Community MetaSteam | August 2021 - Openness Is Its Superpower

[Swenhir]

Because predatory monetization is just hearsay...

It is, unless you can actually point to where and how it happens.

Let me put it another way. I can say that Valve holds a monopoly on PC gaming through Steam, and many others are saying it. They have a vested interest in saying it. But until someone musters up the facts and logic to back it up, it's just an internet opinion. That wouldn't make that statement correct.

There's a lot of that going on around star citizen. There's a lot of small and large communities that have a complete and utter hate boner for that game and the company, SA among them. I have seen doxxing, media articles based on absolutely nothing where people were pretending to be CIG employees just to try and spread fear to trigger a run on the bank. Hell, one of the game's once-loudest and most ridiculous critic is derek smart. There are routinely conspiracy theories drawn up on how CR is building a mansion with backer funds and going on holidays with them. You wouldn't believe how utterly insane the hate-circus around this game is.

That's why I am so adamant and annoying about facts, because consensus and opinions just don't do it when this shit show is routine. I don't mean to piss you or anyone off but as someone who has followed this and knows a bit about gamedev, I do try to point out the lack of facts and disinformation when I can. Same that happens with the EGS and Tim.

 

[Lashley]

Hades is good shit

 

[FunnyJay]

So you can't buy virtual land?
They don't sell ship packs for thousands of dollars?
They don't create more and more ships to sell to whales and others?
They don't rely on whales buying everything?
They don't have a concierge club where you have to have spent thousands of dollars to get in?

Aren't all these points signs of predatory monetization?

 

[Swenhir]

So you can't buy virtual land?

You could, will again, and the mechanics of it are up in the air. What about it is predatory? At best you could make the point for it being FOMO which falls on its face considering the sheer surface area of a single moon in the game. You'd have to believe that the only way you can have your own outpost is to buy a claim in this single sale years from release. Not exactly a compelling argument, especially when the page itself had this disclaimer written on it, at the very top so that you had to read it :

Please Note: These claim licenses are being made available for pledging to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The ability to obtain these claim licenses will ultimately be available for in-game credits and/or otherwise earnable through play in the game. Pledging for these claim licenses now allows us to include deeper features in the Star Citizen game, and is not required for starting the game.

They don't sell ship packs for thousands of dollars?

Which people asked for. Also not exactly extraordinary in the context of many kickstarter tiers. If people want to pay more to support the project, more power to them. What about this is predatory? It's not required, not demanded, not even shoved in your face in any way. Hell, earning money to get ships is trivial.

They don't create more and more ships to sell to whales and others?

They do make spaceships, in a space-sim. Perish the thought. Pledges are how the game exists and the average across backers is about 80$ if I recall correctly. Not exactly whale-dependent.

They don't rely on whales buying everything?

Data points vastly otherwise.

They don't have a concierge club where you have to have spent thousands of dollars to get in?

They do, rewarding people who have spent an obscene amount by my standards with actual service and doing something for them in thanks. I call that doing the right thing.

Aren't all these points signs of predatory monetization?

They aren't, factually. At best I can understand that you dislike that some people have the liberty to spend more to support them. That's not on anyone to criticize. A predatory monetization is one where the game constantly prompts you, reminds you and is designed around making you spend money for something.

There is not even a hint, a mention or a single thing pointing to the store in-game. This argument is factually moot.

 

[dex3108]

There are quite numerous differences between Epic's agreement and this one, most important being the fact that you retain the rights of your product in all this process while the other transfers the rights to the holder company.

At the same time, you need to pay for development at certain point while Epic is not like that, in terms of 50/50, it is similar, yes.

If it's exploitative or not I won't discuss as I never had to sign a similar deal in my life.

---

In more positive news!

this comes in addition to Boyfriend Dungeon success too!

I meant regarding Minimum Guarantee part for exclusives that they pay in advance. That is kinda similar ting as advance payment for book deals. And if i remember correctly according to Epic contract only after they recoup costs 88/12 share kicks in.

 

[Mivey]

It seems strange to call Star Citizen a scam, when it's just people believing in a project, however unlikely it may ultimately seem. Sure, the developer is also selling their work to this community, but as long as enough people believe in it, what's the harm? If CIG can't deliver enough progress, they will lose out on support eventually. The fact that it's still going shows they are doing something right.

My only interest is the single player game, which seems to be stuck in development hell, it seems. Kind of a shame, hope that eventually does see the light of day.

 

[FunnyJay]

. A predatory monetization is one where the game constantly prompts you, reminds you and is designed around making you spend money for something.

Multiple ship sales a year says hello, and as I mentioned before, making new ships so those who have purchased all ships feel compelled to buy more.

Have you ever heard about sunk cost fallacy?

 

[Swenhir]

Multiple ship sales a year says hello, and as I mentioned before, making new ships so those who have purchased all ships feel compelled to buy more.

Have you ever heard about sunk cost fallacy?

What about ship sales is predatory? You are not missing out. Every ship ending up in the game can be bought with in-game money for honestly small amounts or stolen and/or will be earned through missions if lore-restricted. Nothing about them is predatory. Furthermore, ship sales are how the project is funded. They have a year-on-year approach to studio sizing and so far have fortunately never had to downsize.

Now I'd just like to say this : MC is a friendly community. I like to think that we usually are honest and trying to debate in good faith. I have agreed with you on other topics and I really don't want to get acerbic with you so I'd like to stop here if you aren't going to argue honestly. You are going into a direction where you are moving goalposts instead of acknowledging my arguments, citing fallacies without even arguing how they relate to SC and I don't want to derail this thread entirely.

 

[MonthOLDpickle]

So Epic contracts are exploitative by this definition or i am reading something wrong?

Were these deleted or something? I get nothing.

 

[Parsnip]

Oh my god, people. Big brain moment for me. Tried getting into Momodora RutM a couple of times but found it too dang hard.
Turns out, I had somehow missed the bellflower mechanic each time (basically like estus flasks). No heckin wonder then.

If it makes you feel any better I also thought they were one time use consumables and not an estus equivalent at first.

 

[Nabs]

So, Cultic is amazing. Give the demo a try if you're into oldschool shooters.

 

[Readher]

Kickstarter launching today. Made in Poland.

 

[Panda Pedinte]

The first one was pretty fun!

 

[Mor]

Were these deleted or something? I get nothing.

deleted by author

 

[Wok]

PC Game Pass for Microsoft Solitaire Collection will start on Tuesday. I thought it had started earlier, but it turns out I had a trial week of "premium" content after I started the game for the first time. Now that the trial is over, I can see the ads.

 

[Nabs]

PC Game Pass for Microsoft Solitaire Collection will start on Tuesday. I thought it had started earlier, but it turns out I had a trial week of "premium" content after I started the game for the first time. Now that the trial is over, I can see the ads.

They tricked me by having it appear in the Xbox app side panel. I got hit with an ad and quit that thing with the quickness.

 

[PC-tan]

By the way what were the partner games on the Steam deck? Do we have a full list? I'm surprised that people haven't talked about that more (or maybe people have? But I just haven't seen anything)


So in case your wondering what I mean, for all of the Steam Deck stuff, Valve has only been showing certain games, these are very likely games that Valve has tested themselves and later talked to those devs about being able to show off their game (permission being a very important thing), so I'm curious about how they went showing the devs of how the game ran? Did they just capture native footage and then just sent it uncompressed to the devs or something?



So that means that as of right now, for the devs that have had their game shown on the Steam Deck they are okay with their game being "advertised" on it.


Maybe they didn't show other games on it because of how those devs might have deals with Sony/Nintendo, or there games just doesn't run that well on the deck. I think that GG and Ni No Kuni 2 were the only 2 Japanese games shown on the Steam Deck. Otherwise they could have done something like shown the thing playing Monster Hunter World or dare I say something like FFXV or FFXIV..... or maybe those were actual choices but we don't know since people were not showing that run on the system and we're mostly focusing on Doom and Hades, were as with LTT was focusing on CSGO (I don't think anyone else thought about testing that and maybe even the gyro function and other stuff)

To be fair they only had like an hour and a half to come up with stuff to do with it.


What I'm most curious is if October they might try something else of having others test it out and now that people know that they can test games so long as they have permission that they might end up asking certain devs if they can try their game on the device.


For the time being if they do something again it most likely will be US only.

 

[sk2k]

Oldschool shooter. The demo was fun.

 

[beep boop]

If it makes you feel any better I also thought they were one time use consumables and not an estus equivalent at first.

 

[dex3108]

Well that is next month booked XD

 

[PC-tan]

Here is Nier on N/S

 

[Yoshi]

Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar Event Breaks Half-Life 2 User Record

Community fansite Lambda Generation is running the Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar event on August 14 in order to raise the peak player count on Steam Charts.

techraptor.net

It's official, Lambda Generation's Half-Life 2 Breaking the Bar event has officially led to the community shattering the Half-Life 2 peak player count record. At the time of this update, the new record was set over 16k, almost triple the previous recorded high, showing that in 2021 Valve's seminal shooter is still popular among players.

 

[FunnyJay]

You are going into a direction where you are moving goalposts instead of acknowledging my arguments, citing fallacies without even arguing how they relate to SC and I don't want to derail this thread entirely.

Moving goalposts? If you say so.
My opinion is that Star Citizen engages in predatory monetization, and I have stated why I believe so. Apparently that opinion is wrong because criticism of Star Citizen is bad I guess?

It's quite interesting that all forms of criticism of SC is always shot down as being made by haters that should educate themselves and/or shut up since criticism is not allowed.

I earlier actually said that I do not believe the game is a scam but that they have a great way of earning money indefinitely since people keep paying them during their endless development, but as you yourself earlier said any dissent is made by stupid people:

As for people thinking SC is a scam, I don't know that there's any way to cure stupid.

So I think I'll leave the conversation here. I don't want to clog down our lovely community with more bickering.
I don't like the practices of Star Citizen and Chris Roberts and you clearly do. None of us will convince the other to change position.

 

[Stevey]

Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar Event Breaks Half-Life 2 User Record

Community fansite Lambda Generation is running the Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar event on August 14 in order to raise the peak player count on Steam Charts.

techraptor.net

I did my part, played for an hour or so.

 

[Swenhir]

Moving goalposts? If you say so.
My opinion is that Star Citizen engages in predatory monetization, and I have stated why I believe so. Apparently that opinion is wrong because criticism of Star Citizen is bad I guess?

It's quite interesting that all forms of criticism of SC is always shot down as being made by haters that should educate themselves and/or shut up since criticism is not allowed.

I earlier actually said that I do not believe the game is a scam but that they have a great way of earning money indefinitely since people keep paying them during their endless development, but as you yourself earlier said any dissent is made by stupid people:


So I think I'll leave the conversation here. I don't want to clog down our lovely community with more bickering.
I don't like the practices of Star Citizen and Chris Roberts and you clearly do. None of us will convince the other to change position.

As long as it's just your opinion. You stated that as fact earlier, and I challenged you on it for that reason. It's not that criticism is not allowed, I have a fair few in store myself. It's that such criticism has to be reasoned and argued and it can also be criticized in turn. I think the EGS thread is nothing but that, criticism of Tim's arguments.

Either way, I have to agree with you. We won't change each other's mind and I'll extend an olive branch in saying that I'm sorry if I've made your Saturday crappier.

 

[fantomena]

80% done setting things up. Mostly need to setup my Rift, PS5 and Switch. Was not sure if I was gonna bring my PS5, but did it anyway. Don't really use my PS5 much these days. Only have 4 games on it (Dreams, Demon's, 13 Sentinels and Returnal), but was still not sure.

 

[FunnyJay]

and I'll extend an olive branch in saying that I'm sorry if I've made your Saturday crappier.

Hey, no worries in regards to that. Have a good one!

 

[Ascheroth]

Armor upgrade~

Gonna hunt me some Vaal Hazak to upgrade the weapon next.

 

[Kiru]

Edit : in more uplifting news, this is a thing. I like that thing. I want that thing.

Damn, blast from the past, Severance: Blade of Darkness. Still remember the dismemberment lol.

 

[PC-tan]

Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar Event Breaks Half-Life 2 User Record

Community fansite Lambda Generation is running the Half-Life 2 Breaking The Bar event on August 14 in order to raise the peak player count on Steam Charts.

techraptor.net

All thanks to Pikamee

 

[kafiend]

Damn, blast from the past, Severance: Blade of Darkness. Still remember the dismemberment lol.

Is this the game that for its time had some excellent lighting? Torches casting proper shadows and all that stuff? For the time being awesome.

 

[Kiru]

Is this the game that for its time had some excellent lighting? Torches casting proper shadows and all that stuff? For the time being awesome.

Yes, that's the one.

 

[Alexandros]

By the way what were the partner games on the Steam deck? Do we have a full list? I'm surprised that people haven't talked about that more (or maybe people have? But I just haven't seen anything)


So in case your wondering what I mean, for all of the Steam Deck stuff, Valve has only been showing certain games, these are very likely games that Valve has tested themselves and later talked to those devs about being able to show off their game (permission being a very important thing), so I'm curious about how they went showing the devs of how the game ran? Did they just capture native footage and then just sent it uncompressed to the devs or something?



So that means that as of right now, for the devs that have had their game shown on the Steam Deck they are okay with their game being "advertised" on it.


Maybe they didn't show other games on it because of how those devs might have deals with Sony/Nintendo, or there games just doesn't run that well on the deck. I think that GG and Ni No Kuni 2 were the only 2 Japanese games shown on the Steam Deck. Otherwise they could have done something like shown the thing playing Monster Hunter World or dare I say something like FFXV or FFXIV..... or maybe those were actual choices but we don't know since people were not showing that run on the system and we're mostly focusing on Doom and Hades, were as with LTT was focusing on CSGO (I don't think anyone else thought about testing that and maybe even the gyro function and other stuff)

To be fair they only had like an hour and a half to come up with stuff to do with it.


What I'm most curious is if October they might try something else of having others test it out and now that people know that they can test games so long as they have permission that they might end up asking certain devs if they can try their game on the device.


For the time being if they do something again it most likely will be US only.

Linus talked about about this topic in his WAN Show podcast, he said that Valve didn't believe there was any legal reason they couldn't show any game on Steam but just to be safe and as a courtesy to their partners they asked for permission for the 30 or so games they had installed. I fully expect that sooner or later they'll send hardware sites some units so that they can freely test the device.

 

[Routa]

The addition of the actual songs, and not the remixes, is a great change in Lost Heroes 2. Premium edition exclusive tho

W just showed up in the story to WBX extreme

 

[dummmyy]

So, Cultic is amazing

Man, it was so good, i had been following Jason Smith (that's his name right?) on twitter for a while and seeing the game full fledged in a demo was SUPER exciting. what a fun game, what a great looking game. This and Blood West have been the shining gems for me. Even tho a friend pointed out the guns in the blood west trailer sound weak....I can't unhear it

 

[Valdien]

So, Cultic is amazing. Give the demo a try if you're into oldschool shooters.

I tried it just now and the performance wasn't good on my end (@1440p 9900k + 208o). As soon as the game loaded, it dipped to 70 fps. And was constantly fluctuating between 60-100 fps + combined with Unity's awful camera stutter and panning. Really wanted to play it, but not like this. The motion made me feel sick.

 

[Digoman]

Almost done with my Dead Space series replay (of course I went and replayed all of them instead of just 1). Some funky physics aside, I was able to play them all at 120 fps with only 1 related crash, so that was nice.

The first two games hold up incredible well.... surprisingly so given their age. And the third one still is a really bad sequel, so... nothing new - and as bonus it has no community fix for the negative mouse acceleration that EA never patched in three games.

To put it this way: Even after all these years I still had to stop playing the first two at least an hour before sleeping so I was not too agitated. No such concern with the last one.

 

[PC-tan]

Linus talked about about this topic in his WAN Show podcast, he said that Valve didn't believe there was any legal reason they couldn't show any game on Steam but just to be safe and as a courtesy to their partners they asked for permission for the 30 or so games they had installed. I fully expect that sooner or later they'll send hardware sites some units so that they can freely test the device.

I watched that as well but I just think we have heard what those 30 or so games were.

I'm curious what will happen when they ship the devices out to review/dev kits and if prior to the official release if they are going to ask those that are test out the units and that want to play certain games if they will still have to technically ask for permission or if thats out of Valves hands type of thing.


If some one that gets a dev kits or something ends up screwing up or something, I'm guessing that they would end up getting black listed by Valve? On one hand that's not the end of the world but on the other hand Valve is still involved in a lot of things and I guess that if you screw up that others at other places might hear about it sort of thing.

 

[CommodoreKong]

I watched that as well but I just think we have heard what those 30 or so games were.

I'm curious what will happen when they ship the devices out to review/dev kits and if prior to the official release if they are going to ask those that are test out the units and that want to play certain games if they will still have to technically ask for permission or if thats out of Valves hands type of thing.


If some one that gets a dev kits or something ends up screwing up or something, I'm guessing that they would end up getting black listed by Valve? On one hand that's not the end of the world but on the other hand Valve is still involved in a lot of things and I guess that if you screw up that others at other places might hear about it sort of thing.

I would guess there's some sort of NDA on dev units that don't allow them to put up footage of it besides the developer/publisher's own games. I doubt they'll have anything like that for review units though (besides a date when the first reviews/footage are allowed to be published, which is pretty common).

 

[dex3108]

Welp i just had 3h session of Horizon Zero Dawn, I guess that I am hooked.

 

[manchego obfuscator]

Steam page isn't up yet, maybe this was uploaded a bit early?

 

[Blu]

 

[Durante]

but as you yourself earlier said any dissent is made by stupid people:

I don't want to re-roll this argument, but I just dislike it when people get angry about what they imagine others said rather than what they actually said. In the quote you posted, the statement was preconditioned on "As for people thinking SC is a scam". That's not "any dissent", that's significantly more specific than that - it's about people thinking that it is a scam.

SC is an incredibly badly managed project which could be put into the lexicon as the canonical example for "feature creep", and I'm also personally quite sure at this point that any success it achieves is more despite Chris Roberts than because of him, but it's clearly not a scam. It's an actual large scale game development project with tons of people working on it and producing some interesting things.

 

[lashman]

Steam page isn't up yet, maybe this was uploaded a bit early?

it'll probably be exclusive to gog for a while

 

[Swenhir]

SC is an incredibly badly managed project which could be put into the lexicon as the canonical example for "feature creep", and I'm also personally quite sure at this point that any success it achieves is more despite Chris Roberts than because of him, but it's clearly not a scam.

Sorry Durante but [citation needed] there. From what I'm seeing, it's very well-managed. They have made mistakes, it does fall into the usual pitfalls of gamedevs and projects of that size and scale and it surely is not perfect but there's a world of difference with saying it's incredibly badly managed. So I'm surprised to see you, of all people, say this. What is your rational basis for saying so? Because you are presenting this as a fact, stated in bold. You are objectively shitting on someone who I assume you've never met and about 30 project managers. As someone in this industry, you are making an extraordinary claim. I hope you understand the need for some degree of justification for making it.

You are not a random internet person. You are someone who understands the technicalities of making games at least on a technical level and from your experience in interacting with various companies, at least on a project management level. I would hear your reasoning for saying so.

For instance, what you peg as feature creep is something that the community itself asked for when offered the choice. As in, a poll that returned something like a majority by 82%. Most of the things they have added to the game, they had mentioned during the kickstarter. The feature expansion followed the huge rise in funding and delivering a game of the scope of that 2mil goal Kickstarter would have been criminally short-changing backers.

Edit : also, not to be wholly negative, I appreciate what you said about the whole scam and stupid argument. I just feel really exhausted of people throwing incredibly heavy claims around and never bothering to justify them. I've seen the way they have made mistakes and how they have systematically strived to do better and CR and his brother have been the ones leading this continuous effort. They have questioned their practices and re-organized in better and better ways. The amount of times I've seen people at the top and management in general do that is incredibly rare. They listen to their artists, to their coders, CR is a programmer himself who takes advice from and listens to others. I see in all this, with all of these reasons something that deserves to be praised which is why I get annoyed when I see statements like these that don't even explain why.

 

[Durante]

Sorry Durante but [citation needed] there.

It's really quite simple. They had a time plan and a deadline for delivering specific things. Planning out deadlines for delivering things and then delivering them according to that timeplan is literally the single most important job of project management. It's also a hard job, I'm not going to claim that it isn't.

But again, they had a plan with specific dates for delivering specific things. Then they missed those dates and set new ones. Then they missed those dates and set new ones. Then they missed those dates and set new ones. Then they missed those dates and set new ones.

Do you see where I'm going with this? I hope you aren't going to insist that I list the concrete examples. I backed SC before it was on KS and am quite familiar with what they promised in what timeframe.

And again, making sure to plan and scope things such that they can be delivered in the time you announce them to be delivered is management. Failing to do that not just once or twice but over years is failing at management.

 

[Swenhir]

It's really quite simple. They had a time plan and a deadline for delivering specific things. Planning out deadlines for delivering things and then delivering them according to that timeplan is literally the single most important job of project management. It's also a hard job, I'm not going to claim that it isn't.

But again, they had a plan with specific dates for delivering specific things. Then they missed those dates and set new ones. Then they missed those dates and set new ones. Then they missed those dates and set new ones. Then they missed those dates and set new ones.

Do you see where I'm going with this? I hope you aren't going to insist that I list the concrete examples. I backed SC before it was on KS and am quite familiar with what they promised in what timeframe.

And again, making sure to plan and scope things such that they can be delivered in the time you announce them to be delivered is management. Failing to do that not just once or twice but over years is failing at management.

Then I guess I disagree on that basis for the time plan in the first place. You are aware of the expansion in scope that meant that date had to be pushed back. To me, dates slipping is not a sign of bad management so long as the reason it was mis-estimated and missed is logical and they learn from it. They are now making about 70% of their dates off the top of my head since they moved to quarterly releases. It isn't correct to claim that CIG is missing all their dates, that's just not backed by the data from the last 3 years.

There's also the fact that the only dates that were announced in capacity of being release dates were 2014 for the KS, 2016 and 2017 for those stupid answer the call campaigns (or was it 2015 and 2016? can't remember) and that's about it. From where I'm standing, there isn't mismanagement as much as the subject matter being incredibly complex and large.

 

[Durante]

Basically you seem to be arguing that they are now -- over 8 years after the start of the project and 7 years after the "expected delivery" date -- less bad at management than they used to be. That could certainly be the case. I gave up on following the project in detail several years ago, and I'll be back when they deliver the Wing-Commander like co-op campaign I was excited about.

Most of the things they have added to the game, they had mentioned during the kickstarter.

But that's just it: promising features that cause you to miss your deadline not by a few months, but by over 500% in terms of project delivery time, because you clearly didn't even do a preliminary technical viability study and implementation effort analysis before making that promise to people who give you money, is what I'd call bad management.

I'm not going to blame anyone for missing a deadline (edit: on a complex technical project, specifically; otherwise I will, in fact, blame people) by 20%. Or even 50%. Let's say 100% if you're doing a KS project that was funded very well. But when you are literally over 500% of the time into your original plan and there's still no realistic timeline for delivering many of the things you promised in that original plan, then that plan was clearly extraordinarily bad. And planning, as I said, is the most crucial task of project management.

 

[FeedMeAStrayCat]

I'm about to make my own game called .......Planet... uhh.. Civilian....yes, Planet Civilian and then announce a release date of September........2030. But then imma beat SC to the punch and release it tomorrow and you all can suck it

 

[Swenhir]

Basically you seem to be arguing that they are now -- over 8 years after the start of the project and 7 years after the "expected delivery" date -- less bad at management than they used to be. That could certainly be the case. I gave up on following the project in detail several years ago, and I'll be back when they deliver the Wing-Commander like co-op campaign I was excited about.


But that's just it: promising features that cause you to miss your deadline not by a few months, but by over 500% in terms of project delivery time, because you clearly didn't even do a preliminary technical viability study and implementation effort analysis before making that promise to people who give you money, is what I'd call bad management.

I'm not going to blame anyone for missing a deadline by 20%. Or even 50%. Let's say 100% if you're doing a KS project that was funded very well. But when you are literally over 500% of the time into your original plan and there's still no realistic timeline for delivering many of the things you promised in that original plan, then that plan was clearly extraordinarily bad. And planning, as I said, is the most crucial task of project management.

I am not arguing this - that over 8 years line. I am just giving an example that is the best documented one. I am also arguing that your metric for determining bad management, namely missed release dates, is not telling the whole story and not really the best one in this project's case. I do agree that they are less bad at management than they used to be, in the context that they improved a lot over time. Not that they started from an awful position.

That 500% is a dramatic figure. I can also summon one up : funding. The old stretch goals were at 6 mil at most. Funding is today at about 379mil. That's a 63-fold increase. This isn't about pursuing the old plan to which you could apply this figure. This is about changing the plan, in which case comparing their delivery dates is just an exercise in absurdity.

I don't know, seems to me that you are basing your reasoning for incompetence on the 2014 kickstarter date without taking into account the change in scope that the community voted on and then calling them incompetent for abiding by it.