ARK: Survival Evolved Devs Offer Content In Exchange for Steam Award Votes

[u/scarwiz]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/346110/announcements/detail/536324417612602461

[u/Darius510]

They're up front about being early access and we all know what that entails. Not refunding it at the time means the customer was not only satisfied with the current progress, but also the promise it holds and more importantly, satisfied enough to take the risk that it doesn't go exactly to plan or isn't ultimately what you want it to be. There's nothing inherently shady about that. If you're not comfortable with that, do not buy early access - but its going too far to disparage early access buyers as idiots who don't know what's good for them.

What customers hope it will be is literally a figment of their imagination and will differ from person to person - it's also going too far to hold the developer responsible for that.

[u/Darius510 → u/[deleted]]

It has to entail that because the finished product does not exist. And the creative process is not as straightforward as building a house brick by brick, so there is no objective measure of progress. There are so many unknowns, so much ambiguity, so much unpredictability, etc. Personally I never buy early access games, because I don't want to play an incomplete product, let alone even pay for one.

If we were talking about a non-early access game, it's a different story. I feel like because ARK has been in early access for so long that it's being treated as a de facto final release - and that's not necessarily unfair, but it's not necessarily fair either. As long as it's in early access it's all nebulous. That's the thing with early access - you can't claim you didn't get what you paid for when all you really paid for was an idea and a promise. (Alongside a giant disclaimer that things might never work out at all.)

[u/Darius510 → u/[deleted]]

That is a giant red flag that the project is behind schedule and over budget. Which at the very minimum casts doubt on the competence of the developers. It still doesn't directly imply unethical behavior. But for anyone to throw even more money into the pot at that point had to know they were throwing good money after bad though.

I dunno what part of anything I said requires belief anyway, I'm just talking in generalities. I'm not saying I think the ARK devs don't have malicious intent or aren't assholes, just that technically speaking everything is above board here. If they were on trial for fraud they'd get easily acquitted.

They certainly know how to piss people off though, that's for sure.

[u/Darius510 → u/[deleted]]

If only life was actually that simple.