Developer Preview

I want to address something that's been bothering me about the backlash surrounding the revoked Developer Preview access on the forums and especially outside (Reddit).

First, let's be clear about what it was: a Developer Preview. A beta. A preview. Not a purchase, not a promise, not a lifetime license. The word "preview" is right there in the name.

Garry and Facepunch never stated anywhere that preview access would automatically carry over into a free copy at launch. The game is launching on April 28th at a price comparable to Garry's Mod - which, by any standard, is fair for what s&box is offering.

What I'm seeing now is a textbook case of entitlement creep, and it's worth calling out:

Out of 800,000 preview users, 40,000 get to keep access for free. That includes:

The MTX criteria makes complete sense. If you spent money on the platform, there's a real financial relationship there, that's a fair and reasonable threshold.

Facepunch handled this transparently and generously, all things considered. If you're upset you didn't get a free copy of a game you never paid for, that's not injustice, that's just how a product launch works.

Skipin posted:

No, dude, you're wrong. They even took away access from matt. This is unacceptable.
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I agree there should be a way to appeal for the people that got revoked access unfairly.

bigfloppa posted:

i kind of found it hilarious the need of you to dickride so much for s&box, my guy its 20$, the game/engine is going to flop so bad lol

if you look outside of the echo chamber that is the fp discord and this forum i would guess, noone cares about s&box lol, and i can already see, noone will buy the game for 20$, considering the amount of sloppy games they are on there.

None of what you said addresses the actual argument. Whether s&box succeeds commercially is completely irrelevant to whether people were entitled to free launch access after a free preview, they weren't.

Also, 'nobody outside the echo chamber cares' is an interesting take for someone who cared enough to reply.

Сучка Эпштейна posted:

This is basically the opinion of someone who didn’t have the game taken away. So you’re essentially “buying” the game with skins just to keep access to it, while players who were actually active ended up losing it.



What exact criteria are we even talking about? The criteria are on the level of “play enough” and “buy something, but not too little or we’ll definitely take the game away.”



I had the game launched every single day this month, and I’m sure many others who are complaining did too.



The only thing I would want is the ability to message in Discord and submit an appeal — at least that could help solve the problem in some way.

That's a fair frustration, if you were genuinely active every day, it stings to lose access. 

A preview was never a promise of a free copy at launch, regardless of how active you were.

The appeal idea is actually reasonable, if there are edge cases where active users slipped through the cracks, that's worth flagging. But framing it as 'they took the game away from me' isn't quite right either. They ended a free preview. The game was never yours to begin with.