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[Iduno]

Sadly, I know exactly what went wrong with life that I ended up needing to take two painkillers and an anxiolytic to get through family visits. I just can't do anything about it.

I hear that.

[scriver]

Well maybe you shouldn't have insisted on making bare knuckle fighting the favoured family meeting activity Arx

[TD1]

Don't be ridiculous scriver.

It was obviously a sword duel to first-blood.

[Great Order]

A bit pissed off more than anything, but also rather unsurprised.

The old ARK season pass? Turns out that they decided that wasn't actually going to do what it said and they've released a second one so you can get the rest of the map/DLC releases.

Or, "Rather than give you all the maps and DLC, we're going to make you pay again for the rest"

At least I'm not the only one annoyed by this, judging by the old season pass reviews. If I was able to refund, I'd buy the new season pass to leave a negative review then refund it afterwards.

[Egan_BW]

Doesn't the term "season pass" imply that it's a pass good for one "season", and that there are multiple seasons?

(I know that in videogameland it means "buy all our shitty DLC as a bundle, gullible consumers!" But that doesn't make that interpretation of the term not bullshit and misleading.)

[Reelya]

Yeah, I did some digging. Some Steam reviews are claiming that the devs did a bait-and-switch, promised ALL future content for the season pass, then "changed the wording", which would be shitty. I'm thinking Great Order might have got the information 2nd hand from some of the people claiming there was a promise to get "all future DLCs".

However, some digging reveals screenshots over a year old on this reddit question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/playark/comments/8vahnl/can_anyone_explain_this_to_me_if_i_buy_the_season/

The wording was never changed. Maybe clarified a little after the third DLC came out, but not changed in meaning. The season pass was already stated to contain the two existing DLCs, and the upcoming third DLC, plus it states you'll get occassional bonus in-game content. So, it always said 3 major DLCs plus some bonus items. But it says nothing in relation to them giving you free access to all future expansion packs they might come up with, and they haven't promised not to make any DLCs after the ones mentioned as being part of the "season pass". And "season pass" itself implies additional seasons to come.

The new thing is a fourth major DLC, and that was never covered in the Season Pass offering.

What I think the issue here is, is that once another DLC exists people get butthurt about it, since they felt they're entitled to have all the content for free since they "paid" for the game that one time. People expect the "games as a service" model of delivery but with the traditional "retail box price" model of paying for it. Which is unrealistic.

It seems like online delivery has made people think things are "free", whereas the only real difference is that back in the 1990s games came stamped on 2-cents-worth of plastic CDs, and somehow that made it seem reasonable that you'd have to pay again for expansion packs since they were on different disks. Now, people have the base game and the DLC is 50 GB worth of new data, but somehow ... people don't think they should pay for any of it since it's "digital"?

if some other person has a DLC you don't have, you haven't actually lost anything. You still have the same game you paid for. Those people seem like they'd be happier if the new DLC was never made, rather than let other people play it if they can't personally play it.

Also, if the company doesn't have a revenue stream they need to abandon the game in order to survive. So right, if that season pass covered ALL future DLCs then instead of making more DLCs, they'd need to start working on the sequel straight away in order to have any revenue coming in. You'd quickly find that they've terminated support and development on ARK and are launching ARK 2, which you'd need to buy all over again anyway. That's the "traditional" model everyone seems to yearn for when they complain about there being DLC. The alternative to the DLC model (and other models where they get ongoing revenue) is "launch and forget" / "slash and burn" development.

[Kagus]

Doesn't the term "season pass" imply that it's a pass good for one "season", and that there are multiple seasons?

(I know that in videogameland it means "buy all our shitty DLC as a bundle, gullible consumers!" But that doesn't make that interpretation of the term not bullshit and misleading.)

The problem kinda comes from the fact that there's really no standard as to what "season pass" actually means in the gaming sense... Some companies have passes that do include all future and current DLCs, others have ones that only include all current DLCs, and others still make distinctions between certain types of DLCs (such as only including skins/maps/minor DLCs, but specifically excluding major DLCs/expansions).


And the ARK folks are kinda scummy all around, so calling them scummy for yet another thing is really just how some people like to enjoy their products.

[Reelya]

What percentage of that is actual problems however, and what percentage of it is irrational butthurt. I'm skeptical of that kind of stuff these days, and the first link I found for "ark developers are scummy" is this:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2253027-Developers-of-Ark-Survivor-Evolve-do-something-scummy-Again

The argument here is that the game cost $30 in early access, then went up to $60 once it was officially released. And this is "scummy" because "unspecified reasons". So what, they should have kept the early access pricing, just because?

The only argument they put forward when dissenters pointed out how this made no sense was that "but they put out paid DLC during early access and charged $20 for it!" which is a complete non-sequitor. Anyone who bought the DLC during early access clearly paid the lower Early Access pricing for the game, so them raising the price of the completed game later doesn't affect anyone who got the DLC earlier, since they got the game (plus ongoing patches) for the $30 price.

Clearly, people who got the game in early access aren't affected whatsoever if the price goes up later, nor are people who got the first DLC during early access. And people who could get it later can choose whether or not they want to pay $60 or not to play the game. Not a single involved person got burned by the price rise.

Show me some scummy things they did that actually make sense, since the two I've seen so far don't make any sense.

EDIT: not having played it, but looking into it, the other main thing people say is "scummy" is that they made a paid DLC during early access. Well, that might have annoyed people but ...

1) a few people buying a game at half-price during early access can't reasonably fund the development of an entire game. They made paid content during early development, because they needed the money to complete the game. Simple as that. Saying they should have waited until after it was finished to make DLC defeats the purpose of ... selling the DLC to raise more money for development.

2) It's a fucking MMO. Servers don't pay for themselves. A few people paying $30 each to own the game for perpertuity can't possible keep servers running. They either keep shilling DLCs or they have micro-transactions or they have subscriptions. People are pissed about paying for DLC, they're pissed about micro-transactions. Here's a thought: if you don't like paying: don't play MMOs.

[hector13]

There are better ways to frame an argument than “everyone is fucking retarded”, min.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yes. Yes, I do 100% miss when I could just buy a game and it didn't need 3 years of "support" in order to work the way it was initially advertised to. Then they made DLC/expansions and I pay for that too if I want it. If it didn't work people stopped buying your broken crap. If they got money they immediately started working on either an expansion or the sequel. What an wonderful advancement in gaming that I can buy things that are knowingly broken because nothing else exists. Please sir, may I have another.
 
I remember ARK. That's the one where they released paid DLC while the game was in early access. While taking money on the good faith that they will use it to complete the game you paid for before it was finished, they created extra content unrelated to the thing you paid for and then charged you money for it. The idea that you don't think releasing paid DLC content while claiming early access status is scummy in and of itself shows a disconnect from reality that borders on the deliberate.  You're goddam right I'd rather they don't make ARK rather than outright con me out of my money. Like the industry or any aspect of my life whatsoever is going to wither and die without this specific game about dinosaurs and a tropical island.
 
Why would you buy anything from them whatsoever after that? But that's just me getting riled about shady game companies. I'm not sure what makes you think a season pass is somehow people expecting free content, since you have to give them money for it and it specifically promises future content, hence the reason they don't call it a bundle. Bundles are for existing content, season passes are specifically for future content. If they bought a season pass and received no future content, it's a bundle.
 
So here's the problem. The wording states that you get all previous DLC, the upcoming DLC, and also the season pass is specifically listed as a separate item. So no, if they don't include any content after that point with the season pass that they specifically promised to you, they just took your money and split. Again. It's not a lack of understanding in the game industry about the idea that future content means content that is in fact in the future, because we aren't dealing with toddlers who don't yet understand the concept of time. It's another shitty company being shitty, and I'm not pretending otherwise just because we've somehow elevated pansy-ass greedslime producers to some kind of special celebrity status.
 
https://i.postimg.cc/K8tCXhYL/ark.png

[Reelya]

Did they raised enough money to finish the game however? What if the money runs out, which it inevitably does? Also, paid servers = needs constant money inflow.

My point is that expecting them not to try and more money-raising while developing the game because they got those sweet "early access" dollars isn't rational. In the old model, developers had investors who understood that the game may take additional resources so they'd bring more money in. With crowd-funding it's just the reality that money can run out, and it usually does.

Now, when the pittiful few dollars that a few die-hard players paid for early access tickets runs out, the devs have choices

1) end development immediately and cancel the game entirely (this was common in the old days)
2) end development immediately and launch the game in whatever state it's in. Leave any additional features out (see: any old game with unfinished features)
3) find more ways to raise money, either external investors or more stuff to sell to players (either one will piss off players)

The point is, it's just not believable that you could raise enough money to complete the game to modern player's level of satisfaction merely off the half-price sales at the start of Early Access. Especially not for a 3D open world game with online servers promising you can interact with hundreds of players. This is a frikkin MMO. You can't fund continuous operation of one sale or one box-price.

[Egan_BW]

I see no reason why ARK can't be run on dedicated servers like any old multiplayer game. False dichotomy between "supported by the devs forever" and "dead".
To my understanding it's not in fact an MMO. There's not one shared world and you don't need specialized hardware to host it. Devs could very well stop updating it and go work on something new.

[hector13]

Yes, and the points you brought up weren’t the things the person got initially annoyed about, nor are they anything new from you, having made this argument many-a-time in the past.

Regardless of your factual accuracy, calling people “fucking retards” in an effort to tell them off for getting upset over something they weren’t getting upset about isn’t really the way to have a discussion.

[Dunamisdeos]

Then obviously you outright break your promises and offer no apologies while simultaneously raking in profits. Simple.

What happens if I open a local business and then muck up and run out of money? My ass goes out of business.

So look, let's say Samsung sold you a phone, and was like yeah it doesn't work fully right now, no texting and only limited internet access right now, but we're working on it, and it's going to be way better in the end because we have YOUR input and YOUR investment money to get it done.

Then after like, an entire year, they were like, yeah, we need you to buy this second phone or you're getting no improvements to internet access or texting on the first one. They'd be in a class action lawsuit so fast they'd get whiplash.

But with early access gaming it's such a special honor to be involved in the secret world of game development that we just let them do it. If I tell you I need 5000$ to build you a boat, and that once you give me this money I will use it to build a boat, and then I come back and say yeah 5000$ was never enough to build a boat, I am not the victim here.

Edit: I get super serious about this stuff and all riled up, I hope I'm not coming off as attacking you personally Reelya. You are a cool people.

[Reelya]

Fair enough, I'm reading that you can set up private servers for it, so it's set up more like minecraft or something, I was wrong about that aspect, not an MMO.

Still, the main issue seems to be that people are upset they put out paid content during Early Access. Looking into it, the development until release took a year longer than planned. If a one-year project stretches to two years then clearly they'd need more funding if that hadn't been budgeted for, which is why they made an optional extra in the meantime. The money from the DLC went into paying for additional development of the core game.

However, if you paid $30 for the early access which was supposed to take 1 year, and it took 2 years, and they sold other stuff in the meantime (which was additional content you were never promised), but then put the game out, you end up with the same game in the end, still having paid $30. You got the product, albeit delayed. the fact that there's also a "better product" (the game plus DLC) available isn't actually any loss to you, but people perceive it as a loss, despite the DLC never being part of the original bargain they paid $30 for.

An analogy would be if you ordered a $30 pizza with ham and pineapple, but the company ran out of funds to provide your pizza, so they offered a $50 pizza with ham, pineapple, anchovies and truffles, and then sold some of those, and used the profits to get you your $30 ham and pineapple pizza, but now people are pissed because someone else got anchovies and truffles - despite basically getting the same pizza they ordered in the first place.