zodden wrote on Sep 17, 2010, 22:27:
At least Stardock continues to try and improve the game and fix it. Many companies abandon totally a project that's less then successful.
True, and that is one of the qualities that made Stardock's good reputation. They have been working hard under horrible stress for weeks at this point, and shown that they truly care.... but....
Elemental should never have been released in the first place. We all hear about buggy games, but seriously I have been playing computer games for twenty years and Elemental is on top of the list for 'bad state at release'. Good post release support does not excuse releasing garbage.
Stardock has veered into dangerous turf, and they have gotten zapped for it. They thought that any failings could be made up for in a quick 0day patch, and they planned their business strategy around that. An example is the multilayer - it is touted as a feature yet we now know they never intended to have that as a feature at release. They thought they would patch that in one week after release. Instead, the product is so distressed and they are so far behind that one month after release they still have not implemented it.