Simple thread... sign this please

Yes. Just look at the text of the petition. The fact that that kickstartes got it for free isn't even mentioned there. Of course, there are people that were upset about the fact that someone else got it free, but this is just one part of the puzzle.
On the other hand, not giving kickstarters PA:T may have caused some of the kickstartes to go about how they founded this franchise and are now betrayed by Uber. There are 44000 kickstartes, and just getting every tenth of those upset about something fishy is enough to get an raging group that is almost double the size of the current petition.
Maybe you wouldn't be upset in this hypothetical scenario, but I would strongly expect other people being upset instead. So yes, I think there would be a backslash too, just by other people.

But that is not the point here.

I watched this whole thing unfold, and I'm pretty certain that this isn't about shady business practises at all. Or at least not how you all think it is.

Let me take you on a theoretical journey:

Imagine, you have Alice and Bob, both have opposing opinions about some hidden model. Lets A be Alice's opinion and B Bob's opinion with A = not B. Every now and then there is new data about the hidden model. Usually you would think that as time goes on and more data is known of the hidden model both opinions should converge until A equals B. But if you look closely this isn't guaranteed.
It may as well be that over time both opinions start to diverge more and more. One reason for this counter intuitive behaviour is that there is a specific uncertainty attached to the new information. So, for example, Alice takes the new information D only under the assumption that the given information is correct under her preexisting opinion A. This strongly depends on how Alice believes the information is correct and not made up (*). (We all seen this in an discussion: Someone makes an argument, and the opposing party simply says that this is completely made up and takes it as an evidence that his/her standpoint is even more true.)
There are other great examples of this divergence out there: The climate debate is a famous one, where you usually would expect that over time evidence would help to converge to a single "opinion", but instead it gets more and more polarized. Political debates in general are a wealthy source of this phenomena. The common theme is, that new information is not trusted per se. Participants always expect a hidden agenda and thus the new information is weighted on an individual basis depending on the own prior opinion.

Coming back to PA. Look at this thread. There are several arguments thrown into the discussion on both sides and always the opposing side did refute them and take it as argument for their own standpoint.
Take for example the $40 vs. $16 argument: The $40 side tells you that the RSP is $40 and the $16 is only a limited time discount so you should treat this as $40. On the other side the $16 people refer to the statement of Uber that the discount will go on and is only due to technical constraints of Valve's Steam. From an outside view both statements are true: There is a RSP of $40, it is a limited time discount, there is a discount of 66%, and Uber stated that they will prolong the discount indefinitely.
But the point is the interpretation of this: If you have the a-priori opinion that Uber is bad and lying, you will take this as argument for your own opinion and the $16 argument is only a cover up for something shady going on. If you have a a-priori opinion that Uber always was honest and tried the best they can, than this $40 argument will look completely unreasonable to you.
You can do this with all other arguments here. Once you see the scheme it is pretty easy to do so. (**)

Well, what is the conclusion of this wall of text?
This isn't any debate about what Uber currently does. It is almost irrelevant to the discussion, because almost all actions can be interpreted as an argument for or against an a-priori formed opinion. This isn't about shady business practises, it is about you believing that Uber is a shady company beforehand or if they honestly do what they can do.
You can go even further: Several times this forum was called a echo chamber of Uber fans, but this is too short sighted: Most of the people here are following Uber for a long time and they seen that most of the things Uber did in the past were at least on a best effort basis. It is far more easier to believe that Uber did what they did with PA:T because they had no other chance. On the other side when you come from the Steam forums, where people in general always expect an game developer to be shady, be it triple-A companies like EA, Ubisoft or shady single person enterprises like Digital Homocide, then it is far more easier to follow up from this standpoint to a conclusion that Uber is nothing else then this, just because someone stated it on the Steam forums.

So there you have your great divide. It is all that simple.
(Sorry for ruining your debate here.)


(*) For Alice, you can roughly write this down as A ^ (D * P(D|A)), where P(D|A) is the probability that D is true under the condition that A is true. You can formulate this more clearly when using Bayes-Theorem looking at the conditional probabilities of A and B.
(**) Just a quick look at the Steam forum gives another example: This argument followed by that response.

Simple answer... No

It just so happens that I actually contribute to this community rather than blindly throwing hatred against things I don't understand.

And unlike you i don't go around to a thread i don't like and start hating and telling them to GTFO like you do.

Guys, clearly neither side of this argument is going to be convinced by the other, so there's no point in going on about this. He's free to have his opinion and you're free to think it's silly, but now some people are starting to make it personal.

This thread or the petition existing aren't going to do any more damage to Uber than they already have, so just let it go.

By all means lock it. This garbage has no place here.

He's trying to encourage people to sign a change.org petition. That's the petition equivalent of "liking" pictures on Facebook to stop the war in Syria. Sure you might feel self-important about doing so, but what you have done has no meaning.

As it is, its just an argument between opinions, as both opinions have been fairly well fleshed out insisting the other person can't have the opinion they do is self-defeating. Just let it die, and lets move on.

Very informative. What am I signing?

Since the link is not very well-described, I won't open it and will just say "No.".

Nay, I won't even pretend I didn't open it, but I had every right not to. But I didn't just sign without reading, and I wonder how many people did thus making it a not-very-good representation of actual people's feelings or opinions (read: people are stupid enough to click and sign without reading even the title).

So, since I simply disagree with the sentiment, "No.".

This is likely going to be my final comment here, it is clear that starstream2 will not be convinced otherwise so there is no point in posting anymore, reasonable argument or not. Also lock is a bad idea as it gives certain individuals more hate fuel for uber.

So can we all do ourselves a favour and let the thread die.

5 pages in has made it clear that the other side of the fence won't change their mind regardless of the quality of your arguments since he has stated that he is not here to listen to arguments just for you guys to simply sign this in my opinion "bullshit petition with no merit". So far beyond "I should have pa titans because it's unfair" I have not heard one remotely substantiated argument from the other side to make me question my current opinion on the issue. Should we continue I just see this going around in circles.

There are some games that I could list that do the same thing, but its basically making you pay another sum of money to get the now "full version" of the game. We can assume (no matter what the actual reason may be) that we got a lower version of PA and we are upgrading to a higher version of PA which all the players on multiplayer now play. Referencing one of those games, Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth, in which a game has nearly the same amount of players on all the time as Uber Entertainment's PA. Now, all the fans of Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth have bought a new extension to the game and now all the players who haven't upgraded have more trouble finding people that haven't upgraded. This game is basically making you pay for a better version of the game, just as Sid Meier's Civ Beyond Earth and an indirect (but possibly intended consequence, but that does not really matter in terms of what things actually are) consequence is what you guys are complaining about here.

Honestly I think you guys are overreacting and should buy the extension because the non-extended game is not fun anymore compared to the extended game.

You cant compare the two games, civilzation games are actually a good games to play single player, i dont play empire building games on multiplayer so not having the latest version is not so much a penalty.

Pa however has a garbage single player and it only appeal is the multiplayer. So if you do not buy titans you effectively have a very expensie demo taking up space on your hard drive.

Taking pa off sale and attempting to force me to buy titans just to contine to play online is disgusting. Just to get rid of bad reviews my game copy is now null and void unless i pay up.

I couldnt give a toss if titans is good, its the way this company has gone about its marketing that has givin it all the hate. Uber is not getting money from me ever again.

Civ Beyond Earth is easy (for the most part) in single player... the ai only becomes comparable when you set it on the hardest difficulty (which isn't the same for Civ V)

Have you actually played any multi player since titans? There are plenty of vanilla lobbies last time I checked. All players can join vanilla and I often do so.

The servers are up, the game is still playable, sorry but don't see the problem given I still play vanilla as often as I play titans.

Also, upgrade cost is low given the massive discount uber have given, which I might add is still very much available.

Personally I think you're making a conceptual mistake in obsessing about how much you paid for supporting PA. That is totally irrelevant.

It's not about how much people paid back then. It's also only marginally relevant when you bought it. The real issue is about what we've been promised back then, and how those promises had been handled by Uber.

We've been told that we were supporting (and buying) a game that was going to be completed at some point in future and supported for years to come. We have not been told that at some point we had to pay once more to get the completed game * <-- see note at the end.

I felt like a dumb-*ss when I saw PA substituted with Titans. And that happened not even a year after the release of PA, and we all know that when PA has been released it was still incomplete. So basically I feel like we've never got a completed game.

* Note, see below.

I know some will object that titans (and relative super units) weren't supposed to be in PA vanilla. I've been reading this forum since long time and I remember the discussions about introducing super units, T3 techs, orbitals, submarines, unit cannot, etc. Some made in at some point, with great stress to the balance of the game.

However, when I've seen Titans I had the feeling that super units were always in the pipeline. They just pretended they were not, so that they could sell them to us as DLC. And that could have been cool. I'd buy a DLC for expanding a game I like to play.

But the way it has been handled, I don't really think I'll ever buy it.

According to steam stats nearly the same amount of people play both games. (At least at the moment) And all PA:T owners can see/join PA matches.