STEAM

Honestly the irony of this situation is that the Steam community is far more accepting of unfinished or unplayable games than they are of expensive games. Ignoring the feelings of people here, A $20 release probably wouldn't have been a disaster at all. Even with the game playing the way it does.

As far as that point goes, first of all, it *STILL* as of this very moment (I believe) isn't labeled in any special way on Steam, as a "collectors edition" or whatever. I won't belabor that point, however, and air on the side of grace there.

But to be honest, yeah I probably wouldn't have been so enraged...that's at least a more standard way of doing things. Even better, do what 99% of all other game development companies have done in this instance, and charge LESS for the unfinished project to consumers whose trust you have not yet earned and ramp it up as it gets closer to release, so that those who wait the longest to "buy in" pay the most.

Kickstarter is it's own, thing, really -- it's a leap of faith on behalf of consumers. I encourage people to do it for projects they really care about, but if anything Kickstarters should realize they're more "insiders" and give the developers all the room they need to run their companies properly, without expectations.

Kickstarter is not a retail store, but an investment platform. Frankly, there's already this amazing OTHER Kickstarter in existence -- it's called the "Stock Market." People invest their money, and can even possibly get money in return! But in that crazy system, even then investors don't get to walk into any retail store they invest in and take things off the shelf. The investment is a separate entity from actual retail purchases.

Prison Architect is one I can name off the top of my head.

I don't know that full story, but from what I do know their fans had very similar outrage. Kind of proving there's more behind this than "stupidity." I admit there have been times when I've read about internet flame wars and rolled my eyes, but I think this particular debate, in general terms, has some teeth, as this whole "pre-release, alpha, beta, Kickstarter" concept demands quite a lot of understanding on behalf of consumers, and I'm not convinced it's fair to put the onus on the consumers.

hi. thnx for being rational. i totally agree that in hindsight this was a **** up of semantics. and steam not letting them sell preorders with early access didn't help.

anyhow the $90 IS for a digital collector's edition but i don't expect you to not be mad knowing that now. do you have any ideas on a FAIR way for uber to right this perceived wrong?

Doesn't Prison Architect sell alpha access for less on steam than their official page?

Plz stop quoteing out of context. The following quote shows the whole discussion:

So in this context you said:

"Devs are already gettign useful Feedback and Bug Reports, they already have 8k+ potential(only counting the KS numbers and not including ANY pre-orders or upgrades since) Alpha testers, they don't need (or even want) more technically speaking, it's already ridiculously large."

And than i asked you if it is a fair thing that only people who are willing to pay and/or have the money to pay 90$ can play the alpha.

-The feedback of an packer is not DIFFERENT at all in terms of quality compared to the other fans.

-signing up in an forum is not the same than playing the alpha.
Of cause everyone can sign up in the forum ,as you said, but not everyone can play the alpha

And you have not answerd the question why only +90$ packers should be able to play the alpha.They dont give better feedback than the rest or do they ?

You also have not answerd the question why it is not enough for an developer to get good feedback and bugreports from the alpha tester in reward of letting him play the unfinished game. Why does he have to charge extra money?

And why is it 90 for an alpha game when the finished game with all the features will cost only the half, 45 ???

The rest of your post is just you describeing why its a good thing to have an alpha. I already know that.And the part of the "assumptions i make about a lot of people".

If you want to pay 90+ for an alpha you can do that .
Yes there are not many sci-fi rts out there and so people are on some kind of deprivation or starevation, call it whatever you want .
And yes those people are more willing to pay an high amount of money to get their playtime.And its unfair to take advantage over this kind of behavior.

I dont care if you dont see this behavior this way because you are one of them and act in the same way they do.

No need to be carefull for me i just describe the things i see.

Of cause i am biased.
You are biased,to.

Humans have opinions.

By that line of reasoning, you could slap a title like that on any game and bump up the price a healthy penny without actually doing anything.

I should keep this in mind in my future endeavors :lol:

Although I know you guys think I'm "stupid" at this point, and may not believe me, I actually do have some real, professional marketing and PR background. I was a journalist for a newspaper for 3 years, and I have been a web developer for private clients for the past 3 years since then. So, I do have some ideas, and I do sympathize with Uber in this scenario. I actually don't believe they meant for any of this backlash to happen, and they probably didn't expect it would have this big of an effect, and perhaps in fairness it shouldn't have, but people do have emotions about things, and you can't deny them.

I think probably a good place to start, as much as it sucks to do so and as much as he probably REALLY doesn't want to, would be the lead developer (I forget his name, and I apologize for that) to write a personal, heart-felt apology for the confusion to fans. That apology should include at least acknowledgement of the detractor's feelings about this issue.

Taking it down from Steam is probably overkill. But perhaps reverting to the $40 pre-order (without alpha access) model would be advantageous toward quelling the frustration and confusion. It still gives the company a way to attract some pre-release sales, while not giving the impression that they're trying to gouge consumers (again, whether or not they actually are is irrelevant at this point).

The Kickstarters, as well as anyone who has bought the game on Steam thus far, would, of course, be allowed to continue their access of the alpha. But in the meantime, the entire company should probably lay very low, lol, unless it is to emphasize how sorry they are. I would be shocked if there aren't at least a few journalists who want to dig into this story at this point, as it's a little juicy, but if they come, I would suggest *POLITELY* declining their interviews, unless, again, it's to emphasize how sorry they are.

Short of that, they're just going to keep fanning the flames.

And I, despite my expression of my anger, hope that in the end it works out for them, as I would love to see, creatively, where they go with this game.

And, as a final suggestion, I would suggest subcontracting a PR/marketing firm to help them with this stuff because, no offense, computer programmers are not naturally people-friendly, and probably don't think much about these kinds of issues. And they should listen to them and go along with what they say without much question at this point.

You say that like unscrupulous developers the world over aren't falling over themselves trying to do that already. =P

garibaldi5, we're done. You're making claims up about "quoting out of context" when I replied to your most recent post and that I didn't answer a question you didn't ask. Changing up your wording and what you're talking about after the fact doesn't contribute to a Discussion.

Mike

Oh, I know they do . Which just makes it silly in my mind that Uber should have done it, because of how much of a dishonest tactic it is.

Oh, people. How they will believe anything.

And mp, I certainly don't think you're stupid. While lowering the price wasn't a good idea (as I said in another thread, one bird in the hand over two birds in the push), changing the presentation of the product (not entirely their fault with that big "now available" sign on the front) would have been an ideal setup. However, the point was so that backers could convert their keys over to steam keys, and I don't know if that would have happened if done in that way. Could've, I don't know how the system works.

I'm just sad that it's come down to being toxic over such a silly topic as to change how the product was displayed. To me, it's like yelling at a friend because their ppt wasn't organized as well as it could have. Not worth it, and bad for everyone.

I generally agree. In hindsight alpha on steam EA may not have been a good move. The perceived injustice is that Uber is trying to gouge their most enthusiastic consumers - that couldn't be farther from the truth but the reality doesn't matter at this point. Waiting for the problem to blow over might work but there's nothing to lose by acknowledging and sincerely responding to the steam community. If the preorder could be listed along with early access that would go a long way, relabeling the early access to an Early Access Digital Collector's Edition would be helpful as well.

Even though they'll probably stick to their guns and keep the game up,

that seems like a pretty reasonable plan

Well I don't think that there has been anyone who isn't an obvious troll has said anything to that effect. I can assure you that the vast majority of people who saw the price thought "well that's expensive, guess I will wait for the price to come down before I buy it" and went on with their lives.

But this is a dangerous game for Uber to be playing, they are generally an unknown developer and this is probably many, if not most people's first experience with them. It is very difficult to dodge a bad first impression. Can they do it? well... probably. This isn't really going to be the cause for doom and gloom that some claim it to be.

What this will probably evolve in to in the end is a learning experience for Uber. In the future they will probably take more care in how they do this sort of thing. As was discussed earlier in this thread, there are a lot of devs who do similar things to what Uber is trying to do here, some do it better, some worse, and there are things they can learn about how not to do this sort of thing.

While I agree that listing the $40 per order next to the $90 collectors edition is a great idea I also feel that the part of the Steam community that gets upset by these sorts of things can suck it. Really really hard. Nobody is forcing them to buy it now or ever.

Also this isn't the legal system so precedent doesn't mean anything. Companies do paradigm altering things in all sorts of markets all the time. Precedent only lasts until someone else thinks of a better idea.

Dishonest? There is nothing dishonest in anything Uber has done up to this point. Stop being stupid.

Ooooh boy. Antillie. I think you got a bit caught up. I was saying that Uber wasn't dishonest, specifically because they didn't use the "collector's edition" tactic.

I know it's a frustrating topic, but I'm with you here

Well, yeah, it's obviously nothing to do with law. It's to do with standard practices.

For decades (my first system was an Atari at the age of 8, so that's how long I go back) the system was such that game PUBLISHING companies essentially were the "kickstarters" and took on the risk of developing a game, with the promise of exclusive profits.

Fast-forward to the time when Kickstarter/Minecraft started to gain popularity, the game industry changed (on the whole for the better) to developers working outside of traditional game companies (as is the case with Uber and Planetary Annihilation) to sell directly to consumers.

Flash just a few years beyond to today, and it almost seems like now game developers themselves, in their "indepedent" form are starting to kind of take advantage of the consumer trust that is so important to the Kickstarter system, wherein investors are not only not guaranteed profit, rather where the only benefit they might receive is the good feeling that they might get from seeing a product they would enjoy having personally come to market.

That's a precedent -- not a "legal" precedent, but a precedent in the sense of the true meaning of the word. A trend, a commonly accepted practice.

Again, it's THAT precedent that people like myself object to.

There is nothing dishonest about a digital collectors edition either. In fact as long as the price and what is to be bought for said price are clearly explained no business transaction is dishonest.

Now whether or not said price is a good deal is another matter entirely.