Looks like Entrechment's release dates are not to be taken seriously. It was slated to be released last November, moved to January 1st, then moved forward to February 11th, then moved back to February 4th (as slated by the IGN review), then forward to February 11th, and now it is moved two weeks forward to February 25th.
I just hope that Ironclad would come up with the final retail version on the 25th. There are still a lot of things to improve in Entrenchment, including mini-dumps and the like. It would be great if they added the option to create moons which actually revolve around some planets to make the game more realistic, and that the player be given the ability to make moon defenses or bases. Crystal and metal asteroids are not "moons" in the exact sense of the word.
The reason for the delay is somwwhat obvious if you read the posts. It is not the best work they can do. They can provide better with more time.
At most, you could say you are owed a refund if you pre-ordered for breach of contract [based on delivery time]. I don't think you'd have a case . . but more power to you if you wanted to try. Anyone can take anyone to court for whatever crazy reason they want. I can't see why they should give you anything for free.
I have to admit, while delays are annoying, that is one hell of a sense of entitlement you have there. I agree with Zubaz, you might be able to justify a refund for your amount, but you deserve nothing for free.
I am not pleased with the delay either, and agree that we could have been told sooner but perhaps they are relying on the beta sales for pay for finishing entrenchment. If that is the case, preannouncing a delay not be good for us at all.
Remember nothing in this life is guaranteed, and things could be worse - in a bad economy (especially in December) many companies presell product, memberships, gift cards, etc which are often given as Christmas gifts. Some of these companies choose to go out of business in January, keeping the money to pay their own bills, and giving the customer nothing. How fair is that?
Personally, I am tired of the beta crashing and hope that the final release gets things right, even if it means we keep waiting. Of course, if I were in charge anyone who paid for the beta, and waited for the delayed final entrenchment would get a few bucks off the next expansion module. They could call it customer appreciation, or a thank you for beta testing. (real testers get paid after all)
not everything goes as planned. Just relax and wait like the rest of us. you can download the beta version and play.
As far as your sense of entitlement...you are owed nothing. if you want you money back call and complain I'm sure they will work with you. just because they delayed the release does not mean that they have to release the game for free. it's simple economics. if they release it for free = no money = lost jobs. You see my point.
Alright, let me put it this way: I got quite some fun out of SoaSE and had so far not a complaint about Ironclad/Stardock.
Although curious about the expansion, I was aware of some balancing problems in the beta version (in particular issues with mines), which were supposed to be fixed in the final version.
Anyway, I bought entrenchment on Jan 1st, the nominal release date. Before I did so, a casual glance confirmed that this WAS still the release date.
I normally read through the sales blurb quite carefully and I do not remember having read the word "beta" anywhere, nor the word "preorder". Just to be sure I actually just reread my purchase confirmation email, where both words interestingly can not be found either.
That I effectively did not purchase a finished game version, but instead just preordered and effectively trawled in the beta version I discovered only after the download through impulse started. And that the official release date was effectively pushed back by one month only after a quick google in order to find out what's actually going on. And lo-and-behold next thing you know is that impulse flags up the game as delayed ?!?
A very peculiar way to do buisness for a company that makes a big deal out of their "customer first" attitude. Well, since their track record so far was positive, I'll write this off as the most clumsy release shift I have seen recently.
Anyway, meanwhile I have played the entrenchment beta twice, only to discover that the Vassari mine spam basically takes completely the fun out of the endgame (no real way to mine-sweep and they spam until my machine goes into stutter-mode) and that the issues flagged up in the forums are not addressed.
So let me put it this way: I can fully understand AxEmAlls feelings, since this really sucks. In my books Ironclad/Stardock just burned their existing credit and in case they do not deliver really quick as advertised, I WILL get my tenner back and they will irrevocably loose a customer, period.
Um, if you really read the site, it was clearly stated that 1/1/09 was only a PLACEHOLDER and not an actual release date.... to the best of my knowledge no release date has been set mostly due to issues with the SOASE update to 1.1 pushing the beta back and thus the release...
Anyways, while I expected at least an updated Beta by now, I never expected a release by now.
Look, I like SoaSE and spend some nice hours playing it and - let's put things in proportion - since a tenner is really not worth getting worked up about, I have no real harsh feelings about this entrenchment beta-gig. Let Ironclad get this fixed fast and let's forget this.
Having said this, I'm still quite amazed to what length fanboys go to find excuses for bad buisness policy.
I normally play this kind of computer game nonsense off and on to unwind from my real job which - ironically - includes among other things yelling on the phone to subcontractors to finally get their rear in gear and deliver what they did already bill and cash-in for.
What I have received from Stardock is a an order and billing confirmation bundled with detailed download instructions for a product. Doesn't say anything about "which will be available at some undisclosed date in the future".
This is called a purchase contract.
Turns out the product is not available but instead beta-grade code is made available in the last minute.
So could you explain to me again in this context what a PLACEHOLDER release date is supposed to be?
If you don't have it, don't sell it.
You are aware that Ironclad is a very young startup which had with SoaSE a low-budget surprise hit last year. Good for them. So I imagine they experiment with this slice-by-slice expansion pack stuff to create continuous income since they don't have the capital to finance a proper development cycle. Fair enough. But there is a flipside to this coin: I imagine if their first expansion pack doesn't deliver, these guys are history. From here on they should tread very lightly.
AFAIK there was only 1 delay and that was announced in November when the game mini expansion was initially planned to be released. Since then numerous post have been made that the final release is still TBD and a BETA would be made available to those who preorder to play/test during the holidays. Which they did give access to those who preordered.
The only difference I see between BETA and Retail (Correct me if I am wrong here) is that in BETA you can still suggest changes which still impact the retail, and I mean more then just tweaking the units stats.
As a side note, if people where to get free game because they preordered and didn't get it on the date it was advertised because of development delays, a lot of gaming publisher/developers would have gone out of business a long time ago or you would end up with crappy bugged games.
Just my $0.02.
Cheers
Your point is good though that had Entreanchment been released on January 1st, the beta is what you would be playing; becuase it's the latest and greatest. For us . . it's no different from having the full game (with whatever issues it might have).
Um I seem too recall that there has been 3 delays so far with this game one in september that is when they said it was coming out in november 5, Second delay is when they changed it to december then announced that if you preorder the game you get a beta to test, and now the third delay saying not until febuary is when its going to be released. Just watch febuary rolls around and it gets pushed back even more.
WOE IS US!!
Let me put it this
Wow, drama much? I am very entertained by all of the armchair developers, economists and most of all, the wannabe lawyers that feel they have the ins and outs of the business pegged, yet demonstrate a very poor knowledge of their topic.
Let me put it this way: You have been given a chance to help beta test a game that you already like. People would give body parts to be part of the beta process of a game. Look at the fervor over beta status from WoW, Age of Conan, and other games and you will see that this is a cool chance to be part of the development process (this is how the space ponies achievement came into being in the first place).
Either play the game and enjoy, knowing that these imbalances will be ironed out in the end, not when you feel they should, but when the right solution has been reached, or stop playing, cry for a refund and move on to another game.
Stardock has been around for a while now and Ironclad is just a portion of an already successful company. Don't hold your breath on that prediction.
@spylord
The only clear trend that I see here is that a small company is experimenting with a buisness model which is supposed to create revenue during development and not AFTER development. Sure, that can have also it's merrits (such as feedback from the customers to be taken into account), but at the end of the day it's just another one of these gambles where the risk is offloaded to the customer:
"The only difference I see between BETA and Retail (Correct me if I am wrong here) is that in BETA you can still suggest changes which still impact the retail, and I mean more then just tweaking the units stats."
Because this holds only as long as your development builds are at least to 75% playable and so much fun that people just forget about the remaining 25%. This was the case with SoaSE, where for example a single player campaign was silently scrapped because the rest of the game was good enaugh to hold it's own and had to go out asap. But it's quite risky to bet your customers money on always being lucky. A casual go at entrenchment reveals pretty quickly that:
- starbase weapons upgrades do not work consistently
- Fleets in highly mined systems can become invisible
- Mine spam leads to reproducable game crashes/stutter
- The entire mine stuff adds more tedious micromanagement to the game than it's really worth.
- The new units (torpedo crusier...) are ok, but not all that great.
So all I can say that 50% of the added content adds regression to the game and the "wow factor" of the other 50% doesn't really compensate for this. I meanwhile uninstalled "entrenchment" because compared to SoaSE it is in its current form actually quite a bit less fun.
That this was thrown at me as a paying customer in form of a beta on jan 1st was NOT because Ironclad wanted to have my feedback. After all these issues were known since december. This was given to me because they took my money and had at that point nothing else to come up with since they blew their deadline (again).
Anyway: If you guys are actually happy paying Ironclad for being beta-testers and doing the QA for them, have my blessings. I play to unwind, not to debug other folks products for free.
"As a side note, if people where to get free game because they preordered and didn't get it on the date it was advertised because of development delays, a lot of gaming publisher/developers would have gone out of business a long time ago or you would end up with crappy bugged games. "
Why is this phrased in conjunctive? A lot of gaming publisher/developers HAVE gone out of buisness and 9 of 10 games ARE crappy bugged games. And where Ironclad will finally end up hinges imho quite a bit on how things pan out in the next six weeks. Either way, this serves me right: Having been burned often enaugh by the increasing amount of everbeta, vaporware and pay-us-as-often-as-we-feel / rent-a-soft that gets pumped out these days, I vowed never to purchase again without trying a satisfactory free downloadable demo first. SoaSE entrenchment was the first time since quite a while that I strayed from that proven path. So I guess, it's strictly back to the rules then...
Wannabe lawyers?
I AM A LAWYER.
I passed the Bar exams two years ago. Everyone is entitled to share his opinions on this blog. It is the best way to thresh out differences and learn from one another.
Not all lawyers are unreasonable. I understand your zeal in defending the developers of Entrenchment.
I just wish that they better stop posting release dates if they could not promise to keep them, or at the very least informed us way ahead of time that the planned release date of January 1st of the final retail version would have to be delayed another month, and not announce it only on the very day we were all expecting the final version to be released.
It would have been better if they said that the final version would be downloaded on the first quarter of 2009. Any businessman with common sense knows that any delay is bad business practice. I just hope that Ironclad and Stardock would keep their word that Feb 9th would be the actual final release. If there would still be any problems with it, then release a patch afterward, like what most PC game publishers do.
Get a clue mate. Nobody is upset that they are getting to play the beta early. They are upset because the product is no longer being sold as a pre-order and Stardock are actually taking people's money from them RIGHT NOW for what is effectively an unfinished, unpolished and broken product with no concrete information on when the finished product might be released. After x number of delays so far, hands up who thinks their current release date in February is going to be met? Anyone? No, me either. I didn't pay to test a beta, I paid the day before 1st Jan (when the release date still said 1st Jan) for the final game and assumed they had just released it a day early. Imagine my surprise to find what was downloaded was actually a beta product. Nowhere on the invoice that Stardock sent me by email does it say I've ordered an unfinished product or that I've pre-ordered. I am currently seeking to get my money back (through various means, paypal included). I'll consider paying again when (and if) they release the final product at an undetermined date in the future.
The point you missed is that the 1-1-09 date was never a real date and they said so for months. If you ordered your game based on that, then its your fault for not reading the release notes or the official statements, which made the situation perfectly clear. Point is, you paid for what was already announced to be a beta release (using your own statements from above no less) without doing your own homework.
I have also worked in the software (and hardware) development divisions of a couple of large corporations, so I guess my point of view is a little different. Usually, developers aren't nearly as forthcoming as SD has been on this one. Usually you are treated like a mushroom (kept in the dark and fed poop). I agree that it is frustrating when release dates are not met and refunds are probable, SD is pretty good about that stuff, but they did put out quite a large ammount of forewarning concerning the beta nature of the release and that the 1-1-09 date was no more than a placeholder as the Impulse system requires that something be entered in the release date.
Sorry if I am a little salty about my responses, but this has become almost like therapy, allowing me to vent like I never could while in IT development.
Thanks for the clarification, Lokoth. Who the hell created the concept of a placeholder anyway? Not everyone, like myself, understands what a placeholder means. The concept, as I understand, is just a temporary date subject to change. Maybe it would help if beside the release date posted by Ironclad/Impulse the word PLACEHOLDER is written in bold letters with these words included: The release date is subject to change depending on how fast we fix its bugs and try to integrate the suggestions of what most beta testers would like to have.
Perhaps they could only input dates? That happens a lot when they use a database to store all this stuff, which I'm happy to bet they do.
also regarding this:
Very few games get released on time. Also I think they want to release as few patches afterwards as they can, because there'll be less whinging from us, and because it's cheaper in the long run.
I'm just POd that Sins Plus doesn't work with it yet.
When i locked into Impulse on 01. January, Entrenchment got the label 'Released'. It was clearly not, because it is still in BETA. So tell me please, if they never intended to release on January the first, why was it listed as released on the very same day?
They messed that one up, simple as that.
I still love Stardock, but as a consumer i should be allowed to talk about things gone wrong.
Again you miss the point Lokoth. I'm not angry that they missed the release date (well I am, but thats not the issue of this thread). I'm angry that they are no longer selling the game as "Pre-order" and were happy to take my money there and then for a game that wasn't released yet. When an item isn't released yet it should be sold as pre-order and the money not taken until the product is delivered. As of right now, I am paying to participate in a beta program which is not what I paid for.
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