Can you see why he is saying this?

Agreed on all fronts. However, the two have very different arguments on each side and it gets messy and confusing to have the two debates in the same thread, IMO.

Then Uber shouldn't have put the " exclusive* " Commander in the Early-Access retail box; would have saved this thread a lot of trouble.

*cough-cough timed cough-cough still not clarified on how long it's exclusive for cough-cough

sigh...

I expected it was going to end like this the second they announced Nordic as the retail publisher. Sadly such is the nature of business, a very ugly thing, and I must agree with TB. The game shouldn't see a retail shop before it'a finished.

What I hate the most is (if the post @thetrophysystem made on page 4 is indeed what is written on the box) the lies that Nordic (with or without Ubers approval) put on that box. Those don't even represent the finished product, since subs have been a confirmed no. People are going to buy this and receive a different game that was advertised and that is going to leave bad ratings. This is going to hurt the game a lot more than it is going to help it.

Actually, on Steam at least, there is a Giant Blue Box on the PA Store Page that does just this. However, you'd be surprised just how many people ignore it and proceed to complain anyhow.

Well, its a really big Caveat emptor
But more seriously, at it's core EA is pure CE. It's a buy at your own risk. And you usually can't just look up something in the web while shopping. It's impossible to predict the outcome of an EA-game.

I actually agree with you, but that are my and your expectations. Not the full honesty about the nature of buying something in Early Access.

My post really isn't that much about Uber and PA. I also bought Kerbal Space Program (non-steam) and Assetto Corsa in Early Access, which both are phenomenal games. Similarly i'm still convincend backing PA was a good idea.
But they are outweighted by a lot of EA-titles, which have been abandoned or have very little hope of ever being finished. That's why i really dislike the idea of ever seeing such games in a store, no matter how great a game might be, or how Uber might have been forced to do so.
The outcome is selling boxed copy's of unfinished titles. I can't really see a way how this might be good. Even the idea of 'reaching more people' does rely on them not knowing about the state of a game.

PC Gamer put up an article about it, and the comments are pretty bad.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/30/p...is-now-available-in-bricks-and-mortar-retail/

EDIT: Most of the comments are about the whole Early Access thing, but I should say that there are times I feel like that comment section tends to be a bit "troll-y" on certain games.

I completely agree, that's one of the reasons why i think EA shouldn't get mainstream, even if there are great games. Although tbh, the blue box also tends to be somewhat optimistic and very general. People just need giant red letters saying 'THIS GAME IS NOT FINISHED AND NOT WARRANTED TO BE'.

Buyers not knowing about the details can easily get burned by bad games. That risk is ten times higher in stores.

The comments seems pretty good so far. Cut out the top and bottom comments and you're left with "lol" and "meh".

My opinion is the box should be more clear, otherwise I have no strong feelings either way about physical 'early access'.

Considering that PA is nowhere near the worst offender, quite the opposite actually of an example of Early Access Games, I agree. Heck, there's "Full Release" games that are infinitely worse, and they advertise a working and finished product!

Cool! More publicity for PA and Uber!

Let's say you're an indie game developer, and you live in a society where people have gotten used to video game advertisements being unreliable. Your game has some really cool features, but how do you advertise them? If you just make claims up front, people will ignore them completely, because they're used to outright lies in that department. If you show screenshots or videos, they'll still suspect you might be hiding the bad parts.

The only way to give them a trustworthy account of your game is for an honest third party that they trust to get their attention, and then present the game to them. Instead of just being able to tell people directly about your game, you become dependent on third parties just to provide advertising people can trust.

Seems like it would be much better for that developer and for any consumers who might be interested in his product if there were truth-in-advertising laws that meant you could take advertisements at face value.

I will just point this out again. All this fuss over what the box says and doesn't and we have not even seen the info on the back of the box. Yeah the back where typically all the real useful info is.

Personally, I don't see a single issue with the Early Access boxed Edition on sale in retail stores Worldwide.

He's in the rage business, and business is good.

goddamnit nothing kills wit faster than an accidental double post

Anybody else feel like we have all blown this way out of proportion?

I do, it's silly really.

It's the internet I wouldn't expected any less.

Out of proportion? Isn't PA all out ENORMOUSLY HUGELY MASSIVE EXPLODY ROBOT ARMAGEDDON! Box says Planetary Annihilation, and I can use Moons to annihilate planets. I think the box advertises all you need to know. Everything else is extra features.

I don't care, as long as we still get a game.

If the game stays in "development" for the next four years, with one update a month, and two cosmetics a week, I won't risk buying anything from Uber again. If something works, it's natural to do it again; what's to say they won't do this same tactic for their next game?

Of course, that's assuming that this game does turn out to be a marketing ploy. I hope it doesn't, but... making a game focused at long-time RTS players who would be willing to support it at any cost and then stuffing it full of cosmetics is a shady move.

TB is overreacting slightly, but he has the right to flip. He's not flipping because it's being sold at a store before it's finished; he's flipping because the game has so much marketing. Compared to other early-access titles, it takes a very long time to finish the game, and not a lot of the money is spent on marketing. Taking out half your income and spending it on marketing is either a sign of desperation (not having enough money to finish the game) or greed (having enough money to finish the game but instead using it on marketing for even more money at the expense of the game's development).

If all this game has achieved by next year is cosmetics/DLC, I'm done.