There was an article posted earlier today on PC Gamer UK outlining some of the frustrations that the reviewer had with the pre-day 0 version of the game as well as a problem he was having with tactical battles.
In the article, he quoted an inflammatory forum posting I made on a site I participate in called Quarter to Three. This is a site I’ve been a participant in for many years and many of the people I discuss things on there are personal friends of mine.
During one such exchange with my friend Ben Sones, I angrily responded with a statement “Ben, please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games.”
This comment was totally out of line and I apologize for it. It was made in the heat of a ~2000 comment long thread and is not how I honestly feel. Ben’s a friend of mine and his comment that the game felt like a “beta” to him upset me and I responded inappropriately. I post a lot on many forums and unfortunately, sometimes the things I say are inappropriate or inflammatory.
As the CEO of Stardock, I want to be clear that my comments on the Quarter to Three forums do not reflect my team at large. They were words spoken out of frustration and sleep deprivation and I am truly sorry. We stand behind what we feel is a great product, one that we will continue to support for a number of years.
With regards to a post on Rock Paper Shot Gun, which picked up the PC Gamer UK story, they erroneously point to a 2+ year old URL to a Stardock news item that is no longer active (we switched news systems a year or so ago). Their article falsely implies that we have stepped away from our commitment to the Gamer’s Bill of Rights.
The site, www.gamersbillofrights.org was set up and is run by Stardock. We stand by it. It is, with some irony, our commitment to no DRM on our DVD release that ultimately caused the rough pre-release experience of Elemental. Several retailers broke the street date and we felt we needed to release our gold version to our customers who had pre-ordered from us as well as to our beta community that helped make the game the outstanding strategy game that it is.
However, it also became clear that the pre-day 0 version of the game was problematic as outlined in the PC Gamer UK article. The official day 0 version of the game, what is available right now, should address most, if not all the issues that have been described. That said, as is our long-standing policy, we will continue to release updates and improvements Elemental just as we do for the other titles we develop.
I anticipate us putting out regular updates for Elemental for months or years to come based on player feedback, suggestions, and yes, bug reports.
I hope this offers some explanation as to the events that have come up. I sincerely apologize and feel terrible for the effect my forum posting on Qt3 may have had not just on our fans but also my team that has worked incredibly hard over the past 3 years to produce what we hope, is a game that you will enjoy for years to come.
i bet this will be a real game by patch 30.0A well if we are lucky it will be by patch 27.9X :/ Stardock really the game has good potential but u released something that isnt even a game ffs its more likr something that shouldnt even be released in 2 more years by the looks of all the damn bugs and memory leaks :/
Interesting. I didn't see this before, but I have to say considering the stress you guys must be under and the recent news about layoffs, its unsurprising if there was a momentary lapse, even a grievous one.
TBH I don't get why Tom Francis was the guy to review this game (Look at his Articles and history he a 1ST person shooter/3rd person RPG guy IE Morrowind, Deus Ex etc) why they didn't have the guy who review Civ V instead.
As for PC Game and buggy game getting a high score I raise you with BioShock 90%+ game that wouldn't run at all on any of the 3 PCs I tried it on (despite every other game I tried working fine, including ones with far higher system requirements, ended up shelving it after 2 weeks and never got round to trying it again)
Frogboy, you sound in spirit much like me in that I do not hold back in my postings which has lead to many 'situations' where I was made out to be the bad guy for something said under stress, or taken out of context sounded much worse than was intended. On the whole though I applaud you on your leadership in how you are playing catch up on Elemental. I raspberry you however on the fact that Elemental was terribly flawed on release, and even if the retailers had not jumped the gun, the out of the box version would have been received in a negative light. I have not played in days because I can no longer force myself to suffer a game that is lacking access to its full potential. What I had envisioned, through the media available to view prior to release, is still not the program I have bought. I anxiously await the fixes to be released from now till late fall. I hope by Xmas I will finally have the game I was expecting.
I hope you accept this in the friendly light in which I wrote it. Folks who lay it on the line and have little fear of reprisals tend to suffer more blind spots than others. I know this pain well.
PS Please release a new and improved Manual to the game, and update the video tutorials. Neither seem to do any justice to the game, and I expect will be even less informative once the fixes are in.
For those claiming that the emotional outburst was unprofessional:
http://forums.demigodthegame.com/312130/get;1736735
Did you really have to bump a thread 9 days old and irrelevant at this point?
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