Little story.
I was on vacation with my family. I rented a car to go someplace. Payed 20$ in advance. The company didn't deliver and I spent 3 hours of my vacation on the outskirts of the town trying desperately to solve the crisis. Of course I called the hotline and the first thing they told me was something like "sorry, we know car you payed for is not there and we are doing what we can to help you".
Now - you may say this is a completely different story then what PDX just did. But it is not. A lot of people payed money and then lost hours of their life because PDX management deliberately chose to NOT to communicate with the customers. And this is not the first time.
I can only guess what kind of politics drive this kind of attitude. Maybe PDX management believe their players have no choice and would buy next games anyway. Maybe PDX management believe first day sales are more important then anything else. Maybe they just doesn't care for whatever reason.
The thing is - what PDX just did with EU4: Leviathan is literally a fraud: "intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right".
Now - I'm a programmer by trade and I sympathize with Johan and his team. I know how it is to get 10 year old code with so many interconnected modules. With this kind of product deadlines slips. Sometimes you just can't get it right on time.
I can also understand that for whatever reason release date couldn't be moved. It happens.
But I don't understand why we weren't TOLD about that. Why they couldn't label it on steam "early access" for a day or two until the patch came or at least add a warning for players to wait for the 1.31.2 version with new ironman games.
And I don't understand why on the top of the EU4 forum there is no big " We are sorry " banner. This is the absolute basics when you hurt someone unintentionally and many companies have whole departments just to be able to apologize to its angry customers. PDX don't need that because people are not contacting them by phone, all was needed was simple pinned message on the forum and PDX couldn't even deliver that.
How things stand now is that PDX communicate to its customers: we are big, filthy rich company and we can do whatever we want to you because frankly you are nobody; and you are not going to sue us because 20$ and few hours of your life is not worth it and we have better lawyers anyway; and we know that you will buy our next game because you are desperate to play games only we deliver.
So it may all be true. Players are mostly nobody and they would probably buy next PDX game anyway. But it is also true that they have all the right to be angry for this kind of treatment, especially by superrich company like PDX. And this anger is by no means "toxic", it is righteous. What is really toxic is the way PDX management treat its customers.
Now I see that PDX claimed the record worst approved DLC on steam. Congratulation. But considering PDX share price all is still going in the right direction, is it. Only "toxic customers" are problem, nothing else. So now PDX would probably forbid its employees to talk to strangers because apparently customers still knew too much about what's going on.
disclaimer: personally I DO enjoy Leviathan DLC and was actively defending it on the forums, and I didn't experienced crashes and other catastrophic failures and even if I would I wouldn't care much. But I can't accept all the "passive-aggressive" attacks by PDX management on the people they clearly wronged.
Have a nice day.
I was on vacation with my family. I rented a car to go someplace. Payed 20$ in advance. The company didn't deliver and I spent 3 hours of my vacation on the outskirts of the town trying desperately to solve the crisis. Of course I called the hotline and the first thing they told me was something like "sorry, we know car you payed for is not there and we are doing what we can to help you".
Now - you may say this is a completely different story then what PDX just did. But it is not. A lot of people payed money and then lost hours of their life because PDX management deliberately chose to NOT to communicate with the customers. And this is not the first time.
I can only guess what kind of politics drive this kind of attitude. Maybe PDX management believe their players have no choice and would buy next games anyway. Maybe PDX management believe first day sales are more important then anything else. Maybe they just doesn't care for whatever reason.
The thing is - what PDX just did with EU4: Leviathan is literally a fraud: "intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right".
Now - I'm a programmer by trade and I sympathize with Johan and his team. I know how it is to get 10 year old code with so many interconnected modules. With this kind of product deadlines slips. Sometimes you just can't get it right on time.
I can also understand that for whatever reason release date couldn't be moved. It happens.
But I don't understand why we weren't TOLD about that. Why they couldn't label it on steam "early access" for a day or two until the patch came or at least add a warning for players to wait for the 1.31.2 version with new ironman games.
And I don't understand why on the top of the EU4 forum there is no big " We are sorry " banner. This is the absolute basics when you hurt someone unintentionally and many companies have whole departments just to be able to apologize to its angry customers. PDX don't need that because people are not contacting them by phone, all was needed was simple pinned message on the forum and PDX couldn't even deliver that.
How things stand now is that PDX communicate to its customers: we are big, filthy rich company and we can do whatever we want to you because frankly you are nobody; and you are not going to sue us because 20$ and few hours of your life is not worth it and we have better lawyers anyway; and we know that you will buy our next game because you are desperate to play games only we deliver.
So it may all be true. Players are mostly nobody and they would probably buy next PDX game anyway. But it is also true that they have all the right to be angry for this kind of treatment, especially by superrich company like PDX. And this anger is by no means "toxic", it is righteous. What is really toxic is the way PDX management treat its customers.
Now I see that PDX claimed the record worst approved DLC on steam. Congratulation. But considering PDX share price all is still going in the right direction, is it. Only "toxic customers" are problem, nothing else. So now PDX would probably forbid its employees to talk to strangers because apparently customers still knew too much about what's going on.
disclaimer: personally I DO enjoy Leviathan DLC and was actively defending it on the forums, and I didn't experienced crashes and other catastrophic failures and even if I would I wouldn't care much. But I can't accept all the "passive-aggressive" attacks by PDX management on the people they clearly wronged.
Have a nice day.
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