Elite: Dangerous Dumps Offline Single-Player

Robotron23 writes: The developers behind the sequel to legendary video game Elite have, to the anger and dismay of fans, dropped the offline single-player mode originally promised. The game is due for full release in under a month. With the title having raised about $1.5 million from Kickstarter, and millions more in subsequent campaigns that advertised the feature, gamers are livid. A complaints thread on the official Elite forums has swelled to 450+ pages in only three days, while refunds are being lodged in the thousands. It is down to the discretion of Frontier, the game's developer, whether to process refund requests of original backers.

Comments

To be expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Disappointing but not at all surprising.
Their focus on the online multiplayer has been pretty obvious for awhile.
They sell different colored ships and stuff - can't have people running their own multiplayer servers or cheating and give stuff like that away, not if they're trying to run a business.

Re:To be expected

[damnbunni]

Where are the pirate servers for City of Heroes/City of Villains?

I've looked, and haven't found any. There was a server emulator project, but it never seems to have gotten very far.

Re:To be expected

[timeOday]

Minecraft allows people to run their own servers, for free, and is doing awfully well.

Online-membership-only is killing gaming for me. I'm not paying $120/year, forever, to link up my XBox 360s to play with my son sitting across the room. (I scrounge for games that support system link, but there are hardly any.) Nor am I going to watch a bunch of commercials before every game (mobile gaming). The deal is, I pay money for a game, which I can then play as much as I like. Take it or leave it. They're leaving it.

Re:To be expected

[Zephyn]

OMG...is slashdot going to turn into another forum for spoiled MMORPG players to whine about not getting exactly what they want?

It's more like they're not getting the product that they donated money for.

The larger problem is this: If a Kickstarter developer can renege on the promises they made to get people to donate to their project, and not suffer any negative repercussions from it, it's going to make it a lot harder for other developers to get people to donate - once somebody gets away with a bait & switch, everybody else comes under suspicion.

Re:To be expected

[meerling]

I wouldn't say that dumping single player from a game is "not getting exactly what they want", it's more like ordering a luxury 4 wheel drive vehicle, and upon delivery you have a luxury rail car. Major issue of limited usability for many people.

Buyer Beware

[fustakrakich]

This Kickstarter stuff isn't very well regulated...

Re:Buyer Beware

[Dahamma]

You could say that (and in a way it's true), but technically there is no "buyer" since it's NOT a purchase, it's financial backing of a project.

Not much different from venture capital, except by giving $50 instead of $50M you don't get a board seat and massive returns if successful, you just get a possibly sketchy promise of a "reward" for your investment.

Re:Buyer Beware

[Smidge204]

you just get a possibly sketchy promise of a "reward" for your investment.

Kickstarter is NOT an investment. An investment is when you put in a small amount of capital with the expectation that you will get some slightly larger amount of capital back after a period of time. You do not "own" anything when you give money to a Kickstarter project. You are not a stakeholder. You are not entitled to or owed anything.

Kickstarter is best described as a donation. Being more generous, Kickstarter is an advanced purchase, but since there is no guarantee to delivery it's not really that either.
=Smidge=

Re:Buyer Beware

[Dahamma]

Good point. Kickstarter is billed as a micro-investment, but in reality it IS a donation. The reward is basically like getting a coffee mug for giving to PBS, but it's delayed by a year and if PBS goes bankrupt in the meantime you can kiss your mug goodbye.

Re:Buyer Beware

[N1AK]

If you're getting something in return, it's NOT a donation. In this case, it is prepayment for early access to a product. Of course, when you get nothing, or something below your expectations, it's more like a ripoff.

It's a crowdfunding platform. Perpetuating the falsehood that it is more than that just encourages more people to put money into the platform expecting more than they should.

Re:Buyer Beware

[SeaFox]

You could say that (and in a way it's true), but technically there is no "buyer" since it's NOT a purchase, it's financial backing of a project.

I don't think it's possible to apply a blanket label to Kickstarter, which is the first mistake people seem to make with comments on Kickstarter stories.

In my mind there are three distinct types of Kickstarter campaigns.

1. The Distribution Campaign - This is for a tangle good generally, and it's an item the maker already has planned and maybe prototyped as well. The reason for these campaigns is lots of times "we can't get this mass produced unless we order at least x units". So they take the minimum number of units and multiply by the price they want to charge and that becomes the funding goal. These are very straight-forward and the goals are, too. You will get one of the (widgets) in (color) for this backer level. There's little way you wont know what you're getting or for the maker to "rip you off". It's clearly defined what you get. These Kickstarters also have fairly short turnaround times between funding ending and backers getting rewards, because it's a pre-sale drive for the most part.

2. The Charity Campaign - This is a campaign that oftentimes is for a visual art, theater, or dance companies. The money is used to fund a tour for a play to be performed by a company, or a series of exhibits, and another popular example as of late is small independent movie chains being caught with their pants down with the end of film-reel distribution of movies (forced upgrade to digital projection). The rewards are often times simple thank-you's, shout-outs on official websites or Facebook. You name on a "wall of fame" at the business. The higher dollar rewards for these might be admission to a show, or if you're a real high funder, actual face-time (dinners or private Skype discussions) with important individuals about the project. Most backers don't really get any "thing" so there's little to dispute about (unless someone embezzles the money and runs off).

3. The Production Campaign - This is the one that causes the most issues, generally because the goals are not very concrete. Lots of times it's "we want to make a video game and we have these ideas and here's some characters sketches and maybe even some initial computer graphics work, but we can't really focus on this because we have to maintain our day jobs. Please give us monies so we can stop taking all these freelance gigs to pay the rent." Lots of times the backer rewards are copies of said game when it gets released. But the exact form of the game is something that can change during production, which can be delayed, too. This is also the type of Kickstarter that generally can take years to get rewards to its' backers because it requires the people who started it to actually spend time creating something from scratch something afterwards. Another example of this is musicians pre-selling an EP or new full-length studio album they haven't recorded yet. They might have a song or two to demo to you, but the Kickstarter is to front the money needed for studio time, engineering, and disc production of the album.

The problem is lots of people get involved in Kickstarter and don't recognize campaigns for the type they are, and adjust their expectations accordingly. They back one campaign and expect every campaign to be as clear cut or easy as the last, completely ignoring what Kickstarter is -- a showroom for completely unrelated groups of people to reach a geographically diverse audience to seek financial support. They each have their own unique work ethic, and definition of meeting expectations.

I personally avoid Production-type Kickstarters because of the long turn-around times and lack of clear-cut goals. I fund some Donation-types, but mostly focus on Distribution-type campaigns and I generally am very satisfied with what I get in all of them.

Re:Buyer Beware

[Half-pint HAL]

Kickstarter was originally designed to comply with US law. There are laws in the US that cover investments, and Kickstarter is not an investment. These laws were created because of the sort-of-legal scams that would see travelling conmen roll up into a small town and offer to put them on the map by setting up a company or making a film. The locals only had to invest the money to get the film made, and then they'd all be rich. Well, the film would get made, and the film crew would get paid. But the film would never be released, because it was rubbish. The scam was all in the wages -- the conmen were the production staff and crew. So it's not an investment.

Is it a donation? I don't think it is legal to donate to a for-profit entity. Kickstarter doesn't seem to think so either, which is why projects offer at least some sort of token for their lowest levels.

As I understand it, Kickstarter funding is VATtable -- translation, en_US: subject to sales tax. This means there is a clear relationship between the project as a commercial entity and a customer.

There's not a lot of case law to go by, but there's strong legal opinion that the rewards are good or services for sale or hire. If the reward level includes "the game", a lot of people consider that a preorder. The fuzzy bit here is how important the description of the game is. I'd say this is not what was advertised, and I don't see how they can justify dropping it without offering refunds. I'd be surprised if they didn't have enough cash to do it, or at least enough projected sales to be able to promise it later.

Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Dahamma]

Sure, it sucks when projects don't meet their exact launch goals, but I don't have too much sympathy for the "backers" on Kickstarter in general.

The whole thing is clearly labeled as "crowdfunding", not "preorder". If you want to preorder a game, go to Gamestop. If you want to be a backer, i.e. basically micro funding of a startup project, go ahead and use Kickstarter, but in that case you really aren't *guaranteed* anything. There will be poorly managed Kickstarter projects that fail miserably and blow through their investment without ANY decent return/reward. And since you basically agreed to be an investor in the venture (that's why you get a "reward", not a "purchase"), do you know what you can do about that in most cases? Jack and shit.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Idimmu Xul]

If you helped crowd fund my shoe, then I deliver you a hat, I think you'd be a little disappointed. Even if it was an awesome hat.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[ledow]

Agreed. However, crowdfunding for something and then completely abandoning the idea is only going to prompt ire.

You're still obliged, in law, to deliver what you promised you would. Sure, it's almost impossible to enforce that, but you can't go spending the money on holidays in the Caribbean nor can you use it to develop an entirely different game or product. People have had their projects shut down and been chased through the courts for failing to deliver on Kickstarter. It's not easy, but it's no different to any other payment. If you misrepresent what you're going to receive in return for someone's money, it's fraud whether it's an investment, crowdfunding, or written into a sales contract.

To be honest, E:D is my worst Kickstarter. I've contributed to a handful and they've all been great, whether for physical products, digital content, or whatever. I've got several rare beauties of games (I collect mathematically-interesting board / card games), good video games on Steam (including copies), video graphics hardware, all kinds from it.

E:D is disappointing, however, mostly because of the constant demands for more money and the complete under-delivery of the base product. I backed it out of retropathy, yet I have ZERO idea how it plays as yet. That doesn't bother me. But being told "Just X amount of money more and you could see how it plays!" every week in an email is really grating. I regret backing E:D just because of the lack of real return for the backers as yet, and the constant demands for more cash.

That said, it was such a pittance that I don't really care because I always follow your "rule": Never crowdfund with money you can't afford to lose.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Anonymous Coward]

They lied. They claimed offline was part of the project in 2012 and took a lot of money in on the back of that. Now they're going back to the original plan after raking in all that money. They should at least be offering refunds to those they conned, but their refund statement is almost two years out of date and leads nowhere.

This outfit will not make anywhere near month they need to sustain their product. Therefore the online only requirement means this project will disable all copies of the game when they shut up shop in a few months.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Darinbob]

Agreed. However if you lose the money that you can afford to lose, you still have the right to complain about it. And that's what people are doing. Telling them to stop complaining is kind of dumb. At the very least there's some moral obligation to warn potential customers to stay away from Frontier and its games.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Dahamma]

You're still obliged, in law, to deliver what you promised you would.

No, you are absolutely not in this case. Kickstarter is microfunding investments in a project/company, not a purchase of a product with a specific guarantee or warranty. The fine print says as much. Sure, if they absconded with your money for a vacation you could try to sue them. But in this case they tried in good faith to deliver what they could and ran out of cash before implementing all features (not only common but almost universal in the games industry - if you haven't seen this a dozen times you are not a gamer).

t's not easy, but it's no different to any other payment.

This is ABSOLUTELY incorrect. It's not a payment at all, you are NOT buying a product. You are investing in one, and you get a reward if it succeeds. Luckily the majority do, but if they declare bankruptcy and don't product anything because of mismanagement or just bad luck, you get to line up as an investor to collect/sue for any capital invested, which means you are 99.9% shit outta luck.

"Just X amount of money more and you could see how it plays!"

Welcome to the world of "venture capital." Just luckily for the investors it's $50 at a time and not $50M.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Simon Brooke]

I was one of the original Kickstarter funders.

I threw my money into the pot because I got so much fun and game play out of the original Elite. Basically I thought David Braben and his team had already earned it. Am I disappointed that there's no single player offline? Yes, I am. My home internet connection has a long ping time (it's via satellite) so multiplayer combat was never going to work for me. It may be, for that reason, the game won't work at all - FOR ME. But I'm not making a fuss.

Basically if you back a kickstarter you're taking a risk. This kickstarter has enabled an amazing game to be built, and lots of people will get a huge amount of fun out of it; as far as I'm concerned, my money's well spent.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[RogueyWon]

You're right that "backers" need to realise that Kickstarter is not a pre-order mechanism. But developers also need to realise that turning to crowdfunding means, by necessity, a different kind of development model to a "traditional" game.

If this game was - as is more usual - being funded by a big publisher and Frontier decided that the offline mode wasn't working out, then that would be the cue for them to begin a negotiation with the publisher. The publisher might be fine with the change. It might not be. The publisher might want to change its funding committment. It might even want to walk away and leave the project looking for a new publisher. But at the end of the day, it's a commercial negotiation.

Now generally, when a game Kickstarter goes horribly wrong, the root cause is that the developer was a "two men and a dog" team with little to no experience of games development. That's not the case here; Frontier are an established studio with a long track record of delivering games (even if most of those games for the last decade-and-a-bit have been low-profile franchise tie-ins). But they're attempting to behave here as though the absence of a traditional publisher means that they have licence to do what they want without the usual accountability to backers. There's no possible world in which that is reasonable.

So it's no wonder backers are upset.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Half-pint HAL]

You're still obliged, in law, to deliver what you promised you would.

No, you are absolutely not in this case. Kickstarter is microfunding investments in a project/company, not a purchase of a product with a specific guarantee or warranty. The fine print says as much.

The fine print is less important than the law. In the US, microfunding commercial for-profit enterprises is illegal -- this is why Kickstarter, Indiegogo et al don't offer equity: it would get them thrown in jail. In the UK (where Frontier Developments is based), there are no "competent investor" laws so all microfunding is legal, but because there is no equity stake, Kickstarter is not considered microfunding. Last I knew it was considered a commercial transaction ruled by the Sale and Supply of Goods Act, and Kickstarter income was subject to VAT (similar to US "sales tax"). This means that they have to deliver the promised rewards, or declare insolvency.

This is ABSOLUTELY incorrect. It's not a payment at all, you are NOT buying a product. You are investing in one,

As I say, if this was true, the Kickstarter team would now be in jail for breaking investment law.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[AmiMoJo]

According to Kickstarter's TOS:

When a creator posts a project on Kickstarter, theyâ(TM)re inviting other people to form a contract with them. Anyone who backs a project is accepting the creatorâ(TM)s offer, and forming that contract. ...

If theyâ(TM)re unable to satisfy the terms of this agreement, they may be subject to legal action by backers.

So Kickstarter is saying that backers need to sue the project creator for breech of contract if they fail to deliver what was promised. The contract Kickstarter creates between the backer and creator is legally binding, and creators have a responsibility to fulfil it.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[hawkinspeter]

I think you've got a couple of things wrong there. Kickstarter is in no way an investment as you don't get any ownership of the company/project and you don't receive any profits. You "pledge" money rather than "investing".

In the Kickstarter basics, they state explicitly: "Project creators kepp 100% ownership of their work, and Kickstarter cannot be used to offer equity, financial returns, or to solicit loans."

In section 4 of their terms-of-use, they state: "the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward." There then follows a description of the appropriate actions for the creators to follow when it's impossible for them to fulfill the project.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[gbjbaanb]

no, it is a contract - under UK law (and FD are in the UK) once money has changed hands you have some form of implicit contract, though you may have difficulty in court getting your cash back, or it'll cost you more to claim than most backed even in small claims court (£25 filed online)

Plus, the Kickstarter TOS explicitly say that it is a contract between the backer and the producer.

Wow Frontier Sure Can Shovel It

[BBF_BBF]

It's definitely for the backers' own good that the experience be the same for all players... so just one month before release we tell them that we didn't bother to implement the single player offline component.
/s

It took a while for me to decode all that marketing speak to figure out that they were canning single player. It was a deliberate design decision they must have made months ago, and just conveniently "forgot" to tell the backers.

Re:Wow Frontier Sure Can Shovel It

[ljw1004]

It took a while for me to decode all that marketing speak to figure out that they were canning single player.

How did you get that? What I understood was that single-player still exists, but it requires an internet connection and is in a galaxy that steadily evolves. Here's what they actually said:

it does mean the single player has to connect to the server from time to time, but this has the added advantage that everyone can participate in the activities that can happen in the galaxy

So: their statement is that single player exists, and it's in an evolving galaxy, sort of like implicit/automatic DLC.

Re:Wow Frontier Sure Can Shovel It

[Cederic]

With no save-reload ability.
With no modding.
With no "lets try this out for a giggle" without consequences.
With no exploration of your own private galaxy.

Computer gaming is escapism. I want to be a god in my own universe, not an also-ran in theirs.

Re:Oh the horror

[Anonymous Coward]

I FEEL ENTiTLED AND MY OPiNION MATTERS BECAUSE LOUD

"Just pay extra..."

[ledow]

Elite Dangerous is a shower.

I'm one of the backers of the Kickstarter. I am absolutely TIRED of being asked for more money for every damn thing they do.

The number of paid Alpha's, premium content, several Beta's (Beta Premium!) is unbelievable and they seem to want to make me wait until the very day of release before I get anything out of my backing unless I pay more money.

Sure, I get a "reserved Commander name" and a couple of bits of digital content but I have seen nothing of the actual game in all that time except for the occasional screenshot. They have probably made more from the Beta's than they have from the Kickstarter, and every damn newsletter is "just another $15 will get you this...".

I've totally lost any interest and regret backing but, unlike some, I'm true to my word so have written off the money I've given them so far. I've truly not expected to see the game because every preview/screenshot/update still without any access by myself but with begging all the way through it just disappoints me further. If they are milking it that early, what the hell is going to happen in-game when they want to form the economies?

I'm honestly fatigued by the requests for money, which they are still putting in every newsletter. It makes me worry that any final game is going to die from budgetary shortages the second it's release because the begging is so intense.

Meanwhile, all I have to show for backing it is a cart with one item "bought" that I can't touch for another month or so and that's all I ever had.

Honestly? I'm sick of it already. And I haven't even got to play it. Given that it was one of the largest and most successful Kickstarter projects there was, I'm a bit disgusted by how much more they seem to want in order to let me see how it plays, even in a tiny demo.

It's gonna be an over-hyped flop, isn't it? Or crash and burn in the first few months when the servers can't be kept running due to lack of budgeting. And to leave it until NOW to tell people about the lack of single-player, while you're still pasting in 4K screenshots and plugs for various books written in the Elite:Dangerous universe (that doesn't exist yet as far as I'm concerned)? I just don't care any more.

The one Kickstarter project that I really regret backing.

Re:"Just pay extra..."

[gaspyy]

Of all the things you could complain about Elite:Dangerous, you complain about money? The extra 15 pounds is for those who preordered the game, if they want to get early access.

Compared to the Star Citizen money grab, what the Elite devs are doing is just great. There are people who spent over $10,000 (real money!) in Star Citizen to buy ships and a "business hangar". Money spent on a game that doesn't even exist yet (there is just a hangar and an in-game simulator and the controls are a pain).

Re:"Just pay extra..."

[Tyr07]

I'm disgusted that you're disgusted that you didn't receive more than what you paid for.

I paid the price to include the beta access, and I've had a lot of fun with the game, it's actually a lot of fun. I combined it with voice attack and astra and it's quite immersive. Especially playing with friends, its amazing.

You're really missing out over your bitterness that you didn't pay for early access. Personally I'm fine with no single player component, there are plenty of excellent single player space games like the X series (X-2, x3 etc). It's about time we got a quality game like this, that was online and that was their primary focus.

Imagine if you just ignored all the emails, and waiting for the game to come out. Would you be satisfied? Probably. Your real issue, is a bunch of us paid more and are having fun, and you feel you deserve what we got as an extra for you because you're some special cupcake. Suck it up, spend the extra, good game development costs money, and I've seen enough shitty games just trying to make a dime I'm happy to seriously invest money (on a game purchase anyway) for a quality game.

Re:"Just pay extra..."

[jones_supa]

Actually a lot of game servers were run by Internet Service Providers.

Re:"Just pay extra..."

[Half-pint HAL]

Job title: playtester
Employer: Frontier Developments Ltd
£15

Potential applicant: "Is that £15 per hour? For playtesting? Sign me up!"

Recruiter: "No, it's a one-off payment."

Potential applicant: "You're only going to pay me £15 to playtest a near limitless galaxy sim?"

Recruiter: "No, you're going to pay us.

Re:"Just pay extra..."

[Sibko]

I have also paid for beta access.
The game is NOT fun. It's a fucking disaster.

First of all, what's good: The visuals, audio, UI, graphics, etc. Everything related to how the game looks and feels is top-notch. It suckers you in that way.
What's bad: The gameplay.

Oh lord the gameplay. In one word: Shallow. It's like a pile of disjointed minigames. Everything is "there" in the sense of a checkmark on a list, but it is not there in the sense of "I actually want to play this."

And the game is monetized out the ass.

For the longwinded bits, read below:

More detail:
Combat: Like your typical "spacesim", AI is easy to kill, and between players - whoever has the biggest most expensive ship is the winner. Skill doesn't enter the picture because ships are not sidegrades, they are direct upgrades. The incompetent player with 1 million credits will always beat the skilled noob in his sidewinder, no exception. The combat brings nothing new to the genre and lacks serious complexity. (They have a good idea with their stealth system, but it's tacked on rather than a core concept in dogfighting like it needs to be) In spite of all these problems, the combat is probably the best/most fleshed out portion of gameplay and the one that can be legitimately fun for awhile.

Mining: In every game I have ever played, mining has been an exercise in tedium. This game is no different. You shoot an asteroid with a laser until it pops out a rock that you scoop up. Repeat ad nauseum.

Money: Get this out of the way quickly, everything you do - mining, combat, missions, trading - earns you next to nothing. To put it into perspective, the most expensive ship in the game was the Anaconda at 150 million credits (after every stage of beta they increased its price, who knows what it'll be post-launch). Your average mission earns you 15,000cr and takes about 5-30 minutes to complete. If you are extremely dedicated you could probably earn ~100,000cr/hr (more is possible with a good traderoute and a lot of cargospace, but this is hard to find now). It'll take a good year of playing multiple hours per day, to afford the most expensive ship. Then the upgrades to that ship will double or triple its cost, at the least. There were comments by Braben (co-creator) [archive link in case reddit deletes the post as they are known to do with touchy subjects] that the game is going to come with a cash shop. Considering the grind and the comment about the cash shop for credits, I can understand why they wanted to get rid of the offline singleplayer: They don't want people modding the game to get what they paid for.

Trading: It's really just hauling goods, and it's rather boring. There is a 15 minute video here which shows almost the entirety of trading gameplay. (Not including hours spent trying to find a decent traderoute) You fly back and forth, earn a few thousand credits for the trouble and that's that. There used to be a trading calculator available on the forums - you downloaded it, it would check the trade good prices wherever you docked and give you a centralized database from everyone else's information which allowed you to pick the best trade routes. People were using it to make boatloads of cash and Frontier, failing to think of a way to counter this tool by making trade interesting, instead banned it.

Exploration: You literally jump into a system and hold down a button for 5 seconds. Your ship "pings" everything nearby and if its newly discovered, it gets added to the exploration catalog and earns you 1,000-10,000cr (depending on number of planets/stars you found and only after returning to a space station). You can also fly close to the stellar object to do a detailed scan - but it takes a long time to fly around a system and the reward is peanuts. Maybe 500cr per planet. It's faster

Shattered

[Anonymous Coward]

Another disappointed backer from the kickstarter in late 2012.

I have wasted over $500 on this game with the PROMISE that it will be offline.

Now a few days before its official launch, they drop this bombshell, and are not even responding to refund requests.

Absoulutely shattered.

Frontier, hang your heads in shame. I will NEVER purchase anything from you again.

Re:Shattered

[Kuroji]

Frontier is going to fold, and you know it.

What you need to do is pay attention to who is in charge of this, and find ways to boycott any products they have anything to do with in the future. Especially the bastards who were involved in the marketing.

Real investments come with guidance

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You could say that (and in a way it's true), but technically there is no "buyer" since it's NOT a purchase, it's financial backing of a project.

Right, but when grown-ups accept investment in their company/fund/whatever, they normally publish various information about their strategy so investors know what they are backing. If the officers/fund manager/whoever then deviate significantly from that strategy, investors typically have some redress in law and regulatory action may be involved.

It's a simple analogy to look at backing a Kickstarter campaign that states certain things about their project goals in the same way. Whatever the legal position, in practice a deliberate and unnecessary deviation from what backers were explicitly told they were supporting seems likely to end only one of three ways:

1. The project team relent to save their reputation/project and issue refunds to those who feel it's not a project they would have backed under the new conditions.

2. Kickstarter themselves step in to protect their own reputation, somehow forcing the project to issue refunds. This issue could be an existential threat for the crowd-sourcing business model, after all.

3. Kickstarter and/or the project admins argue that a bait and switch is OK under Kickstarter rules and say something weaselly about legal terms and the deal not being what everyone thought it was. If too many backers take a different view and pursue this with their card providers claiming fraud, good luck doing any further business after the resulting chargebacks.

It's not clear to me how significant and widespread the objections to this actually are, but if it's a real problem, I don't really see any way it ends well for either the project or Kickstarter if they don't proactively do something to make things right with backers who thought they were being ripped off.

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[mwvdlee]

Or, perhaps the best option of all:

4. The project team reinstates offline single-player mode.

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[Shadow of Eternity]

The last one is pretty much what happened to Mighty Number 9, they lost a lot of money to chargebacks.

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[gbjbaanb]

And when grown-ups invest in a company/fund/whatever they normally make sure that the information is available before they put any money into it.

but the information was available - it said there would be an offline mode.

Now they just changed their minds, but its ok, they said there would be offline mode when you invested so obviously that makes it ok not to have offline mode now?

Imagine I buy into an ethical investment fund, and later they decide "well, by ethical we meant drugs, tobacco and defence".. investors would be a bit miffed. We have regulators for this in investments, I think its obvious we need the same with Kickstarter - either privately or socially (ie sue them until they change their practices!)

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[Anonymous Coward]

4. The project team reinstates offline single-player mode.

Game creators seem to hate single player anymore. I guess it is because they have to make an actual game with a plot, and goals, and an actual AI to fight against you. It is so much easier nowadays to take an engine (licensed and written by someone else) and create a bunch of pretty graphics for it. Then setup a server and charge monthly fees, no pesky AI or plot to worry about.

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[bluefoxlucid]

You picked literally the worst analogy possible. I'll give you two important facts.

First, investment funds don't actually support the things you buy. A company's stock isn't directly tied to the company, and buying into it doesn't put money into the hands of the company. The big Harvard divesting projects to sell out of oil companies is more likely to make the oil companies huge profit in temporary corporate buybacks and stock reissues than anything.

Second, stocks work by buying off other people and selling to other people. What you call "growing your money in the market" amounts to "sucking cash out of stupid people's retirement funds". The stock market is a partial information game, like poker or blackjack. Some players have access to more information--one or three cards in an opponent's hand, the top card on the deck, and so on--and others have just the minimum. In the stock market, information amounts to understanding of the game itself: high-information players (investment bankers) know how to read technical charts, react to news, and overall predict the market; they also often buy into level 2 quotes, and know which purchase orders in which clearing houses are likely to relate to bankers rather than retailers (i.e. they know when other big firms are making a move).

Overall, 401(k) holders are there to funnel in money; day traders are picking at scraps (and paying loan fees for it); and big banks are leaning over everyone's shoulders and making enormous gains by outplaying everyone. If you make any money in the market, you do it by robbing someone stupider than you.

Enjoy your ethical investment.

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[geekoid]

Actually, his example was fine, your understanding of the market is, well, broken.

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[geekoid]

seven eight it.

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[jythie]

I think it is less a factor of not wanting to make AI/content and more a new generation of developers and what they grew up playing with their friends. Unfortunately often the people who go into development are not representative of the wider population and in the case of the multiplayer-centric teams they have a pretty strong self reinforcing tunnel vision linked to their social group. They do not even see single players people among their peers since multiplayer is such a big part of how they build community (which includes who they hire).

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Game creators seem to hate single player anymore. I guess it is because they have to make an actual game with a plot, and goals, and an actual AI to fight against you.

I fear there is a much simpler explanation: on-line games are far less susceptible to piracy and generate more reliable financial returns.

Next time some pirate posts about how copyright isn't theft because the developer didn't lose anything, they wouldn't have bought the game anyway, and DRM is pointless, consider that the modern games industry is the logical result. Copyright infringement is economic damage and the big game publishers have routed around it.

Unfortunately, in doing so, they have almost killed off entire chunks of the industry, such as single player games with any serious depth, or games with novel gameplay and new ideas. Why bother with little things like creativity and making fun new games when Call of EVE: Advanced WarCraft 2017 is a safe bet to make a fortune?

Most of the innovation in the industry these days is done by the little guys. On very rare occasions, those little guys make it big, but mostly you just don't get the same kind of epic scale and production values at that end of the market.

Beware of Gamers

[Darinbob]

Beware of gamers developing games. Too often you find them preferring their own game play style, ramping up difficulty, no bones thrown to casual players, and so forth. Then it gets defended as "by real games for real gamers" or something like that.

I get a sneaky suspicion this might fall into that category. They've got a "vision" of what they want, and damn the paying customers who say differently.

I mean isn't this part of the whole reason kickstarter games are popular, because they're supposed to listen to customers which is the opposite of what the big name game publishers do?

Re:Beware of Gamers

[Tyr07]

The game isn't difficult, oh wait I know what your problem is. In eve, you would be called a care bear.

Someone who if they lose even once gets extremely upset, even more so if it's because of a player. People need to look at it like a first person shooter, you die sometimes, and that's okay.

This doesn't mean it's not for casual gamers. Casual doesn't mean 'Super easy I never die so I'm the best and feeds ego'

If that's not what you mean I apologize but it's what it sounds like.

Re:Beware of Gamers

[drinkypoo]

People need to look at it like a first person shooter, you die sometimes, and that's okay.

The problem is that you have to work it like a job in order to advance. People get pretty cross when what they've worked for hours to attain is lost in a matter of seconds, especially when it's just because someone is feeling like being an asshole.

This doesn't mean it's not for casual gamers. Casual doesn't mean 'Super easy I never die so I'm the best and feeds ego

No, it means "I don't have to spend hours and hours and hours grinding only to lose all my progress in seconds". Casual gamers don't want to grind.

I can guess the reason

[Pallando-zi]

There's already a single player mode, for days when you don't feel like interacting with other players, and a 'friends only' mode where you only interact with people on your friends list.

Your ships and money are shared between modes. If they added an off-line mode too, then they'd face complaints like "I've just spent 60 hours in off-line mode working my way up to an Asp, and now you're telling me that I can't use it when I play with my friends??!? W.T.H. You guys suck!"

I paid for beta access, and it was worth it

[Tyr07]

Hello /.

I've purchased the game plus it's early access, and I've had a lot of fun with it. I've played games like X3 and earlier so I know what a decent single player game consists of.

Frankly, I think it's about time we received a game that was even of better quality that was just online, we have great single player space games, we really do. However, I always wished they were online, that those ships out there were other players I could comm with or do things with my friends. Elite dangerous, has brought me that. Eve online is a fantastic game, but I always wanted a first person cockpit, full docking procedures, aiming, the whole I'm a spaceship in space experience, not the mmo style.

Elite brought it. They also added new features, and patched them quickly to make the game stable, playable, look fantastic, fun, and immersive. Sitting in the cockpit with voice attack, astra, engaging in combat yelling divert power to weapons! Full impulse! and shooting down npcs or players is great fun.

If they focused on a single player offline mode, I think the game would really suffer, we need that open ended focus where players get the drive the story and history of the game by their actions, not by a predefined script.

I want to see alliances of mercenaries that you know to avoid or that will steal cargo from you. You'll eventually see player factions I'm sure that you recognize as pirate. You get the joy of someone pulling you out of hyper drive, and fighting to stay in it. If they pull you out, you see what it is, oh crap it's system authority, do I fight or run? I kick my engines to full speed as I have a bounty on me and as soon as they scan me, they'll open fire.

I'm trying to get away and spin up my hyper drive engines, and I hear the dreaded 'Ship scan detected' Next thing I know, shots are wizzing past me, I'm under attack. Fortunately my quick reflexes allowed me to get away this time.

It's not always like that though, I've had players pull me out and open fire right away. I was in a slow cargo ship, their proximately slowed the spin up of my hyper drive, I couldn't get away, they destroyed me.

Other times, I was in a small attack ship, the eagle, and I inderdicted other players. Some got away, had enough distance to spool up and run before I could get them, others, not so lucky.

Plus all the docking is fantastic, it's actual ports, you go in the actual station, there is no state change to dock, and land in a landing port. Also even when you're waiting after you landed, and told the platform to pull you in, which it literally does and hides your ship in the station, if you want to go to the outfitting and it 's not done yet, your interface says 'please wait'. That is, your ships interface. You have several consoles, can still look around and muck with them still.

So it's quite well done to make you feel like you're in that ship and things are happening as they should with no loading trickery.

The only state changes are entering hypercruise, which with a bit of network lag you can tell it's a state change, but once in it, it feels natural, and if it's instant exiting and entering feels like it's not a state change. Also hyper jumping to other systems can tell it's a bit of a state change, but you never see a 'loading' screen.

Let this small detail go. It's one of the few games that will really benefit from online play.

Re:I paid for beta access, and it was worth it

[qeveren]

This 'small detail', unfortunately, leaves a number of backers who were depending on an offline mode - that they understood all this time they were going to get - basically shit-out-of-luck. That's kind of hard to let go.

Anyway, the real reason single-player offline got ditched is because the game is going to include technology to upload real-life advertising into the game world. It's right there in the EULA.

Re:I paid for beta access, and it was worth it

[drinkypoo]

Offline mode for this that game was always going to be a crippled version of the main game, much of the workings of the game happens on the servers.

Do you remember the days when the game came with the server? It wouldn't cost them any more to deliver it to the players, but it would rob them of the opportunity to milk the playerbase for profit, because they wouldn't be the only ones capable of running a server.

The only thing you could fault them on imo is that they should have realized this sooner/from the start.

It's obvious they've known for months that they were likely to make this decision. What (again, obviously) happened is that they decided on this architecture ages ago, and they always knew that they might decide not to release the server to the players, so that they could wring more money out of them. And now they have announced this decision, but if the game requires the server to function then they've known about this for a long time. They're just only announcing it now.

They could deliver the server to the backers in order to make good on their promise to them, but they won't do that unless forced in court. Luckily, since they are capable of delivering on their promise, there's a chance that a court might force them if enough customers file suit, and that's precisely what they should do. Anything else is blessing fraud and if you willing fund fraud against your own peer group, fuck you.

Re:I paid for beta access, and it was worth it

[Aziour]

You assume bad intent while there is no proof of that at all.
We don't know when they internally made the decision to no longer aim for an offline mode.
For all we know they been trying until shortly before the announcement. Maybe you are right, but you simply can't know if you are.
Heck, if they knew sooner it would have been in their best interest to say so sooner and have this backlash over with long before the launch.
To assume they would do it now, shortly before their big event, out of some evil plot to mess with people is just not a realistic assumption.

Projects goals change all the time, and this was a kickstarter project. There is no guaranties when you back a kickstarter.
So a lawsuit is not realistic at all, there is no chance at all that a lawsuit could force them to change their plans, and it shouldn't either.
Heck, some projects got funded and never delivered anything and didn't get a lawsuit either.

At least with Elite Dangerous we know they are doing an amazing job at really bringing the game.
They have been very reliable through out alpha and beta, and been very respectful toward their backers.
And just for this one thing you act like they are the scum of the earth.

Re:No longer a day one purchase

[krane]

Yeah, as it turns out, "from time to time" means (in the dev's words): "At the moment it's whenever you need to conduct a server moderated transaction like trading." and "The servers handle more than just the data, they handle all the key processes for interaction in the game, so trading, mission generation and background simulation to name a few." Anecdotally, in the beta at least, the client apparently lasts between 2 and 5 seconds if you pull your 'Net connection. The enormous rage-thread about this on Frontier's forum is hither: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/... (is at nearly 500 pages now). Another useful thread to check out is this one: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/... which just has stuff the company has had to say since the whole thing blew up (although they haven't posted since Saturday).

Even Donations Come with Obligations

[Roger W Moore]

Kickstarter is best described as a donation.

Even donations come with obligations though. If I donate to a charity to support science education in country A and they use the money instead to purchase needles for drug addicts in country B then you could sue them to get you money back since they are using it for a significantly different purpose even though both might be considered good causes.

Whether the a single player game is sufficiently different from the delivered MMO game is something for the courts to decide if it ever gets that far. However what is very shabby about this whole thing is that the announcement has come only 1 month before the release. Given their description of how essential the online servers are to the game it seems highly likely than they have known about this for a very long time and have only just come clean.

It's also a real shame. Part of the beauty of the previous games was that they made such a detailed, massive open sandbox which you could explore and admire the intelligence that went into crafting the procedural generation. Now you are going to be sharing the galaxy with immature, adolescent school kids and any unusual features you will ascribe to a human moderator putting them there. It's going to have more similarity to Eve Online than Elite.

Re:Even Donations Come with Obligations

[ljw1004]

Now you are going to be sharing the galaxy with immature, adolescent school kids and any unusual features you will ascribe to a human moderator putting them there. It's going to have more similarity to Eve Online than Elite.

Why do you say that? They clearly state that they will have single- and multi-player. And they say that single-player requires an online connection so it gets a gradually evolving galaxy. That sounds more like automatically-downloaded DLC, entirely different from "sharing the galaxy".

Re:Even Donations Come with Obligations

[Smidge204]

Sure, you could conceivably sue a charity but only if there is a blatant misuse of funds. Benefit of the doubt, most Kickstarter campaigns I feel do at least have honest intentions and use the money the collect in a manner consistent with those intentions... they just completely botch it. (Of course, there are some "genuine" frauds as well...)

Back on topic; How about offline play with an option to update at each launch? Seems like a good compromise; You don't *need* an internet connection to play, but you can still keep in synch with updates. "Always on" single player is complete bullshit, and I defy you to provide one example where a constant connection to the internet for single player has actually provided a benefit to game play that could not be achieved through a player-invoked update function.
=Smidge=

Re:Even Donations Come with Obligations

[drinkypoo]

Back on topic; How about offline play with an option to update at each launch? Seems like a good compromise; You don't *need* an internet connection to play, but you can still keep in synch with updates.

You won't be able to do that with this game, because the game requires the server, and instead of giving the server to the backers so that they can run their own single-player games like they would do if they gave one fuck about the players, they are keeping it for themselves so that they can profit from it. They are keeping half of what they promised to deliver to the backers. That is bait and switch, and therefore fraud, because they are able to provide single-player: simply deliver the server component to the player.

I predict that if they have free servers that they will be shit, and that you will have to pay a monthly fee for access to a server that doesn't lag you into oblivion. As my internet connection is crap, an online-only game is simply not an option for me at all, so I would be livid if I had backed this kickstarter.

I've backed two kickstarters so far. The first one was the new space quest game, which the discerning reader will note is years overdue. YEARS. That is to say, it's still not there. The other was the infrablue photography kit which was actually delivered. Until I get the rewards from my first Kickstarter, though, I'm not even going to look at their site. I am not even considering contributing to any more projects.

Kickstarter is a Bad Deal if you don't have money to throw away.

Re:No longer a day one purchase

[citizenr]

Single player still seems to exist, but will need to sync your universe with that of the multiplayer universe "from time to time". That's perfectly acceptable

no, that online DRM, like simcity

You're screwing it up devs

[Karmashock]

You got all excited about this new funding opportunity. The ability to get funded directly by your customers rather then going through the big scary publishers.

And it could have worked except you crapped all over your customers the instant it became possible. You told them what they wanted to hear until the checks cleared... and then you betrayed them.

Again and again.

All these crowd funding systems need to have some sort of refund clause built into them.

We're very happy to fund you guys... but if you intentionally fuck us over then you deserve to have the money pulled.

Obviously you can't afford that happening. You already spent it. I get that. That is in fact the fucking point. You make your commitments and you damn well follow through. Alternatively, just bail on the whole project and never get funded again. Either way, this sort of behavior needs to be a third rail. It needs to mean financial ruin or career suicide.

The first rule of crowd funding is DO NOT fuck over your sponsors.

The second rule of crowd funding is DO NOT fuck over your sponsors.

Re:You're screwing it up devs

[Karmashock]

They could very easily offer a light version of the server as well as a setting to have it look to the local host for server updates rather then their server.

Neither of these things would take more then an afternoon to configure. I could do as much with my own programs so I don't see why they couldn't offer the same thing. It isn't rocket science.

If they don't want to give away the mini server code... fine. Fix offline mode.

The issue here is control. If the game requires their systems to function then I do not have control of my game. It remains their game. The beauty of an offline game is that 100 percent of the relevant code is operating on my system. Their systems go down and I am not impacted. I am off the internet for some reason and it does not effect the game.

Offline mode is not a minor issue. People are asking for refunds for a reason.

Kickstarter, IndiGoGo, etc terms need to be adjusted so that organizations that raise money through them are held to their promises on pain of reversal of funds.

I am okay with projects failing. That is one thing. It is quite another for them to make promises that are easily kept and then betrayed when all the checks have cleared.

Re:You're screwing it up devs

[drinkypoo]

They did not fuck over anyone.
They just (in hindsight wrongly) assumed they could offer an offline mode.

Congratulations, you just proved that you're a useful idiot.

Other than that, they have come true to pretty much all of their promises

Whether a game is single-player or multi-player is the first or second most important thing about it. In fact, we often describe a game as single- or multi-player as the first words in its description. This is a central promise.

If they have a server, they can release the server to the players. So there is no way in which they could not offer single player. They'd just give you a dedicated server. If it was meant for single-player-only, then they could simply limit it to one connection from localhost, or another node on your local network as defined by masks. But if they did that, there would be no reason other than milking the playerbase for money not to give the users a multiplayer server. And this is why this is fraud: They promised the users a single-player game, used the money to develop a multi-player game (bait and switch) and now they are outright lying about their ability to deliver a single-player game. They can, but they choose not to. And that is why they will lose in court. They're going to have to try to prove that this was not their intent all along, but the architecture of the game will prove otherwise. It's a client-server game when a single-player mode was promised, and they are choosing not to implement a single-player mode so that they don't have to deliver the server component to the players, even though they paid for its development.

Fraud is a felony. And your argument is stupid.

Re:You're screwing it up devs

[Aziour]

The exact description on their own website.
http://elitedangerous.com/abou...

Elite: Dangerous is the spectacular new sequel in the Elite series of games.
Head for the stars, take a ship and trade, bounty-hunt, pirate or assassinate your way across the galaxy in this ,massively multiplayer online space adventure
It's an awe inspiring, beautiful, vast place; with 400 billion star systems, planets, moons and asteroid fields just waiting to be explored and exploited.

Bought merely for single player...

[sTERNKERN]

I do not want to synchronize anything with any server which might or might not make it for some years until it is shut down. This is DRM nothing more. I bought this game to play on my own not bothered by any other player... Kickstarter should be able to penalize companies which are not willing to fulfill their promises.

Re:Bought merely for single player...

[StarTuxia]

You can still play single player, offline is gone, so we'd better hope the game is a success and if they ever decide to shut down we had better hope they get a chance to put the code back in the client so that it can be played offline.

The click-bait FUD continues

[ArithonUK]

If you are one of the 17% that posted you want a refund because Frontier tried and failed to make their online game work offline, then good luck. The guy who put ã5,000 in the KickStarter (Liqua) says while disappointed, he's NOT going to ask for a refund, and "The game is awesome - a good solid foundation. FD just need some PR lessons (and I in some self control)" if you didn't already have the game (as most complainers are saying) then you backed to the tune of less than ã50 - I don't think that gives you a seat on the board. Frontier have been honest. They could just have easily waited until after December 16th to not hurt sales, but they put their hand up and said "we just cannot do it". Most posters, which really annoy me are saying "I was going to buy this, now I'm not + rage comment". So no interest or commitment to Elite: Dangerous, just want to rage at someone. Nice. It's a shame that the offline option isn't open, but to anyone who had followed the game development you'd have to have been wearing a blindfold to see this announcement as a shock.

Re:The click-bait FUD continues

[drinkypoo]

Frontier have been honest.

No, no they have not.

They could just have easily waited until after December 16th to not hurt sales,

They could just have easily told us about this decision months ago when they made it, and went to a full client-server model, and then subsequently decided not to provide the server to the players so that they could run their own? Remember when games came with the server? Those days are gone now, and this game is part of that.

but they put their hand up and said "we just cannot do it".

And that is a lie. They are liars. Restrict the server to one login, deliver it to the player, done and done. They are choosing instead to control the server component to the point of fraud. They promised single-player, they can deliver single player, they are choosing not to deliver single player, and they have to have known about this for months.

Re:I'm just happy they made it

[Aziour]

Yes, I think it's a bit unfair that they got so much negative attention about this one thing while the solid steady development of their amazing game has struggled to get serious attention at all. I guess people love to have something to complain about, but for a fan of this amazing piece of technology, it can be very frustrating.

Cheating in singleplayer doesn't matter

[evilandi]

(disclaimer: this turned into a general letting-off-of-steam rather than a direct focussed reply to your specific points)

What does it matter if there is cheating in singleplayer mode?

I backed this game to the tune of around a hundred quid on the basis that there would be a singleplayer mode; I bought Beta and Lifetime Expansion Pass. And there still will be a singleplayer mode, it's just that it will require an internet connection. That's fine for as long as the game remains profitable enough to keep the servers running (and for as long as I don't move back to the sticks or join the armed forces; the latter is unlikely, the former is possible).

The problem is that it was funded as a one-off-purchase game, not a subscription game, and therefore I'm having trouble identifying how they will keep the money coming in to fund the servers past the initial, say, 18-month sales peak. As I've mooted elsewhere, Frontier need to commit to releasing the server modules as freeware on or before the day the servers inevitably become unprofitable. I appreciate the servers are cloud-based with multiple interdependencies, but it's not like the Elite fanbase is short of technical skills - the community WILL be able to manage it, even with near-zero documentation.

As far as the "it was always obvious it was going to be an MMO" goes, I disagree strongly.

I backed this because it was Elite, and not because it was Eve Online Plus. If I'd wanted an Elite MMO, Eve Online already exists.

I have neither the patience to deal with the minority but significant number of griefers, spammers and general idiots that proliferate in online games, nor do I have the time required to grind my skills up to the level required to participate fairly against those who can put 20+ hours a week into the game. I used to be one of those 20+ hour/week gamers (what I don't know about TFC:Badlands isn't worth knowing), they're mostly lovely people, but now I have kids and a mortgage, which was my choice, and a choice which informed which Kickstarter games I backed and which I didn't.

I backed a singleplayer game with up-front paid lifetime pass.

Now it looks like "lifetime" means the lifetime of the game, and with that lifetime is looking pretty short.

(And while I'm having a moan, have I just forgotten how steep the original's learning curve was, or are all the available control systems in E:D really, really hard, or is this just another symptom of me not being a 20+H/week gamer any more?)

Re:Cheating in singleplayer doesn't matter

[TheRaven64]

Same here, I remember finding the line in the savegame files that contained the inventory and set the number of missiles to 0xff. The game became a lot less fun after that, but it was the first time I'd used a hex editor and it was very useful experience for later life.

Re:Oh the horror

[Half-pint HAL]

Just to think that a company would change there mind on what to leave out and put in..... in a game....

You realise that if the backers had been a company (eg Electronic Arts) and Frontier had changed the product without consulting them, they would be in trouble, right? Either the Kickstarter backers have preordered a product (in which case "changing there [sic] mind" nullifies the contract of sale) or they are investors who have control over what their investment is used for.