Looks like a case of pulling a statement out of context and then trying to beat Stardock over the head with it.  I remember the days when PC Gamer used to have some actual journalistic integrity, but those times are apparently long behind us.

I DEMAND A HOTFIX FOR THE Gamers Bill of Rights to guarantee more girls in slinky chainmail 'armor' !  

I know they're called "games" and all, but do people who play them really have to act like spoiled children?

Maybe it's because I'm a developer, but I didn't form an opinion about the game based on 1.00 or 1.01, it wasn't until 1.05 that I started looking at issues with the game.  I know from personal experience that when you push out a gold CD it just won't be ready, it is generally in the middle of a QA cycle so you're going to have to do a release day patch. 

Since someone broke street date we didn't get to play the game as it was intended to be played, we played something with game breaking bugs.  After 1.05 came out the game drastically improved for me, the campaign plays a lot more like a tutorial, I'm getting less wonky behavior and it feels more balanced in general. 

The only unfortunate issue is that they had to cut features to deal with the broken street date, but again this is something I'm forgiving on as well, because it's something I've had to do many times when I find a show stopper close to release.  Either cut features or fix things, so maybe I'm not the best person in the world to form an opinion about how they released it.

ALL games which are released have bugs and crashes : all of them (except, perhaps, a few simplistic indie games). It's the price you have to pay, in the gaming-software industry, for increasing complexity to have richer content -- compatible with gamer systems that become more and more complex (such as : the high sophistication of recent, videocard electronics, architecture and drivers).

The Big Boss of Stardock (forum nick "Frogboy") was still on the forum yesterday evening, around 11:15 (my time : Eastern), when they were in the process of putting up 1.05 on Impulse.

I came back here this morning to learn that 1.05 had already been patched during the night (up to 1.05.016), and I noticed a hot-fix thread, initiated by Frogboy at 5:09 (Eastern). 

It means that between 11:15 and 5:09, Stardock's CEO has had little sleep, and has been working hard supervising the 1.05+ final production process.

Earlier in August, Stardock sent to the printing presses version 1.00 for the retail, non-Impulse release. Then, versions 1.01, 1.05, and hot-fixed 1.05.016 have been made available, on Impulse, in less than 5 days.

No released game is perfect : far from it. What's important, here, is that Stardock employees and their Boss are working overtime (and posting on the forum, a very rare initiative for developers) to squash bugs and refine their game.

It's very normal for a post-beta game to have bugs. What's extraordinary, here, is that the responsible corporation (and its CEO) have accomplished in about one week the fixing and upgrades that most other companies would have taken at the very least one month to accomplish -- if ever.

(Take the example of Heroes of Might and Magic 5, in 2006: the first patch was released by major corporation Ubisoft many, many months after the initial release. We were stuck with bugs and incomplete features for a long time. Producer Ubisoft and developer Nival almost never came on the official forum to keep their anguished customers informed about anything.)  

People who believe that versions 1.00, 1.01 and 1.05 were premature "beta" releases don't know anything about the computer-game industry, and especially, they don't realize that it is extremely rare that the CEO of a game-development and game-production corporation (Stardock playing both roles in the case of Elemental) will post on a forum, answer complaints, and spend the major part of his evening and night directly involved in the fixing of a product.

(I do hope that my post raises BoogieBac's spirits!)

In all seriousness, how do I get in on that?  I absolutely want to do it.  More power to all the folks that have the vision to see this as a great game.  I see it as broken, and while I'm not sure I categorize it as "unplayable", it is not what was advertised.  I'm not a beta tester.

Is there a form somewhere, or what?

In another thread Frogboy told the person in question to E-Mail sales@stardock.com and tell them he sent him.

So, I guess this is what you need to do.

Hmm....fascinating. So your saying that they release games unfinished on purpose as a weapon in the war against piracy. That's one I've never heard before. Do you have any links to them saying that? I would think that this would be a very short term solution at best as pirates could just wait for the final version to come out and pirate that. Plus it carries with it all of the bad PR from reviews of an unfinished game.

And it's going to stop them... how exactly? If they don't get sent a reviewer copy, then can just go buy one and review that.

And when you get down to it, what's factually incorrect in the article? There are crash problems, bugs, polish issues, and a total lack of multiplayer. Brad really did say that if people don't think it's finished, they shouldn't buy Stardock games anymore.

So, what's the actual problem with this article?

It's already open to really unhappy people. It's always been. It's just that people would rather go on the forums and rant nonsensically about some part of the BoR instead of emailing and asking for the refund.

Liked your posting better when you put some thought into them, Tridus. Been going closer and closer to just trolling lately

I'm having a blast with Elemental.. Very enjoyable.

YES, there were problems with 1.00, but the last couple of patches over the last couple of days have been good to me.

I'm looking forward to playing more and where Stardock take this. Shame, that as usual, stuff on the net is all overblown "guff" and people just need to CTFO (shock).

Any other game released in bad shape would get slammed by critics too.  The difference is most other devs didn't create the "bill or rights" or set such high standards for themselves (and others by implication).

Most other devs wouldn't be working so hard at time of release to patch things up and unless you're a big fan of Stardock games, you might not have faith that they will get things right eventually.  The question is, should you need to have such faith or should the game have been in better shape at time of release?  I think most neutral parties and hell, even I, a huge Stardock fan, think the game could've been in better shape at release.

Dunno.  For me the difference between .99 and 1.01 was huge but the game is finally getting there in 1.05 hotfixed - I finally felt the "one more turn" hook and had to pull myself away from the late game last night (early this morning).  Part of it is steep learning curve - but that's something most reviewers will recognize and accept.  Moreso it's stability and balance issues, IMO.

I've been wanting to start a thread called "did elemental beta fail" because either the game was released too early or beta failed.  The drastic changes in builds over just a few days make you wonder.

The game could use more polish, but at the same time, very few people have had a lot of time to play with 1.05 compared to 1.00 and 1.01 (1.05 went up around midnight ET last night, and I imagine most people have jobs), so there is a bit of 'version churn' going on I think.  The broken street date doesn't help-- I imagine we'd have seen a much cleaner equivalent of Day 0 if there wasn't 1.01 in the middle taking up Stardock's resources. 

I won't make a lot of excuses for Stardock, because there are clear indications that this was a rushed product-- the poor manual and poor in game documentation come to mind, which is very bad for a game this complex.  HOWEVER-- this is the state of gaming with awful QA cycles for all games, where even console games these days are having release day patches.  What annoys me is that the major game houses get free passes around bugs and issues because of their leverage with the gaming media.  Someone earlier (in this thread or another) posted correctly what a train wreck Civ IV was for a long time-- it was getting "fixed" by the community months faster than it was by Firaxis.  But no one called them out, because they're Firaxis. 

Brad made a ballsy move with the gamers bill of rights, and there are parts of Elemental which clearly don't live up to it.  This appears hypocritical, which is a fair view.  What isn't fair is the double standard that Stardock is held to and the rest of the industry isn't.

I look forward to playing 1.05 tonight, the half hour I played last night was promising, and I look forward to the continued future patches of the game.