Because you realize one of these things is under their control (the pace and quality of patch releases) and the other is not? (The deadline to ship the game enforced by the publisher)

Clearly you've never worked for a company that develops software, I have. And these kinds of things happen. Deadlines get missed and goals get pushed back. You can have a team of passionate and talented people and even then sometimes they just can't deliver.

You want to talk about embarrassing issues with games? I'm sure you've all seen this picture before, right?



This is from Assassins Creed Unity, a AAA title made by Ubisoft (Edit: thanks Braken), with a budget of over 100 million dollars and a development team of over 900 people.

Get off your high horse and play the game, or don't, but this kind of mud slinging accomplishes nothing.

Ubisoft, not EA.

About as strange as when I plan to record something, in a literal case a "tutorial" of sorts that goes into everything in EC and how it works, pros and cons potentially, but I've done nothing but talk to myself while driving between my town and where I work. So do I find it strange it took so long, nope, some of us are still human and when you started putting more of us together it just becomes more complex and convoluted.

I can't resist the joke, sorry Asheru, but I will also be offering English lessons for written or spoken form if I get 1,000,000,000 subscribers! Well, of all the things we could've resorted to, at least we aren't talking about long tailed cats in a room full or rocking chairs, if you can't imagine it you shouldn't be in game design in any way! Damnit, time to go write a book now and be creatively fulfilled...grumble grumble...

18 years in software development, from junior developer to lead developer to project manager to product manager, Fortune 500 organization. For the past 10 years I've also been an occasional adviser to a venture capital group who engage to help cut through technobabble and junior college marketing degree bullshit. Let me help you out.

"The deadline to ship the game enforced by the publisher". Deadlines don't just magically happen. Deadlines are negotiated. When a publisher takes on a developer or when a developer takes on a publisher (the relationships are really bilateral now-a-days) they have a courtship period when the publisher decides if they want to work with the developer and the developer decides if they want to work with the publisher. Both sides do their research, ask questions, answer questions, verify assumptions.

Release timing would be a top question asked by the publisher. It would also be a top question asked by the developer. As long as the relationship between publisher and developer has existed, the release timing would have been known. Mr Bandai and Mr Namco didn't wake up one day and decide to randomly demand the release.

During the courtship process, you can call it due diligence if you'd like, there was a negotiation regarding release timing. Bandai Namco and Behaviour agreed to that timing as a condition of their relationship.

Bandai Namco would have been instrumental in pushing EC to Steam Early Access, as that would mitigate their exposure (read that as "limit financial loses"), as a condition as well. The timing of the publishing agreement and the EA launch was not coincidental.

For the full release, the most likely scenario would see Bandai Namco giving Behaviour several extensions before finally requiring that Behaviour live up to their agreement and release the product.

In short, it is disingenuous to claim "The deadline to ship the game enforced by the publisher" means that Behaviour was forced to do something they didn't agree to. That simply isn't true. They knew the deal going in. They signed it.

It's not a question of passion or even, ultimately, the inability or ability to deliver. We both agree that they didn't deliver.

It's a question of personal accountability and integrity. Who is going to stand up, stop making excuses and take ownership of the problem? Not Nathan. He's trying to convince everybody that everything is fine.

And that's not going to change if we all stand around in a circle jerk and buy the bullshit they've been selling.

This guy gets it.

*Cough* Okay... so, you have worked for a software company before. My apologies for the rude assumption. And yes I'm fully aware of the due diligence process as the company I worked for was sold off and all of the potential buyers would come in and do that same process just to make sure they knew what they were buying.

I suppose the only defense of my argument I have left is that the game was initially said to be released in Summer of this year. (For PC and consoles) It ended up getting pushed back a few months to late September. I'm sure if there was anything BeHavior could have done in their power to pushback the deadline even further, short of breaching their contract with Bandai, they would have.

As I showed in my previous post, games can get shipped with embarrassing glitches and issues. It happens pretty commonly, actually. Thank god for modern technology and being able to patch things right? If you are wanting Nathan to go on stream and commit seppuku for his crimes it won't happen. I"m sure there was/is a reckoning at BeHavior for the messy state the game shipped in (and continues to be in). It can't look good in your yearly review with your boss that projects you oversaw turned out to be in such a poor/untested state upon release. Nathan has hinted at some regret that the game released as it did, this is reflected in the 10,000 RTC they gave all players (lol a helmet) as well as thanking us for sticking with the game.

I think the fact Bandai Namaco has had not one but two publisher sales and EC is neither hide nor hair on either one of those sales either says Bandai has noped out of being associated with them or they don't think the title is such a shitshow to already be on sale. Pretty sure it's the first.

Finally some words from a professional, now the trolls cannot deny the facts on the basis : you have no idea about game development

Saying sorry or gifting some laughable 10k rts points is unfortunately not enough, personally I don't care about it, this is not a business way of dealing with things. The refund period should be simply extended, then we could call it fair.

Finally thank fuck someone has explained this properly.

I'm going to paraphrase Nathan from the post launch QnA he did with DJPenguin: End of the day even Nathan said it came down to a question of cancelling the game (the game was in a shit state when he got it) or releasing 'something'. They chose to release something.

Now to me that sounds like things are not in a good state. Its no wonder that its been over a month since Launch and the game still has a lot of critical issues.