EMail From CO/Paradox Regarding Beach Assets

[TripleAgent]

It's telling how bad communication has gotten by the fact that it's been days with this on the front page and no one at PDX or CO can be bothered to comment "ignore it, it's fake" or "it's real, we'll let you know more in a bit". The entire situation is just bizzare.

 

[TheBeardBuilds]

The ONLY thing I can think of that would explain the lack of comms on something like this is that they read it, knew it was a hoax, but mgmt are thinking about/trying to impliment it anyway?

there is ZERO other reason(s) to not immediately make a post, remove the post...sheesh SOMETHING that shows the lights are still on at COHQ

 

[LordTridus]

Was there ever a thread? If yes, everyone who is subscribed to that forum should have gotten that email. From the reactions here, I would say, looks like definitely almost none did. So there cannot have been a thread or nobody was subscribed (on Friday) to that forum.

How many people subscribed to that forum? It's not something that happens automatically, you have to go and do it.

 

[Brynjar]

Weekend, and now, if they noticed, they're probably preparing a statement in one way or the other. I say preparing because "it was fake and we're tracking down who did it" won't satisfy anyone and they'll be flooded with questions and more complaining anyway, as people would've wanted anything to repair the recent PR disaster.

The ONLY thing I can think of that would explain the lack of comms on something like this is that they read it, knew it was a hoax, but mgmt are thinking about/trying to impliment it anyway?

If there is a fake email with a spoofed (or hacked) sender going around asking people to click on a link to contact Paradox support for a refund, the primary concern of CO and Paradox should be to minimize the risk of someone even clicking on the link provided in the email. The longer it takes for them to dismiss it as a fake e-mail, the higher the risk of someone falling victim for a potential scam.

The longer it takes without any confirmation that this is a fake email, the more likely it seems like this may be a result of a real draft having gone out too early by mistake. That makes it all the more concerning that there has been no word at all on the topic. The worst thing they can do in this situation is to remain silent. The longer they remain silent, the worse it is when people have a potential security risk in their inbox.

Regardless of it being fake or not, the damage has already been done when it comes to spreading an expectation/hope of a refund. The only thing complete silence can achieve at this point is further damage which is far worse than anyone's disappointment caused by it not being real.

 

[xagash]

If there is a fake email with a spoofed (or hacked) sender going around asking people to click on a link to contact Paradox support for a refund, the primary concern of CO and Paradox should be to minimize the risk of someone even clicking on the link provided in the email. The longer it takes for them to dismiss it as a fake e-mail, the higher the risk of someone falling victim for a potential scam.

The longer it takes without any confirmation that this is a fake email, the more likely it seems like this may be a result of a real draft having gone out too early by mistake. That makes it all the more concerning that there has been no word at all on the topic. The worst thing they can do in this situation is to remain silent. The longer they remain silent, the worse it is when people have a potential security risk in their inbox.

Regardless of it being fake or not, the damage has already been done when it comes to spreading an expectation/hope of a refund. The only thing complete silence can achieve at this point is further damage which is far worse than anyone's disappointment caused by it not being real.

Guys... stop thinking logically. It's CO/PDX we're talking about.
It's a hoax and they are still in holidays.

 

[Neshura]

If there is a fake email with a spoofed (or hacked) sender going around asking people to click on a link to contact Paradox support for a refund, the primary concern of CO and Paradox should be to minimize the risk of someone even clicking on the link provided in the email. The longer it takes for them to dismiss it as a fake e-mail, the higher the risk of someone falling victim for a potential scam.

Someone did the work and discovered that at least up until this weekend anyone could post to the Official announcement forum. So the email has a good likelihood of actually coming from this forum, but the veracity of the Post itself is still rather dubious.

 

[KyoLo the major]

Or maybe they just forgot their forum passwords!

 

[ma2412]

i think there are waiting one week more an then - surprise: they've fixed the whole game!

 

[BoraBora]

Someone did the work and discovered that at least up until this weekend anyone could post to the Official announcement forum.

It seems you still can as you can click on "Post a new thread in this forum" and write any text.

 

[Askorti]

Is it just me who's under the impression that at this point CO is in full "ostrich hiding its head in the sand" mode?

 

[tweety80]

Is it just me who's under the impression that at this point CO is in full "ostrich hiding its head in the sand" mode?

Yes.
But let us assume it is not a hoax. It would take time before someone with enough power has such an idea.
The second question would be asking if it is even possible.
If it comes from Paradox, the answer is relatively easy, but if it comes from CO, it would require many different steps. It also impacts milestone payments and these things.
It is impossible to decide in a few days, even if CO's CEO wants it. She does not have the power to decide alone. You probably need lawyers to negotiate and finalize a new deal.

Let us assume it is a hoax.
In that case Monday is already over in Europe... the mods should have closed this topic.

Let us assume it is not a hoax, but it is unclear if it is possible or not and the timeline for a final decision is not that far away.
In this case, the thread may remain open because it is undecided.

 

[Borgratz]

Is it just me who's under the impression that at this point CO is in full "ostrich hiding its head in the sand" mode?

I doubt they have a choice in the matter. The standard practise when you and your publisher are "discussing" what to do after a failed launch/post launch phase is for both sides to shut up until a new agreement is signed.

The same happened with all the other paradox published games that didn't do well.

(just an observation, I have no insider knowledge of what's going on behind closed doors in this project )

 

[The Aziz]

I'm assuming even mods don't know exactly what happened. If it actually happened, as we're only getting claims from a bunch of people who may or may not be following the announcements forum. If the mods knew and acted accordingly, we'd also knew something has happened, just not what exactly (unless we were told in the closing post)
All we know for sure is that anyone can or could post in the announcement forum.

 

[BoraBora]

Let us assume it is not a hoax, but it is unclear if it is possible or not and the timeline for a final decision is not that far away.
In this case, the thread may remain open because it is undecided.

If this wasn't an hoax, it would be PDX decision to refund the DLC because they're the publisher, not CO. If this wasn't an hoax, the e-mail wouldn't be sarcastic towards PDX.

If it is not an hoax, then PDX should have published an apology for this badly written and sarcastic draft, with some explanation about why it was posted too soon and what's cooking on their side.

If it an hoax (and it is, obviously), then PDX should have published a disclaimer saturday, before it was discussed at length all over the various CS social networks (discord, Steam, Reddit, all forums, of course including this one). This hoax impersonate them to make fun of their business practices while exploiting a forum breach. Not saying anything is pathetically irresponsible.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

I doubt they have a choice in the matter. The standard practise when you and your publisher are "discussing" what to do after a failed launch/post launch phase is for both sides to shut up until a new agreement is signed.

The same happened with all the other paradox published games that didn't do well.

(just an observation, I have no insider knowledge of what's going on behind closed doors in this project )

I was on the Imperator rollercoaster, and I don’t remember developers or Johan cutting off communication with us completely even after the negative release. They still did a roadmap, with general points on what patches fixed what and what they would rework on, free DLC and dev responses on them. I have never seen a major Paradox release have this level of cutting communications off completely.

Feel free to correct me on this ofc, my memory has been proven to be faulty

 

[Borgratz]

I was on the imperator rollercoaster, and I don’t remember developers or Johan cutting off communication with us completely even after the negative release. They still did a roadmap, with general points on what patches fixed what and what they would rework on, free DLC and dev responses.

Feel free to correct me on this ofc, my memory has been proven to be faulty

Yeah, that's true, but Imperator was both published and developed by Paradox, so you don't really have two companies talking about contracts and obligations, but more of an internal discussion about future strategies. So Johan probably had a lot of freedom in how to plan out the post release phase and was part of the strategy meeting that decided to axe the game. That's not really the case here.

If I had to guess, we just passed an evaluation point for the game (first dlc/first major patch), where the contract between CO and PDX specified some sort of "must reach" goal (some sort of player metric?), and now we are witnessing the very silent fallout of that goal not being reached.

 

[Civ5rako]

The ONLY thing I can think of that would explain the lack of comms on something like this is that they read it, knew it was a hoax, but mgmt are thinking about/trying to impliment it anyway?

there is ZERO other reason(s) to not immediately make a post, remove the post...sheesh SOMETHING that shows the lights are still on at COHQ

Honestly, guys, you are still thinking something like that would even be considered?

Meanwhile my expectations are rather low as far as CO is concerned, and for PDX it doesn't look too much better. But a failure of those dimensions is beyond my expectations.
Not only is it highly unlikely to prepare such a forum posting, only to later have to press just one button for releasing it. Then accidentally releasing it on a Saturday is even more unlikely. And the willingness to go through the refund trouble - in addition to have to create something new for the Ultimate Edition customers - will be zero on the side of both parties.
So, we can safely assume this has never been the intention of either of both companies.

But now to develop hopes they might read that hoax and start thinking: "Oh, that's actually such a sweet idea. Maybe we should do it!" - well, that isn't too reasonable. Sorry to rain onto your parade, but don't do it. You will only be disappointed even more.

 

[LordTridus]

I was on the Imperator rollercoaster, and I don’t remember developers or Johan cutting off communication with us completely even after the negative release. They still did a roadmap, with general points on what patches fixed what and what they would rework on, free DLC and dev responses on them. I have never seen a major Paradox release have this level of cutting communications off completely.

Feel free to correct me on this ofc, my memory has been proven to be faulty

Star Trek: Infinite AFAIK had a 3 month gap between its last weekly patch, where they said "We are now in discussions on what our future roadmap looks like, what the game needs and what type of resources we need to hit those goals. We are still in the early stages of this discussion however and don’t have any information to release at this time."

The next announcement was the end of development, and I don't think the devs were very active in the forums during that time.

Not saying that's whats happening here (CS2 is still much more popular), but there is precedent.

 

[Anna_Gein]

Star Trek: Infinite AFAIK had a 3 month gap between its last weekly patch, where they said "We are now in discussions on what our future roadmap looks like, what the game needs and what type of resources we need to hit those goals. We are still in the early stages of this discussion however and don’t have any information to release at this time."

The next announcement was the end of development, and I don't think the devs were very active in the forums during that time.

Not saying that's whats happening here (CS2 is still much more popular), but there is precedent.

Tbh maybe ST Infinite devs were genuine but the publishers told them nope

Though I got to say I am deeply dissapointed by CO with this whole CS 2 debacle.

I am glad people on this forum noticed something was fishy with the pre-release footages and I am glad I listened to them and put my order on pause despite my excitation for CS 2. I cant believe CO and PDX released such a broken game and this despite being increasingly frustrated by paradox over the past years due to their poor releases and insane DLC money grabing.

 

[brother_korahael]

Surprisingly, there has been almost no coverage of this outside the forum and Reddit. Only one Youtuber that I’ve found spoke about this.

@co_avanya is anyone aware of this email and deleted forum post?