Yeah, Minecraft was the first, and arguably implemented it in the best way. It would have went over like a lead balloon, though, if Notch had charged 3+ times the final release price for people to have the "honor" of testing his game for him, rather than significantly less than full price like he actually did. Also, imagine the outrage if Notch had said, a month before the game went full release, that he was scrapping the offline[1] mode and would require constant connection to Mojang servers just to play the game at all.
Back on the topic of Elite, from what I've seen and read, it looks to me like the whole promise to include offline mode to begin with was nothing but a desperate, disingenuous ploy that they tried halfway through the Kickstarter to get more backers, because people simply were not backing what was before that point shaping up to be an online-only game. Now that they have the money and the game is about to release, they just no longer feel the need to continue with the deceit, and are now fucking backers over by not giving a lot of them the opportunity for a refund, just because those backers made the poor decision to kick in something extra for the "privilege" of testing the fucking thing for them (again, see my bizarro world comment about testers having to pay to test shit, rather than being paid for it). I'll just say it again, I seriously hope they get sued into fucking oblivion over this shit.
[1] - Sure, it's true that Minecraft does require an online login, as it always did as far as I know, but that's not even remotely close to the same thing as always-online, and even then I'm pretty sure you can still play the game on some level without necessarily having to log in.
no subject
Back on the topic of Elite, from what I've seen and read, it looks to me like the whole promise to include offline mode to begin with was nothing but a desperate, disingenuous ploy that they tried halfway through the Kickstarter to get more backers, because people simply were not backing what was before that point shaping up to be an online-only game. Now that they have the money and the game is about to release, they just no longer feel the need to continue with the deceit, and are now fucking backers over by not giving a lot of them the opportunity for a refund, just because those backers made the poor decision to kick in something extra for the "privilege" of testing the fucking thing for them (again, see my bizarro world comment about testers having to pay to test shit, rather than being paid for it). I'll just say it again, I seriously hope they get sued into fucking oblivion over this shit.
[1] - Sure, it's true that Minecraft does require an online login, as it always did as far as I know, but that's not even remotely close to the same thing as always-online, and even then I'm pretty sure you can still play the game on some level without necessarily having to log in.