Provided they appreciate how valuable that input is. Charging your players for the privilege, however, is borderline criminal when the final product will be free.Įven worse, in my opinion, is that people are supporting that with their wallets. I think the ability for studios to have 2-way conversations with its player base during the development process is invaluable. To be clear, I'm not indicting the concept of Early Access here. Interestingly, one aspect of my Twitter conversation with Smedley revolved around the game's funding, and he admits that "if we could fund H1Z1 another way I would have preferred it." Did someone at Sony refuse to fund the game traditionally? And for what reasons? Then in another tweet he's somewhat dismissive about the $20 asking price, saying "if it's a lot of money to some people they shouldn't spend it. That being said, Smedley agrees that people have a right to be upset at SOE for changing their minds on such a core part of the here's what I can't disagree with - people that are pissed off at us that we changed our minds about it. 5% - that's a real number as of this tweet. Smedley argues via Twitter that the low refund request rate thus far indicates that most players are quite content with the airdrop hah I bet you didn't think I'd answer that :) the answer is. Hopefully SOE President Smedley is rapidly coming around to this failed logic, because Sony is now offering "no questions asked" refunds to players who paid for H1Z1's Early Access on Steam, saying via Reddit that " If you feel like the airdrops are an issue for you, you may immediately request a refund to - this offer applies till Monday and it applies only to people that have purchased the game as of 10:30am Pacific today.
Smedley indicated that they would be changed in some fashion to negate the pay to win aspect, but I'm waiting on a response detailing exactly how.)Ĭharging your potential player base to beta test your game is insulting enough, yet we see this tactic used all the time as a pre-order or purchase incentive ("Buy Halo: Master Chief Collection, get access to the Halo 5 Beta.") But when that game is slated to be free-to-play, it's downright infuriating. Is it that unreasonable to think they should actually be compensating you? So what adjective do we use to describe the act of endorsing and perpetuating these disgusting business practices by giving a publisher money for an unfinished free-to-play game? (You'll notice that I pressed him regarding paid airdrops in the final release. On this particular topic, Smedley has come to the developer's also that video with Adam from a few days ago was simply him not even thinking about airdrops.