They are pulling the reverse Hello Games. Sony’s contract with Hello Games (No Man’s Sky) forced them to ship an unfinished game, met with hundreds of thousands of bad reviews, but they turned it around by not only delivering what was originally promised, but continuously adding huge DLC level free updates to the game, effectively nulling the effects of their contract with Sony. Arrowhead Studios shipped an incredible game, but ignored Sony’s contractual requirements to ride the wave of sales, and is now being hit with the effects after finally enforcing what they signed up for.
I might be wrong about this, but if I remember right, the PR team for NMS and the dev team had pretty much zero communication. Sony kept hyping the game up, very much making promises that the devs were trying to keep. However during development it became increasingly that they either need to push back on the release date or drop some features, neither of which Sony was ready to do. At that point it was already too late: the hype was built.
So instead of trying to do damage control Sony just pushed Murray in the focus, probably hoping he and his company would take the fall. Honestly it feels hard to blame him for what happened. He, at the time, was just an incredibly ambitious indie dev with no idea on how to manage expectations.
I feel like with Sony as your publisher, you don’t need enemies.
How did they ignore it when it’s both on the store page and the first thing you see ingame since day one? They didn’t add that in later. It’s always been there. It wasn’t optional for a period of time on launch day, before the servers were overloaded. It was then temporarily made optional, and they said as much (though obviously not clearly enough for people to realize that).
They expected an active userbase of about 10k. They didn’t know how popular this game was going to be.
More likely, they didn’t know that PSN accounts are only available in select regions. They followed the stipulations on all fronts except selling the game in places that can’t make accounts, and everything else is the result of the PSN account requirement being made optional while Sony rolled out more infrastructure to handle the player load.
Did you buy it on PC? I know at the time, sony was offering refunds on the ps4, which is uncommon. I don’t know about steam’s policies at the time though. Probably similar to helldivers now, where if you’ve passed the play time limit you are automatically denied but can re-request a review for manual approval
It was listed on the store page from day one. It was put in front of your face the first time you launched the game. It was only made optional temporarily due to the overloaded servers on launch day. This was said, though not clearly enough for people to realize before now that the PSN account being optional was only temporary, it seems.
My money’s on Arrowhead not knowing that PSN accounts are only available in specific regions and countries. Otherwise, none of it makes sense. This was always going to happen if they knew and did it anyway, and why would they torpedo their dev studio with the refunds like that.
To be fair, they’re the ones who signed the deal. Hopefully this is something they can learn from for future games.
They are pulling the reverse Hello Games. Sony’s contract with Hello Games (No Man’s Sky) forced them to ship an unfinished game, met with hundreds of thousands of bad reviews, but they turned it around by not only delivering what was originally promised, but continuously adding huge DLC level free updates to the game, effectively nulling the effects of their contract with Sony. Arrowhead Studios shipped an incredible game, but ignored Sony’s contractual requirements to ride the wave of sales, and is now being hit with the effects after finally enforcing what they signed up for.
Please Sean PLEASE NO MORE UPDATES, WE FORGIVE YOU
I just wish I could hide the reticle when the multitool is holstered. That’s all I want at this point lol
I don’t, give me more amazing updates. Infinite updates.
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I might be wrong about this, but if I remember right, the PR team for NMS and the dev team had pretty much zero communication. Sony kept hyping the game up, very much making promises that the devs were trying to keep. However during development it became increasingly that they either need to push back on the release date or drop some features, neither of which Sony was ready to do. At that point it was already too late: the hype was built.
So instead of trying to do damage control Sony just pushed Murray in the focus, probably hoping he and his company would take the fall. Honestly it feels hard to blame him for what happened. He, at the time, was just an incredibly ambitious indie dev with no idea on how to manage expectations.
I feel like with Sony as your publisher, you don’t need enemies.
deleted by creator
How did they ignore it when it’s both on the store page and the first thing you see ingame since day one? They didn’t add that in later. It’s always been there. It wasn’t optional for a period of time on launch day, before the servers were overloaded. It was then temporarily made optional, and they said as much (though obviously not clearly enough for people to realize that).
They expected an active userbase of about 10k. They didn’t know how popular this game was going to be.
More likely, they didn’t know that PSN accounts are only available in select regions. They followed the stipulations on all fronts except selling the game in places that can’t make accounts, and everything else is the result of the PSN account requirement being made optional while Sony rolled out more infrastructure to handle the player load.
Still want my money back from nsm lies.
Did you buy it on PC? I know at the time, sony was offering refunds on the ps4, which is uncommon. I don’t know about steam’s policies at the time though. Probably similar to helldivers now, where if you’ve passed the play time limit you are automatically denied but can re-request a review for manual approval
No, I didn’t buy this game because it looked like a boring wave shooter with meme buzzwords and was too expensive. 20$ game tops in my eyes.
And apparently they knew about the requirement, and ignored it.
ESH
It was listed on the store page from day one. It was put in front of your face the first time you launched the game. It was only made optional temporarily due to the overloaded servers on launch day. This was said, though not clearly enough for people to realize before now that the PSN account being optional was only temporary, it seems.
My money’s on Arrowhead not knowing that PSN accounts are only available in specific regions and countries. Otherwise, none of it makes sense. This was always going to happen if they knew and did it anyway, and why would they torpedo their dev studio with the refunds like that.