Yeah, I saw my Impulse show a new update, tried to grab it, it give me a popup saying my registration's not valid - I come here because I just want to know I'm in the same boat as everyone else. So pretty much they took down the beta before it's about to be released. Is that what all the fuss is about?

But this is the internet! It's time for rabble! RABBLERABBLERABBLERABBLERABBLE!!

...in seriousness, this should be read again, both links included. It's not like there wasn't advance warning, and for the love of Pete it's not like they owed you the ability to keep playing. In actuality you're lucky that when the Beta was over they allowed you to keep playing, most companies will just disable all the Beta copies when a Beta ends, immediately and you're SoL if you wanted to keep trying/testing/playing with it. The fact that they not only allowed you to keep playing ex post facto is pretty telling that you got well more than you were entitled to.

Get a grip, people.

And insulting Kryo is bad form. :/ Dude works hard.

Nobody says that something illegal was done. Only that they did not handle situation well. We do not say "give my beta back or we will sue you".

That also has nothing to do with what you quoted.

It's an interesting contract question.  One could argue that the statement provided merely gives Stardock the right to change, suspend, remove or disable ACCESS to any products, content or other materials.  This is different than removing a product entirely from a hard drive.

Kryo, you are doing it again, implying that it is our fault somehow, it is not. Here is my situation.

When I lost access to beta I actually new about posts that the beta is locked, and we should not update if we want to play (though it was not in large red letters at the time). However, I also knew that there will be release for beta testers BEFORE the actual release date, without specifying a particular date

Here I come yesterday, having two hours allocated from my busy life to continue Beta 4 game I saved before just to enjoy it, because we do not need to post bugs anymore. So I start the game, and instead of normal game I see the window that RECOMMENDS to update. This has never happen before.

But I am smart, I remember what has posted that beta should be updated until release, so I go and check the version that it wants to update with. And it is 1.0! It is release! Do I update it? No, I am still distrustful, because I do not want to lose access to beta and not being able to play allocated time for it. So, what do I do? I go and check the game page in Impulse, and it shows the release date August 19!!! AHA! Early release! Sweat!

WHAT ELSE I WAS SUPPOSE TO THINK AT THIS POINT when we were promised early release for beta testers?!!! So OF COURSE I am excited and trying to update... to find out that beta 4 is gone and I could not play Elemental for those two hours which was so difficult for me to find...

So, of course I am upset and I go to the board to share it with others. And what do I find here? That the threads are getting locked and you, kryo,  are explaning us that it is all our fault.

Nice job! How do you think I (paying and dedicated customer) feel after that? No wonder people are going ballistic after that "handling" of situation.

As Kyro says it is the Customers Fault, Stardock made no errors .

I mean changing posts with no update tag, is how mods always do things.

Allowing personal attacks, with no response.

It was not handled well, there were over last night many things that went wrong, the Largest is SD through Kyro, acting like the Customers did this, Not Stardock, and then Kyro fanned the flames.

If this was not SD I would almost think it was Marketing Ploy to get folks to look this way. 
This was a Screwup, own up.

Lee

Patently false.

They told you exactly when to expect it: Monday Morning, possibly Sunday Night. 

Which, I might add, is neither Sunday Night nor Monday Morning.

I think you were supposed to think that it was clearly stated on more than one occasion that the release was going to be Monday Morning with a possibility of it being Sunday Night. Not Thursday evening.

Agreed, for those that feel wronged consider this: once Blizzard and Bungie (two other companies known for their community support) had gathered the information they needed from the Starcraft and Halo betas respectively, they cut everyone off for weeks and or months before their release dates and no one said a thing because at least it was better than nothing.  In this case one might have to wait at the most 96 hours without access to an inferior version due entirely to a technical requirement of release and you are mad because you did not recieve a personalized email informing you of this?  Be happy with what you have and do not think by raising a fuss you will get the developers to cave an release 1.0 early.  If anything they might just take offence at your sense of entitlement and give up on trying to give it to you early at all.

Seriously now, no need for the blame game. It's a combination of things: Some ambiguous information on Stardock's part and unckecked overeagerness on part of the Beta testers. It's no big deal. It's actually kind of funny if you really think about it. People looking back on the "incident" 10 years from now will fondly remember it and the game while discussing the abysmal state of the current gaming scene... 

The information you have quoted become available only later for me, and I did not know about particular dates when I run the updates. You can not expect that every member scans all the forums each day, do you? I am not even sure if I learned about early release directly from one of Frogboy posts, or from somebody else posts. The fact is that I knew that there will be early release, the fact is that the web site did show release as August 19, the fact is that beta DID recommended to "urgently" update the game and the fact is that the update version was 1.0. There was no any other conclusion that I could come up upon information that I had.

And even if I did know about post by Frogboy about POSSIBLE dates, I would still try to update, because they are A) possible dates, that could have changed, B ) so many other things indicated that the release date DID change, c) It is more likely to have a typo in single post than on official website, in Impulse and together with the window begging to update.

And I mean if you read what that window says you would be scared to continue playing the existent version because bad things may happen, it was THAT urging.

But again, this is hypothetical, because I personally did not know about particular possible release dates.

So, by not means I can say that it is somehow my fault, as kryo and now you are implying. I understand that it is beta, and such things can happen, I do not blame SD for that AT ALL! But situation handling by kryo, saying that it is our fault and locking the threads (new were appearing because old were locked, by the way), was not optimal, to say the least.

With this kind of logic one may say "hey, people kill people, so I will just rob you, and you should be happy that I did not kill you".

And I personally do not think that SD done anything wrong here. Things happen in beta, no problem. It is "this is your fault that you lost beta" attitude that pisses me off.

thanks, that makes perfect sense - and i would certainly prefer the team allocated resources to post-launch fixes, as opposed to working on the demo...

and to be honest, i think i've read enough of the developer journals, watched enough of the beta vidoes, read enough of the background lore to know this will be a worthwhile purchase... as a software developer myself, i really appreciate it when i find other folks who are as passionate about their labor of love... Stardock deserves my coppers!

We've already said it was unintended. However, as Yarlen noted there's not really anything to remedy here; the beta was never provided for the purpose of playing for fun, nor does the beta last forever. It was provided to test, and that means things may not always be pleasant (which we've made a point of saying quite frequently over the past year).

When the beta was offiically terminated on Tuesday we did note that further installs would not be possible. And as others have pointed out, Brad announced already that the preorder early access would not be opened until late Sunday or Monday.

It's unfortunate that some people jumped to attempt to install 1.0, and I can understand some annoyance, but that does not justify such overreaction given that this all has been announced and discussed well prior to last night.

"Things happen in the beta" is exactly the bulk of what I've been saying. You're inferring "it's your fault" from "read the stickies and announcements before posting", but the subtext isn't there. Which is understandable if you're irritated over the matter, but that doesn't mean we're going to let a million threads on the subject run amok when it was already asked, answered, and stickied in a calmer fashion earlier in the week.

I think it's the first time I see A riot in the boards since I've been a member...

I leave for a few months and see what happens....

dang it Solam, so its your fault!

Oh this is nothing. We've had a much worse one recently That one is your fault too, by the way. Thanks a lot. Jerk.

Why not? You could of apologize for inconvenience, promise soon release and let the topic die without locking, (locking only upsets people more). And saying "read the stickies" to the upset person also ... ehm... not optimal, even if your are right.

Of course it is up to you how to handle this situation, you are the moderator and SD employee, not me, but I thought it could have been done slightly better.

Anyway, I'm closing this thread.