"Elite: Dangerous Ditches Offline Singleplayer Plans"

[kane_magus]

And here is the Rock, Paper, Shotgun version of the previous post. The comments under that are also largely negative about this change, with the occasional defender throwing in their worthless two cents, of course.

This was yet another one of those games that I'd been seriously eying as a potential purchase, but now won't be touching with a ten-foot pole. They knew all along that it was going to be online-only, yet they blatantly and abjectly lied to their backers that there would be an offline mode. (EDIT) And the precise reason for why the game is online-only is blatantly obvious. (/EDIT) Seriously, though I don't foresee it actually happening, I truly do now hope this game utterly crashes and burns. Soooo glad I dodged a bullet by not backing this shit, even though I'd been tempted to do so on more than one occasion in the past.

This thing here both is and is not about the lack of offline in this particular game, though. It's just as much, if not more so, about a game company who ran a Kickstarter campaign and who explicitly promised to backers a certain thing, no matter what that thing may be, during that Kickstarter campaign, and who are now completely reneging on said thing roughly a month or so before initial release of the game, and who never intended to provide said thing in the first place, as should be quite obvious by now. And I'll definitely be keeping this in mind the next time some other game company comes to me with hat in hand asking for my money, as well. Yes, not all game companies are going to be utter scumbags like this, but then who would have thought that the curators of the Elite franchise would be scumbags like that? (EDIT) Well, assuming you weren't already paying attention anyway, as I had not been until now. (/EDIT)

I truly hope Frontier Developments goes utterly out of business over this, though again I don't see it actually happening. There are just far too many clueless and/or apathetic and/or militant sycophantic lickspittles out there for them to fail the way they really deserve to.

Yet another facet of why I just don't give much of a shit at all anymore about modern video gaming in general.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Oh god I love one of the comments from the apologists there trying to bitch out one of the people pissed off by the official backtrack on having an offline mode.

"Feel free to raise a few million quid, form a studio and make the game “you” want."

IF I had an account I'd probably have replied to him with "That's an AWESOME IDEA! I'll tell all my backers when raising my few million quid that I'll be making an online game, then a month from launch reveal that moving the game to the server is just too unrealistic and impractical so the game would be offline only. Then I'll tell people who bitch to go raise money for their own games instead of believing other people will keep their promises."

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's one of the go to responses of people who don't have an actual response to make. "If you think you can do better, go right ahead." It's just as much bullshit as all the rest of their stupid bullshit.