Greedy Goblin

Friday, July 7, 2017

I told you not to play Albion Online!

I admit to love when my predictions come true. I'm still walking with an ear-to-ear smile watching CNN committing suicide-by-the_donald two days after I predicted that Dems will lose the internet generation due to completely not understanding them. But now I celebrate something else: Albion Online revealing itself to be a scam.

I told to not play that game after I've found that you can speculate on the premium currency. While it's bad in itself, allowing RMT-ers to make stupid amount of money using insider info, it also shows that the devs are bad guys and likely do worse.

They just did: "Founder packs (and upgrading) will also become unavailable on July 9th. Founder pack buyers will be granted an additional 10% gold when the game launches [on July 17], above and beyond previous promises. Do note that the game will not be free-to-play at launch, and presumably the launch game won’t come with the same goodies, so plan your wallet-opening accordingly."

This is an open scam. Founders are investing money into a game that is not yet published, helping its development. Therefore the earlier you jump in, the more risk you take, so the more reward you shall receive. It makes absolutely no sense to increase the reward of "being a founder" when the game is already ready to launch. The difference between "founder" and "normal buyer" should decrease as we approach to launch. Can anyone tell me why someone buying the game 5 days before launch gets free gifts compared to those who buy it on launch day?!

Simple: because the devs already know that the game will flop because of widespread RMT. So they know that after the reviews arrive, they can't really expect people to buy the game. So they offer extra rewards for those who buy it before they could realize what they got into. The reviews of the beta aren't that bad, because it's not a bad game now. But it will be horrible after they officially launch because all RMT Hell will break lose with bots, market manipulators and input-multiplexers.

Further prediction of Albion: Wildstar. It'll be a major disappointment, will go F2P and linger until it can't even pay for maintenance. But before it can happen, they want to cash out and offer extra rewards for "Founders" of a found game.


Update: Ark Survival Evolved is being published and its price doubled - as it should be. The early access people who helped with the development and paid for the sub-standard beta game got it cheaper than those who buy the complete game. That's the normal pricing, not what Albion did.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Founder packages always give an increased reward, even if you buy them right up to launch day (and in some cases, afterwards).

Gevlon said...

That's clear. However now they increased the reward compared to the "old" founder pack. Why didn't they designed the founder packs with +10% gold at the first place.

Anonymous said...

It's called marketing. "Now, new and better!", to tempt the last few people to get it and get something "special".

Gevlon said...

Why market now? Why not when the game is out and people can jump in instantly?

Hanura H'arasch said...

I think you simply misread the article? EVERY founder will get an extra 10% gold, not just the ones who buy the founder pack now.

The reason is fairly simple: starting mounts, that were once the big appeal of legendary founder packs, are fairly useless now that the tutorial gives you a mount. A lot of people obviously got upset about that, which is why SI gives more gold to everyone now. You may argue they could've given that bonus only to legendary founders, but then the other people would've probably complained as well.

Gevlon said...

@Hanura: I didn't misread it. However old customers can't "unbuy" anyway, so this +10% only motivates new Founders to make purchases.

Smokeman said...

I thought this was suspicious when they kept selling "Founder packs" after the finish of the kickstarter. You can't have a "Limited edition for the kickstarter" reward that you just casually keep selling after the kickstarter.

The clincher was when they had their "trusted" (As in the same people working the Eve Online PLEX scam for years..) "third party sellers" selling the new and improved, post kickstarter "Founder packs."

There are reasons to use "third party resellers" for this kind of thing, like you want to sell game time cards in stores, and you have no distribution connections. Or if you are some 2 guy indy shop using steam to sell your game subs and DLC. But these guys had no excuse for not selling accounts directly from their web site.

Gevlon said...

@Smokeman: Yes, having their own "personal Kickstarter" is a shady thing, as the Kickstarter money should be enough to pay for the development. It can mean two things:
- They are overspending and need extra funding (incompetence)
- The Kickstarter money is enough and they are just pocketing the extra funding (criminal in case they finally don't deliver)