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DriveClub dev "had confidence" servers would work - compensation possible

reptilescorpio said:
Pretty terrible article. Was hoping for some actual new information, not just a tweet dump.


Where did he defend the launch?


Where did Evolution say that? Do they take Rushy tweeting as him speaking for the company as a whole?
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lol yes that's how it is done today. 140 signs are enough to accept as offical statement
 
Heroman said:
What are you talking about? if you buy something you are entitled for it to work.
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But they are fixing it. Just like anything with a warranty. The audience hit a defect, the company is backing up their product with the costs to fix it. I don't get why people start talking like they were sold snake oil.
 
Too bad servers don't run on "confidence". Glad I didn't buy the PS+ full version upgrade. Might test out the PS+ light version, but with the packed release schedule this fall they missed out on my sale.
 
Jinjo said:
Too bad servers don't run on "confidence". Glad I didn't buy the PS+ full version upgrade. Might test out the PS+ light version, but with the packed release schedule this fall they missed out on my sale.
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Well you can always buy it later down the line and for a discount.

I am beginning to wonder whether it's a good idea to forgo buying big releases on day 1.
 
CannonO said:
But they are fixing it. Just like anything with a warranty. The audience hit a defect, the company is backing up their product with the costs to fix it. I don't get why people start talking like they were sold snake oil.
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They were sold a product that a major part didn't work, it doesn't matter if they are fixing it. By that logic we shouldnt get mad if a game is broken on release.
 
CannonO said:
But they are fixing it. Just like anything with a warranty. The audience hit a defect, the company is backing up their product with the costs to fix it. I don't get why people start talking like they were sold snake oil.
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They had an extra year to fix problems. Also, there are many people that if they were in this situation and bought a product and it didn't work correctly after about a week would just turn it in for a refund. You shouldn't have to wait a week for your product to work correctly. There are other products that work correctly day one that you could use your money on.

And people are talking like they were sold snake oil because for the past week they've been sold snake oil. It doesn't matter if it's not snake oil in a couple days, it should have never been snake oil in the first place.
 
Heroman said:
They were sold a product that a major part didn't work, it doesn't matter if they are fixing it. By that logic we shouldnt get mad if a game is broken on release.
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Yeah, that's the logic. I bought it, and I'm not mad. Logic and rational thought tells me that no one is more concerned with this game being broken than Evo.
 
I feel terrible for those people at Evolution who worked hard and came up temporarily short. Sucks for gamers too, but it's just a game. This is their livelihood.
 
Zen_Arcade said:
They had an extra year to fix problems. Also, there are many people that if they were in this situation and bought a product and it didn't work correctly after about a week would just turn it in for a refund. You shouldn't have to wait a week for your product to work correctly. There are other products that work correctly day one that you could use your money on.

And people are talking like they were sold snake oil because for the past week they've been sold snake oil. It doesn't matter if it's not snake oil in a couple days, it should have never been snake oil in the first place.
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That sounds totally irrational. You are talking like they knew about the issue ahead of time despite their beta tests working fine. Like it showed up in tests and they basically decided to bomb themselves and their reputation. In reality, not every problem can be caught by the company. They tested and it passed, but it played out differently when they let it out in the real world. That's not selling snake oil. Not even a little.
 
They needed to capacity to handle those buying the full game in addition to the millions of PS+ subscribers. They couldn't even handle just the first group, which is likely to be the much smaller one. What a huge fuckup.
 
CannonO said:
Yeah, that's the logic. I bought it, and I'm not mad. Logic and rational thought tells me that no one is more concerned with this game being broken than Evo.
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No one gives a shit about good intentions when they payed hard earned money for something that doesn't work properly. They should have been more concerned with the game being broken before they agreed to put it out to market.

Them being "Concerned" about it doesn't change the fact that people have had their money taken for a broken product.
CannonO said:
That sounds totally irrational. You are talking like they knew about the issue ahead of time despite their beta tests working fine. Like it showed up in tests and they basically decided to bomb themselves and their reputation. In reality, not every problem can be caught by the company. They tested and it passed, but it played out differently when they let it out in the real world. That's not selling snake oil. Not even a little.
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Fine you can shy away from calling it snake oil because they didn't intend for it to fail, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a broken product and shouldn't have been broken for about a week now.

Their job was to get the game out a year ago, they failed, they released the game almost a year later, and they failed even after they let it out for the public to buy. There is nothing wrong with pointing out incompetence, which this game has been rife with.
 
krypt0nian said:
I feel terrible for those people at Evolution who worked hard and came up temporarily short.
  • Sucks for gamers too, but it's just a game.
This is their livelihood.
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I wish folks would stop saying this. It's both our hard earned money and their livelihood. It's intertwined and consequently the feeling of disappointment is common to both parties.

As aforementioned, I am glad that they're doing all they can to fix this issue and they should not be subjected to inflamed and hateful comments. However, gamers are entitled to be disappointed and voice it; issue is that the line between that and "hate" is a blurry one.
 
You only get 1 chance to make a first impression. DICE took a huge hit in credibility with the BF4 launch and Evo is getting raked over the coals now. I dread to see what happens when they open up the floodgates for the PS+ trial...
 
Driveclub 2 ain't happening due simply to Gran Turismo. Hopefully Evo does a more interesting game next, maybe another Motorstorm.

Driveclub was intended to be a simple, pretty launch game. A Ridge Racer stand-in, basically.

Imo.
 
Zen_Arcade said:
No one gives a shit about good intentions when they payed hard earned money for something that doesn't work properly. They should have been more concerned with the game being broken before they agreed to put it out to market.

Them being "Concerned" about it doesn't change the fact that people have had their money taken for a broken product.
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It's not like the precedent hasn't been set before but it is surely approaching ridiculous levels now. How can one castigate those who complain and are upset that the item they paid their hard earned money for does not function as required.

As much as I've enjoyed Evolution's previous games this is just completely unacceptable.
 
Zen_Arcade said:
No one gives a shit about good intentions when they payed hard earned money for something that doesn't work properly. They should have been more concerned with the game being broken before they agreed to put it out to market.

Them being "Concerned" about it doesn't change the fact that people have had their money taken for a broken product.

Fine you can shy away from calling it snake oil because they didn't intend for it to fail, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a broken product and shouldn't have been broken for about a week now.

Their job was to get the game out a year ago, they failed, they released the game almost a year later, and they failed even after they let it out for the public to buy. There is nothing wrong with pointing out incompetence, which this game has been rife with.
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Who says they didnt care though?
 
Zen_Arcade said:
No one gives a shit about good intentions when they payed hard earned money for something that doesn't work properly. They should have been more concerned with the game being broken before they agreed to put it out to market.

Them being "Concerned" about it doesn't change the fact that people have had their money taken for a broken product.
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You keep skipping that logic part. They were concerned with it before launch. You are again making no sense by suggesting they decided to risk their future and run with a busted or untested game. That's not what this is. They made a working game. As is the nature of software, tests can't actually find and predict all flaws and true reactions that the massive real audience will find. You keep talking like they did this on purpose. Like they are some pickpockets who don't have a care about their livelihoods and must not have tested their game (even though there's a whole thread showing their working beta).

mrklaw said:
Drive-Ghazi
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Stop doing this. Benghazi and Watergate are way different. One is way newer and involves tragedy. There's a reason it isn't being used by grown adults in place of Watergate when talking about trivial scandals.
 
CannonO said:
That sounds totally irrational. You are talking like they knew about the issue ahead of time despite their beta tests working fine. Like it showed up in tests and they basically decided to bomb themselves and their reputation. In reality, not every problem can be caught by the company. They tested and it passed, but it played out differently when they let it out in the real world. That's not selling snake oil. Not even a little.
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Yeah, sure they didn't intend for this to happen, as you've stated a few times. But is the alternative you are proposing much better? How could their testing be so inadequate (especially considering they were intending to release the game for free and had to know that would create huge demand on the servers)? I think the complete failure of their testing to anticipate anything like this, which is what they seem to be saying, says they thought their testing was OK but in fact it was woefully inadequate, which throws into question whoever works on that and what they are doing. That doesn't exactly fill anyone with confidence going forward.

I really like the driving model in this game and the track design is great, but not even being able to post to leaderboards nearly a week out indicates some kind of catastrophic miscalculation, and I'm genuinely curious how any genuine testing doesn't pick that up at all.
 
CannonO said:
That sounds totally irrational. You are talking like they knew about the issue ahead of time despite their beta tests working fine. Like it showed up in tests and they basically decided to bomb themselves and their reputation. In reality, not every problem can be caught by the company. They tested and it passed, but it played out differently when they let it out in the real world. That's not selling snake oil. Not even a little.
Click to expand...

You're just describing incompetence. Which doesn't really make much of a difference in the end result. They can't even get the online working when only a fraction of the userbase they were anticipating is playing the game.
 
CannonO said:
I don't get the anger some people have. Like do you really think Evo is just chilling and didn't care if their game was going to crash and burn and maybe bring them with it? Especially with how people looked at Dice and BF4?

Or do you maybe think they basically just got stuck with a break and are trying to fix it and repair the damage? Obviously they tested it out, did a Beta on PSN and such, and it worked. They wanted a working game and did the tests they knew to do and it passed. Real world played out differently. That happens with software and tests. A little team relative to a massive world audience means a lot of issues only get caught by the mass real world audience. This is one that came from the real world audience and is Evo's worst nightmare.

Get off their backs. They obviously would rather be known for a flawless release and an instant fix the next day at worst. If it's taking time, it's because the issue takes time so resolve.
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The problem is that this shit is constantly happening. A launch is something that we are surprised when it goes well, that's bullshit. It may not be Evo directly but we're a decade into online console launches at this point ... why do they always seem to go so badly? It's time the consumer stops paying for these mistakes.

And the "entitlement"? Think of any other product, what if you bought a BR movie and started to play it and couldn't for a week? Would it be "entitlement" or would you just answer "Hey, at least you can play the previews chapter ... wait until they fix the rest".

Honestly, why do people have such a "fuck it, I'll do something else" attitude with a product they purchased? People complain about dead pixels on monitors, AC not working, a tool that doesn't perform as advertised. We're consumers, we purchase a product with the expectation of it working. And it's "entitlement" when we demand something we bought to work? In fact I have been on the fence with this game, wanted to see how it played with a controller and if it would be worth it. I didn't have a chance and bought some other stuff this weekend, so now instead of "possibly" it's a "wait for the discount bin".

What a passive attitude. This is why the companies get away with it. This is why they have launch after launch of shitty online performance and broken promises. We accept it. We think it's "the norm". Well, some people are getting irritated with that. It's not "entitlement". It's not even really anger at this point. It just disappointment that so many people are accepting of such a shitty consumer/provider relationship when it comes to these online launches. It's not acceptable in almost any other medium. But throw a half assed product out in the gaming world? Just fix it afterwards ...

They could have fixed this in tests. They could have tested with a wider audience. Being a purchasable exclusive AND having a free version for every single PS4 owner with PS+? You don't think that warrants extra testing and maybe some more safeguards/steps? I work for a company that is SaaS so I understand the problems that can happen. Maybe it's just acceptable in the gaming world and that's the huge divide you see with this. Yes, problems happen. But a network error because of 'too many attempts' or w/e it is? Come on, that could have been caught in a wide-spread public beta test. But they had to be tight lipped, no reviews until launch and a closed beta. But again, maybe all of that was out of their hands.
 
rambis said:
Who says they didnt care though?
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Where did I say they didn't care? My entire point was that them caring and feeling bad doesn't mean anything when there are a bunch of people who payed good money for a broken product.

You're essentially saying it's alright to not have any standards for the companies you buy products from because they might feel bad every time they sell you something that doesn't work.
CannonO said:
You keep skipping that logic part. They were concerned with it before launch. You are again making no sense by suggesting they decided to risk their future and run with a busted or untested game. That's not what this is. They made a working game. As is the nature of software, tests can't actually find and predict all flaws and true reactions that the massive real audience will find. You keep talking like they did this on purpose. Like they are some pickpockets who don't have a care about their livelihoods and must not have tested their game (even though there's a whole thread showing their working beta).


Stop doing this. Benghazi and Watergate are way different. One is way newer and involves tragedy. There's a reason it isn't being used by grown adults in place of Watergate when talking about trivial scandals.
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They did not make a working game. If they made a working game, everyone could play it as advertised right now. They made a broken game that they didn't know was broken until they released it. Which is only slightly better then selling a broken game that you already know is a broken game. Either way people payed money for a broken product and are perfectly justified complaining that the product doesn't work. I'd wager that most, if not all companies don't purposefully push broken products out to market. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be scrutinized for it.

It doesn't matter if they did this on purpose, what matters is it happened. I'm sure Direct TV and Comcast don't randomly knock out my TV and internet signals on purpose to fuck with me, but that doesn't mean that it's suddenly acceptable for my internet to go out every couple months. I pay for their services and I expect to have them as long as I keep paying them.
 
RealityPales said:
I would be AMAZED if Evolution got to make another game after Driveclub...
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it is #2 in the UK charts this week. It has a lengthy set of DLC planned and already Rushy is talking about tweaking the penalties etc. So it has the potential to have some legs, especially when you have PS+ people playing it and setting times to beat for the rest of us.

And I'm guessing Motorstorm Apocalypse sold way worse (due mostly to factors outside of Evo's control) and Evo still got another chance.
 
krypt0nian said:
Children that don't live in the real world. Gotcha.
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In the real world when people release products with minor flaws (like the iPhone 6) there is an ass storm of complaints. Unless a game is an MMORPG, expecting it to work out of the box isn't outlandish or childish. See: Skyrim PS3, BF4, SimCity.
 
Are they ever going to actually release the PS+ version?

Can they ever be confident they would have enough server capacity to deal with millions more people downloading the game at the same time.
 
i-Lo said:
I wish folks would stop saying this. It's both our hard earned money and their livelihood. It's intertwined and consequently the feeling of disappointment is common to both parties.

As aforementioned, I am glad that they're doing all they can to fix this issue and they should not be subjected to inflamed and hateful comments. However, gamers are entitled to be disappointed and voice it; issue is that the line between that and "hate" is a blurry one.
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See no, I said I feel bad for them. I don't really care who rages or not. It is just a game, and IMO doesn't come close to being as important as people's jobs and livelihood.

You're welcome to feel differently. Rock on.
 
flyinpiranha said:
The problem is that this shit is constantly happening. A launch is something that we are surprised when it goes well, that's bullshit. It may not be Evo directly but we're a decade into online console launches at this point ... why do they always seem to go so badly? It's time the consumer stops paying for these mistakes.

And the "entitlement"? Think of any other product, what if you bought a BR movie and started to play it and couldn't for a week? Would it be "entitlement" or would you just answer "Hey, at least you can play the previews chapter ... wait until they fix the rest".

Honestly, why do people have such a "fuck it, I'll do something else" attitude with a product they purchased? People complain about dead pixels on monitors, AC not working, a tool that doesn't perform as advertised. We're consumers, we purchase a product with the expectation of it working. And it's "entitlement" when we demand something we bought to work? In fact I have been on the fence with this game, wanted to see how it played with a controller and if it would be worth it. I didn't have a chance and bought some other stuff this weekend, so now instead of "possibly" it's a "wait for the discount bin".

What a passive attitude. This is why the companies get away with it. This is why they have launch after launch of shitty online performance and broken promises. We accept it. We think it's "the norm". Well, some people are getting irritated with that. It's not "entitlement". It's not even really anger at this point. It just disappointment that so many people are accepting of such a shitty consumer/provider relationship when it comes to these online launches. It's not acceptable in almost any other medium. But throw a half assed product out in the gaming world? Just fix it afterwards ...
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I agree to an extent. I don't so much mind if the online is down, but games should be developed with such a thing in mind. Devs should take two approaches.

- make the online and server infrastructure as robust as they possibly can to minimise the risk of issues at launch. Maybe do an open beta if they can't trust synthetic load tests.

- design the game to fail quietly and not be so reliant on day one infrastructure holding up. In DC's case that might mean properly banking your XP until you join a club, allowing you access to club cars temporarily if offline, not having a massive red banner scrolling across your screen saying you have problems connecting..
 
GitarooMan said:
Yeah, sure they didn't intend for this to happen, as you've stated a few times. But is the alternative you are proposing much better? How could their testing be so inadequate (especially considering they were intending to release the game for free and had to know that would create huge demand on the servers)? I think the complete failure of their testing to anticipate anything like this, which is what they seem to be saying, says they thought their testing was OK but in fact it was woefully inadequate, which throws into question whoever works on that and what they are doing. That doesn't exactly fill anyone with confidence going forward.
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It could be inadequate testing, or it could just as easily be that real world conditions produced factors that that couldn't create in a controlled test enviroment.

I love entitled gamer logic. If something doesnt work correctly, the only possible explanation is that someone is an idiot and needs to be fired.
 
Stare-Bear said:
Why can't you play the game? You can still play all singleplayer races.
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Your offline progress does not contribute to your club progress if you can't get on to sign up for the club. So many are holding off on playing offline until clubs work.

I am one of those. I have yet to be able to join our club, even though I got the invite and all. I have been checking multiple times each day with no luck. I have played offline some, but I don't want to fully dive in without the club progress.
 
kiguel182 said:
They really should compensate the people that paid 60 dollars for it and are unable to play the game.

It sucks for the devs that problems like this happen but it shouldn't be accepted that a product is sold like this without some form of compensation for the consumers.
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I never was compensated for Battlefield 4, and those issues went on for months.
 
GitarooMan said:
Yeah, sure they didn't intend for this to happen, as you've stated a few times. But is the alternative you are proposing much better? How could their testing be so inadequate (especially considering they were intending to release the game for free and had to know that would create huge demand on the servers)? I think the complete failure of their testing to anticipate anything like this, which is what they seem to be saying, says they thought their testing was OK but in fact it was woefully inadequate, which throws into question whoever works on that and what they are doing. That doesn't exactly fill anyone with confidence going forward.
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You don't know why their tests were inadequate, but at least you realize there's no point in looking at them like they stabbed you and stole your wallet. Yes, maybe their testing team placed confidence in inadequate methods, either because they made an error or their chosen methods failed them when it promised otherwise. Although it seems again rather rough to jump to suggesting that Evo is either incompetent or reckless when software and testing frequently miss errors on their own unpredictably.

Or maybe these tests are industry standard and for some reason failed to provide adequate warning of any potential trouble. But I guess some people want to operate on Guilty and no chance of being proven innocent.
 
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