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[Jay Shadow]

I haven't really been following this but...

Is the countdown on the store page wrong? It currently says 18 hours for me, and then that countdown on the release status page is at about 10hrs?

They're not adjusting the number on the store page.

 

[BobTheFork]

Actually, good will is very important for PC-centric devs. When PC gamers feel they're being treated well, they're less likely to pirate, more likely to spread the word to their friends, and more likely to support games with mods. The PC gaming scene does not revolve around 100 million dollar advertising campaigns, it revolves around social networking. Tripwire and CDProjekt are in the positions they are in large part due to how they've treated the PC gaming community. Valve would not have near so many people clamoring for a Steamworks future or auto-prepurchasing every Valve game or preferring Steam over other DD services at the same price if not for the good will they've built up.

Gabe talks about this himself in that recent high school conference call. He talked extensively about how successfully leveraging the PC gaming community is so much more important and effective than throwing money at advertising campaigns.

DO you think that good will is More important to PC developers than others? With a larger potential for piracy I can that being the case.

 

[XeroSauce]

All this ARG has done besides hyping me up for Portal 2 has made me dislike a great deal of people on the Internet. Valve I like even more.

People talking about wasting money on the potato pack and wasting their time playing games all weekend just hurts my mind. Haven't seen a bigger group of weirdos in a long time.

Okay.

 

[Plasmid]

fuck fuck fuck. i want to buy the potato sack so bad, but i don't want to lose getting 36 potatoes because ill have to download the game's friday..

BUY YES OR NO?

 

[EviLore]

I very well realize the value of goodwill, my post was pointing out that in this situation ; clearly Valve doesn't value it at ALL.

Haha, okay then.

 

[The Technomancer]

I very well realize the value of goodwill, my post was pointing out that in this situation ; clearly Valve doesn't value it at ALL.

I really really doubt this will cause any significant negative opinions of Valve after say... a week from now. Probably people will be less into the next ARG is about it.

 

[Red]

fuck fuck fuck. i want to buy the potato sack so bad, but i don't want to lose getting 36 potatoes because ill have to download the game's friday..

BUY YES OR NO?

It's a great deal.

 

[wind_steaker]

I very well realize the value of goodwill, my post was pointing out that in this situation ; clearly Valve doesn't value it at ALL.

if they didn't why would they give away so many free updates to their games. I think this was just a little misstep and no one will care once they click "play".

 

[f0rk]

I really really doubt this will cause any significant negative opinions of Valve after say... a week from now. Probably people will be less into the next ARG is about it.

Yeah everybody will be tripping over themselves fitting the new "the cake is a lie" into every online conversation to bitch about what happened this weekend.

 

[eiskaltnz]

I very well realize the value of goodwill, my post was pointing out that in this situation ; clearly Valve doesn't value it at ALL.

Or Valve just made a mistake (like they have many times in the past) that is not as easy to just fix. Valve will learn from this at the least.

 

[FlashFlooder]

This thread is a lot more entertaining if you imagine a grown man crying in front of his computer when you read some of these posts.

 

[XeroSauce]

fuck fuck fuck. i want to buy the potato sack so bad, but i don't want to lose getting 36 potatoes because ill have to download the game's friday..

BUY YES OR NO?

Buy for the games, you goon, not for the potatoes.

 

[MurkyZebra2417]

valve will just patch in a free hat for TF2 an everything will be alright

 

[Burger]

They're not adjusting the number on the store page.

Sweet!

 

[TheExodu5]

DO you think that good will is More important to PC developers than others? With a larger potential for piracy I can that being the case.

Of course. Good will generates word of mouth which turns into free marketing. This is incredibly important since PC devs usually don't have the budget to throw around for massive ad campaigns.

 

[Oreoleo]

Yeah everybody will be tripping over themselves fitting the new "the cake is a lie" into every online conversation to bitch about what happened this weekend.

the bars are a lie :|

 

[Rainier]

if they didn't why would they give away so many free updates to their games. I think this was just a little misstep and no one will care once they click "play".

If they really do end up releasing it at midnight EST, it will reek of a scam. People hate that shit.

the bars are a lie :|

Haha, nice.

 

[Corky]

Haha, okay then.

But still your point is very important, which makes it soo much more infuriating when people state their opinions and are met with nothing other than " you entitled nerd "

I really really doubt this will cause any significant negative opinions of Valve after say... a week from now. Probably people will be less into the next ARG is about it.

Perhaps, perhaps this will be a case of the vocal minority that will diminish in the millions of portal 2 sales. But next time people might not be as docile.

 

[Blizzard]

fuck fuck fuck. i want to buy the potato sack so bad, but i don't want to lose getting 36 potatoes because ill have to download the game's friday..

BUY YES OR NO?

If you only have one or two of the games, it's probably a good deal. If you have several, it depends on whether you want the remaining ones, whether you want to gift extra copies, and whether the pack is worth more to you than buying a couple of individual games for $2.50 or $5.

Personally I literally did not WANT several of the games in the pack, so I didn't buy them. I did end up gifting a $2.50 game to somebody though.

 

[Spire]

I very well realize the value of goodwill, my post was pointing out that in this situation ; clearly Valve doesn't value it at ALL.

Yes. Oh except nobody is really going to give a shit about any of this 24 hours from now.

 

[The Omega Man]

valve will just patch in a free hat for TF2 an everything will be alright

my price

 

[Corky]

Yes. Oh except nobody is really going to give a shit about any of this 24 hours from now.

Which is sad, do you forget that people "mistreat" you as soon as they give you a cake?

 

[XeroSauce]

 

[fallengorn]

If they really do end up releasing it at midnight EST, it will reek of a scam. People hate that shit.

Yeah, well people sure seem to forget about the MW2 stuff pretty damn fast.

 

[TheExodu5]

Yes. Oh except nobody is really going to give a shit about any of this 24 hours from now.

Though it will still hurt Valve's credibility in the future, if ever they decide to set up similar events.

The anticipation of a Friday release had quite a few people pre-order, at least in the NeoGAF community. Those people will be far more skeptical in the future.

 

[dave is ok]

Yes. Oh except nobody is really going to give a shit about any of this 24 hours from now.

Every time I see, cook or eat a potato from now on I'm going to feel a soreness in my asshole

 

[Gandie]

Though it will still hurt Valve's credibility in the future, if ever they decide to set up similar events.

 

[enzo_gt]

Though it will still hurt Valve's credibility in the future, if ever they decide to set up similar events.

The anticipation of a Friday release had quite a few people pre-order, at least in the NeoGAF community. Those people will be far more skeptical in the future.

Credibility? For ARGs? wut.

 

[EternalGamer]

http://i.imgur.com/ctx0t.png[/MG][/QUOTE]

And yet who claim to enjoy these games complain...

 

[Backfoggen]

This thread is a lot more entertaining if you imagine a grown man crying in front of his computer when you read some of these posts.

To each his own I guess.

 

[TheExodu5]

Yeah, keep posting that flawed and irrelevant screenshot.

 

[Spiritreaver]

Every time I see, cook or eat a potato from now on I'm going to feel a soreness in my asshole

I would suggest not eating potatoes. You may see some health benefits!

 

[Corky]

Credibility? For ARGs? wut.

For crying out loud. There is a sizeable difference between cryptic ARGs and " BUY THESE GAMES AND THIS OTHER GAME WILL COME OUT EARLIER!"

 

[Krauser Kat]

so how long until the potatos finish?
I hope its not just overclock mode, and will release when we run out of spuds.

 

[EviLore]

DO you think that good will is More important to PC developers than others? With a larger potential for piracy I can that being the case.

Yeah, by far. A part of that could be casual piracy and how doing right by someone will make them more likely to feel obligated to go the legit route. A part of it is that PC games usually don't have the budgets of "AAA" multiplats, so positive word of mouth has far more potential than a meager ad campaign. And another part is that PC games are usually not frontloaded in sales, so if a PC game has good word of mouth it'll keep selling for years, especially if there is strong post-release dev support.

 

[Arozay]

Well this thing did start on April Fools

 

[Oreoleo]

Yeah, keep posting that flawed and irrelevant screenshot.

19 people in a 833 member group were playing MW2. Everyone's a hypocrite!

 

[Corky]

so how long until the potatos finish?
I hope its not just overclock mode, and will release when we run out of spuds.

That would be around its originally schedule release.

 

[Curufinwe]

Yeah, keep posting that flawed and irrelevant screenshot.

It's amazing how many people think that screenshot proves anything.

 

[webrunner]

the bars are a lie :|

 

[Campster]

so how long until the potatos finish?
I hope its not just overclock mode, and will release when we run out of spuds.

Neither option is particularly appealing. It looks like at the current rate of potato consumption the counter will reach zero in somewhere between 8 and 9 hours.

 

[mazeedibeedi]

Weird, now the focus is on Killing Floor.

 

[XeroSauce]

Credibility? For ARGs? wut.

Managing expectations is part of business. They set up a big promotion that was bound to cause huge expectations. On top of this, they asked people to spend money and time to make the reward even bigger (even sooner release date). They knew that if they had said 'if you buy all these games and spend your whole weekend playing them, we'll release Portal 2 3 hours early' people would've said 'screw that; that isn't worth the time/effort/money'. They chose to leave it open-ended and implied that the more money/effort was put in, the quicker it would be released. This is setting expectations very high on purpose and they failed to follow through.

If a project is due on Thursday and you claim you'll have it done by Tuesday (and the client is told that) and then flake out, you can't say 'well, it was originally due on Thursday, so no harm done'.

 

[webrunner]

Neither option is particularly appealing. It looks like at the current rate of potato consumption the counter will reach zero in somewhere between 8 and 9 hours.

i dont have a copy of that pic of fry from futurama but I would post it if I did have said picture.

 

[EternalGamer]

19 people in a 833 member group were playing MW2. Everyone's a hypocrite!

19 out of 36. That is only the first page and the ratio on it is over half. And those are only the ones playing it at the very moment the screen was taken.

 

[Spire]

Which is sad, do you forget that people "mistreat" you as soon as they give you a cake?

I don't feel like I was mistreated. I, like most people, bought the Potato Sack long before the countdown stuff was even known, because it was a great deal and the new Portal content for the games looked rad. I'd like to play Portal 2 as soon as possible of course, but I don't feel like I've been cheated by Valve in any way.

 

[EviLore]

19 people in a 833 member group were playing MW2. Everyone's a hypocrite!

I claimed I wasn't buying MW2 due to Infinity Ward's terrible treatment of the PC gaming community, but then I...

http://steamcommunity.com/id/evilore/games?tab=all

...didn't ever buy MW2.

 

[Kyaw]

So we are only going to get Portal 2 on its original release time?

Well, this glados@home has been a waste...
Apart from those indie devs.

 

[StuBurns]

Maybe it wasn't a fix, maybe it was a failure, the community didn't even get close to doing it in time and this was the contingency plan all along.

It was never going past the release date anyway.

 

[Baha]

I claimed I wasn't buying MW2 due to Infinity Ward's terrible treatment of the PC gaming community, but then I...

http://steamcommunity.com/id/evilore/games?tab=all

...didn't ever buy MW2.

To be fair, the PC price never dropped below $40 either. Fuck Activision.