Re:No Man’s Sky developer Sean Murray: ‘It was as bad as thi...
by nolok on Friday July 20, 2018 @02:26PM
(#17577525)
I have no source on this, but I would not be surprised one bit to learn it's Sony that pushed them hard to support the game properly. They picked the game when it was still indie, gave them lots of money to finish it and make it playstation exclusive, paid for a lot of marketing, and then had a major push for refund on the psn (which they "fought" against, because the psn is not very refund friendly).
Given that 90% of the issue is not "it didn't live up to what we expected" but "why is that guy lying about features that are in on release week", they probably didn't want to let hello games off the hook and screw players completly.
Re:No Man’s Sky developer Sean Murray: ‘It was as bad as thi...
by CM30 on Friday July 20, 2018 @04:49PM
(#17578795)
Of course, a good response to Murray's argument is that if they'd waited a bit longer and released the game with the promised features intact (or just released it as is, without lying) then the good PR would have gotten them a lot more sales and the same extra features they're adding now could have been added anyway. How many people didn't buy the game because they realised they were being lied to? How many of those who did buy No Man's Sky will ever buy another game from Murray and his studio?
The business logic doesn't hold up well here.
> "[But] if we hadn’t released No Man’s Sky when we had, and I was sat down talking to you now after we delayed it for two years, we would not have a game as good as it is right now"
It seems like Murray's argument is that misleading customers before the initial release is justified because the sales money allowed them to finish the game after launch. It's commendable that they didn't abandon the game afterward, but that doesn't really excuse/correct/justify the deception--which continued even post-launch. It's really unfortunate that Murray / HG get the "underdog" narrative when what they really did was a bait and switch.