remind me of phrases like: "...ever open beak..." and "...what have you done for me lately?..." What they deserve as a living as human being is a separate debate.

(I'm in favor of a UBI by the way.)

http://torrentfreak.com/how-shall-the-artists-get-paid-isnt-a-question-its-an-insult-130818/

Fair enough. I personally like experimentals. But the AI always has an economic advantage over me because it by nature can micromanage everything without limit. It can totally "focus" on expanding in all directions as well as the war effort. This means in a race to nukes/game enders it always gets there first if it does everything right.

The only way I feel like I ever beat the AI is because it let me win. But that's ok with me. I'm essentially here to play with little toy robots in a cool solar sandbox. Pew pew pew!

/sigh

I'll miss the days when this game didn't remind me of greed and injustice.

I still hope they'll turn it around. As I said, time will tell if I'm a fool or not to still have a shred of hope for Uber growing some integrity.

Maybe people on the steam forums have walked away in cynical disgust forever. I would like to seem them pleasantly surprised.

And the nearly 1800 signers of the petition agree with me I would think, at least for now.

Mediocre bait. Am I expected to flip out and call you names and get myself banned? Try harder.

FWIW I don't appreciate being called "butthurt." I find that dismissive, offensive on par with a slur, and unproductive. I always have. I see it essentially as a prison rape joke or a repugnant trivialization of child abuse.

I would have simply reported your post but can anyone blame me for suspecting that the mods agree with your hate? Also I feel you need to be called out for it in public.

Parsing your Horatio Alger hate speech as an argument though, as common and boring as it is, we find that you feel that the issue is cost, and unoriginally and simplistically assert that anyone who didn't get a free copy like you is presumably lazy. If I'm wrong about the translation, you have only yourself to blame.

Ironically that argument is self refuting since you admit this comment was work yet you also admit no one is paying me for it. So by your own admission I can do work but not get paid, so your premise that work leads to money is obviously flawed.

I guess you didn't actually read my spoiler text so let me paste the relevant bit for you so you don't have to be bothered with any unnecessary reading which you obviously hate so much.

"The objective of our backlash against the titans debacle for the record is not simply a free copy of titans. I will not forget this attempt even if I receive said copy. It's exactly like Steam's effort to monetize mods."

"This is about not rewarding shady behavior. More importantly it's about preventing even worse in the future."

I don't expect to be able to talk you into having integrity since you're apparently cool enough with prison rape and child abuse to joke about it, (you're probably even proud of it) but let me just say for your theoretical understanding something which is obvious to everyone else: There's more to this than the 13$ fee I would incur if I bought titans.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=define principle

Good thing that's not what they did. I'm done here. I don't know why I ever even bothered. You're not here to argue. You're here to pour gasoline on the bushfire. You'll never listen to anything anyone says. Your mind is made up. If you had anything even resembling an open mind you wouldn't have such a provocative avatar and smug self-assuredness. You are part of the problem. You will always be part of the problem. And gaming would be better off without people like you.

inb4 you ask sarcastically if gaming would really be better off without people fighting back against "greedy" companies and "unethical" behaviour.

@bsergent, I take issue with you notion that Uber somehow 'downgraded' your existing game with the release of Titans.

How exactly did PA get downgraded? Since Titans, original PA got a nice updated UI, additional voice stuff and engine changes that enable things like the new terrain.

PA has constantly been constantly updated since it first hit early access several years ago. Whilst over the time things have been chopped and changed a bit, no recent content has been removed from PA, quite the opposite.

Everything that was in PA *before Titans released* is *still fully present, playable and working* after Titans release. I do not see the 'down grade' there?

You may have issue with the fact you wanted more from original PA, well that's a personally and subjective opinion (I personally very much enjoy the base game). However if we stick to more objective things you can in no way suggest that PA has been downgraded- that is simply wrong.

As I said above:

• "The argument of titans updates partly applying is irrelevant because clearly that's just an incidental bonus. Especially if we take it at face value that titans is in fact a new game, and not just a PA copy pasted, modded, renamed, and reposted."
• "PA is now clearly a demo for titans. They admit that by pulling it. They admit it's essentially the same game by pulling it from the store. They know that anyone who bought both would be outraged and would just get a refund on PA base."

Which doesn't answer my question to you. You are saying "they removed original PA from the store, ergo it's now a demo"... that doesn't explain however:

- What have they removed from PA to constitute you calling it a down grade?

- How does having a newer iteration of a game turn what was a full game a few weeks ago magically into a demo? Was SupCom a 'demo' after the release of FA? Was TA a 'demo' after the release of Core Contingency?

I've given extensive and complete replies to everyone making a legitimate argument and even a few who didn't.

I am absolutely listening. Again, as I said, don't you think I'd prefer to be happy with the way things are?

As for my avatar, did they or did they not pull it from the steam store on or around the 18th of August? Was it or was it not released sept 5th of the previous year? Was a desire for profit not part of Uber's goal in releasing titans?

My apologies for being confident in my position but I've been given no sufficient reason to change any of them. I'm not going to pretend like I'm unsure of myself. But that is balanced by the fact that I am absolutely willing to say I was wrong if proven so and I'm extremely forgiving when a gesture of conciliation is made.

Predicting my response doesn't intrinsically counter it. I wasn't going to ask that actually but you make a good point. Clearly some part of you gets it.

They have removed full implementation of future updates. Titans technology can be found in GW mode but not used. The Game is now a Demo for titans. It spams for titans. It's balanced for titans, which I cannot build without folder trickery. It in terms of technical detail is a crippled copy of titans. The titans content is in my folder now but I can't officially access it without paying an additional fee.

They really might as well make PA free to sell titans. (I would buy titans at that point in principal by the way)

Comparing real SAEs and DLCs to titans is a false premise as I elaborated on above at length. If you're not going to read what I typed the first time, I see no point in typing it a second time.

I may or may not reply in a timely fashion. But I'll probably reply eventually.

I think your grave avatar is hilarious.

The problem here is that what a "real" addon/dlc/whatever you want to call it is is highly subjective.
To my understanding some of the TA addons "only" added a bunch of new units and maps...
And the reasoning that the base game is devalued because it can't be bought anymore with the addon attached to it really is beyond me.