Attempts at redemption should not be despised, they should be encouraged. They made a bunch of money at launch, they could have kept it and split, but they didn't. Nms has gotten closer and closer to the original vision.

@harmny:
The thing is, its that the likes of EA, who have repeated abused the goodwill from an apology, to then do the exact same thing if not worse, that's created this mentality.

So you didn't get what was promised day one , they continued to support it , continued to update it and on Tuesday the game will be updated to where Hello games wanted it to be.

harmny

More sob stories from you defending game developers... Sean Murray had the choice of being honest and upfront with everyone. He had the choice of releasing an early access game. Instead he: went to Colbert's show and lied about his game, made interviews with gaming publications and lied about his game, went to EA and showed fake gameplay footage, put a misleading trailer on storefronts, released his incomplete game at full price, released a broken mess and the people that bought the game at full price are still WAITING for features that the scummy liar advertised and you're talking about mistakes? Mistakes?! LMAO and the oh so poor devs are people as well whaaaa whaaa. Yeah scummy con artists are people as well. They fart everyday like the rest of us and huh they pick their noses when they're waiting for the light to go green so up the dee fucken hooo whaaaa whaaa https://media3.giphy.com/me...

Or....the real world where they would have cancelled development and not released the game because they would have run out of money. They were a small dev, with limited funds. It's not like they had big publisher backing where they could afford to delay the game to make it more than it was.

I can understand if people weren't happy with what was released compared to what they feel was promised, but people saying like they just had a choice to wait to release it seem to think that that is always a solution. Indie games often don't have that option at all.

rainslacker

If funds were a problem in the real world Hello games had the option of releasing an early access game or they could have started a crowdfunding campaign, maybe even both. NMS might be in indie game but it was an indie game that was followed by many gamers and had garnered a lot of attention. It wasn't your run of the mill unknown indie project so that excuse doesn't fly.

God, some of you are so bloody toxic. I thought it was a joke when it came out, but it's pretty amazing now. Yes he fucked up, promising a lot more than they could deliver. He did a Peter Molyneux. He reached for the skies with ideas that he probably thought they could squeeze into the game by launch but the realties of game development meant most of what was meant to be in the game didn't make the cut. They made demo material that they couldn't deliver on. It was a mix of marketing spin and naivety. It WAS a joke and they've been suitably torn down because of it. But what they've done since is totally commendable. There is no doubt in my mind of the passion and vision that's there.

The guy is a intentional liar and a scammer and you are defending his lies and scam.

Pure and simple. This is related only to his scammer mindset, nothing else.

@iam

Sure....but they did have private funding for the game, so the release schedule wasn't entirely up to them. Indie doesn't mean publisher/investor free to take your time and do whatever you want, and ultimately, that people funding it are going to want a return on their money, and may not have more money to give. The producer is responsible for getting the money, and if they can't, then it's either cancel or go with what you got.

Not everything in the real world of development is as black and white as some people assume, and what may work in one place, may not even be available in another. For instance, Sony paid money to publish on PS4. Sony doesn't do early access. Are they going to be content with HG just releasing it on PC while they're left out in the cold? Things just don't work out like that when money is involved.

I'm not saying that Murray didn't do a horrible job of PR, just that sometimes, choices are limited, and this game suffered due to poor setting of expectations by Murray, and because of the delay, probably a quick drying up of the money.

If early access is enough to appease you and be alright, then what's the problem? Isn't selling the game and then using the money for updates the same thing? Isn't that what the dev has been doing since release? They didn't market it that way, but the end result is the same. I'd even say they've done better than many early access programs out there.

Ea would have took your money then ditched all content plans, over and over.

Hello games have stuck by this game for 3 years now with free content updates.
I was gonna post all the patch notes here but theres way too much. I cant even make a thread on reddit cos it dwarfs the text limit.

Instead I've had to put it in word. Its 115 pages long.
over 3 years with a team no larger than 25 members, they have redeemed themselves in my eyes.

These notes will be denser come wednesday when the patch drops also at least another year of free content to come and probs a ps5 update.

https://drive.google.com/fi...

Indie games by definition are self funded and self published games. If Sony funded the game then that excuse of lack of funds doesn't seem plausible because if I remember correctly it was a small team and if early access wasn't possible because Sony published the game then they could have done what Shenmue devs did to help fund their game. Anyway that to me is irrelevant because lack of funds or set release dates don't explain this https://www.youtube.com/wat... and let's just leave at that because there are more examples. You don't need to be good at PR to know that you're showing fake gameplay footage on the biggest gaming convention in the world. You don't need to be good at PR to know that you're misleading the people that you're trying to sell your game to. All you need is decency and I don't understand why you and others are throwing words like mistakes, naiveté or "bad at PR". That guy knew exactly what he was doing when he went on that stage.

You know full well why I mentioned early access games as an option for Hello games to fund the game if needed be but again, irrelevant. The lack of honesty and respect shown to the people that bought the game is the real issue. "Devs are people muwahhh muwahahhh" yeah so are the people that bought their game and got a product that was not even close to be what was advertised to them.

"Anyway that to me is irrelevant because lack of funds or set release dates don't explain this https://www.youtube.com/wat... and let's just leave at that because there are more examples. You don't need to be good at PR to know that you're showing fake gameplay footage on the biggest gaming convention in the world. You don't need to be good at PR to know that you're misleading the people that you're trying to sell your game to. All you need is decency and I don't understand why you and others are throwing words like mistakes, naiveté or "bad at PR". That guy knew exactly what he was doing when he went on that stage. "

If you can't understand how this could have been naivety then I probably should bother explaining but here goes. It's called a "vertical slice". you polish off a slice of the game you intend to make, make it work in some controlled situation and show it off as a proof of concept to sell the game. In the case of some big ol' universe sim I imagine it's infinitely more complicated to get right than some corridor shooter. You have thousands of systems, none of which are going to be ready yet and all of which are interconnected. it's going to have to be heavily scripted to work at all. This was overconfident and full of bull, but bull I'm guessing they hoped they'd eventually pull off in the following years of development. This is nothing new for E3, especially not on the Sony stage, they regularly show off, well, bullshit. You hear it time and time again if you actually listen to stories about these E3 demos from people working on the games.

It deserves a lot of criticism, there was clearly no way they were going to pull it off with our glorious hindsight. But it doesn't have to have been malicious. I reckon he thought it was going to come together. But it didn't. You can even tell in some of the interviews closer to the date that he was trying to temper some of those expectations but it was too late, his previous words were out there and the gaming media and Sony PR had created an unstoppable hype monster.

There was no reason other than them having their hand forced for them to release the game in the state they did. The backlash was (and clearly still is) immense. I would guess they had no choice. It was a huge mistake as it clearly needed to stay in the boiler for at least a couple more years. It has tarnished their reputation. He is so very clearly "once bitten, twice shy" about overselling his game and while they might have won quite a few of us back which this stream of significant free updates he and his company is now stuck with a reputation amongst the so-often notoriously merciless gaming community.

I don't believe, however, it was a "scam". They didn't run off to panama with the money, he shut his mouth and they kept plugging at it. People had a whinge about the pre-orders they bought (when will people learn?), it became the butt of jokes, people demanded refunds, the games price quickly plummeted and people like me who could see through the hype waited a few months and bought it for next to nothing. There were so many mistakes here, clearly, and a few deceptions, some smoke and mirrors we all got to see through at launch. But there's no definitive proof I see that it was done in bad faith, just bad judgement.

@foxtrot. Pretty sure they did have a choice

CrimsonIdol

A vertical slice is a proof of concept in early development stages to sell your game to a publisher. This was one year before the game was released and yes I'm aware that devs touch up the gameplay demos shown at E3 but 99% of the time it's just graphical upgrades. That's not what happened with NMS. The game that was sold wasn't just a visual downgrade from what was shown in that stage, it was much more than that so we'll have to agree to disagree on Hello games, a studio that wasn't comprised by noobs, naivety.

There’s a huge difference about making a mistake and intentionally withholding information about a product to get money then “add it in later” after they’ve taken the money.

If they were honest up front and said most of the content won’t be ready at launch but will work hard to get it to what they originally promised, then I’d forgive them.

Instead, they made promises about the game, it turned out to be something completely different WITHOUT telling the public, took the money and fixed it 2 years later.

Yea. No thanks. That’s incredibly scummy.

It's not about making a mistake, it's about them telling lies to everyone! you might be able to forgive that, but I don't and neither do a lot of other people who wasted money on a game that was sold on a lie.

"they did the best they could"

Oh come on... really? They threw money into after taking peoples money.

Sure people make mistakes, learn from it and change, but I can honestly say that I haven't lied to people to cheat them out of money. A "mistake" like that takes a person with low characteristics to make.

Making a mistake and intentionally lying to everybody... are two very different things.

It's not a mistake to lie to your potential customers about features that aren't in the game.

It's not a mistake to lie on release day, saying that players can't find each other because of server issues.

It's not a mistake to show features in a trailer that do not exist in the game.

It's not a mistake to go completely silent for months without any sort of apology or explanation.

They knew exactly what they were doing. Yes, I'm glad they kept working on the game. But that does not in any way excuse what they did.

You all seem to think the guy maliciously lied and purposefully misled the potential buyers.

I've watched this dev during pre-release, and all I could think was that he wasn't very good at PR. He allowed himself to be led too often, and often seemed to be all over the place. I think he got too wrapped up in everything, and maybe intended to release what he said.

At the same time, people really stretched the nature about how many "lies" there were. The no MP expanded to any and everything that could potentially be a lie. Like for instance, the animals shown in the trailer weren't in the game proper....ignoring any and all technicalities of how the universe was created, or acting like the trailer wasn't a bullshot to show as much as possible in as short a period of time.

I've seen the big publishers lie much better and often, and be caught in lies, and still not show a single ounce of remorse, and then go and do it again, half the time not even fixing their mistakes. But people acting like Murray was worse really got on a hate train that was way overblown.

Don't forgive the man if you feel he did wrong. But after all these years, it seems people still hold way too much hate for the man. it's time to move on, and it offers plenty of content, and realistically, I think most people just aren't interested in the game, but want to be hostile towards Murray, and even the people who still enjoyed the game regardless of all that happened.