[tomc1985]

Some of the blame goes to the consumer though. The community here is really playing up the drama in a childish way. Many games have had far worse launches, and got panned in reviews (both critic and user), and haven't seen this kind of outrage.

The gaming community sucks, full stop. I'm part of several reddit communities for various games and in a majority of the cases those subreddits are a swamp, full of anger and bitterness. The more competitive a game is, or the more the game tries to monetize itself, the uglier the scene. It really is bad.

Years ago I worked close to one of Rockstar's studios. Sometimes I'd overhear RS employees talking over lunch, and more than once that chatting was them complaining about the toxicity they have to deal with.

[tsimionescu]

Most of that is actually the fault of the studios. Few companies are investing in managing their communities and communicating with them, setting standards and so on. Those that do actually see results.

A great case study is Final Fantasy 14 VS World of Warcraft. 2 pretty similar MMOs, vastly different communities. If you dig a little, it's immediately visible that the difference is not coming from game design, but from explicit community management and standards of conduct. The FF14 mods police the community with an iron fist, and are very explicit about what kind of behavior is toxic and off-limits - and the results are visible whether you play the game or look at the reddit.

Most companies though just don't want to invest in that, even to the minimum extent of setting clear guidelines and enforcing them when violations reported.

[dawnerd]

100% disagree. None of the blame is on the consumers. The studio pitches a game. People get excited. People buy it. None of that is the consumers' fault. It's false advertising, period.

[manfredo]

If consumers didn't preorder and waited for games to come out and get reviewed fairly before buying, then this strategy wouldn't work.

False advertising only works because consumers are buying games based on promises made in advertisements instead of based on the quality of the game that is actually released.

[tomc1985]

Those angry consumers have a responsibility to not be complete and utter babies in their response though. And, as a secondary responsibility, not to expect so much.

Sure CDP hyped the game up. But they're fools for believing it. How often do things ever live up to the hype, especially in business?

Hmm, maybe this backlash is naive kids learning how to be jaded.

[hnick]

I agree with your general point and never pre-order anymore for those reasons.

However: people are getting refunds. In countries with consumer protection laws, it looks like there is little downside to buying in to the hype, if you can get your money back. This may eventually teach companies to rein it in a little.