Well you only to look at the thread regarding RNG Crafting how much people hate, stopped playing because of it and referred to the companies previous statements.
It’s not just me and I am not saying everyone either.
Is the crafting/itemisation mentioned in the steam page ? And the Microsoft store one ?
Cause a Dev Blog isn’t really promotional material no ?
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Ok, but that sentiment wont hold water in a court. If you look at the wording they have left plenty breathing room. Other companies get away with far worse on a regular basis and ONLY ever backtrack, if at all, due to public backlash, NOT because they could be taken to court, which they wont be.
e.g. Sony arent shaking in their boots rn, but they feel public pressure and will only give leeway, a tiny bit of false goodwill, to alleviate the public perception of them. The reality is, $ony only care about money and the idea of courts make them laugh. Its all about image.
Being upset that a game isnt made how you think and that you interpret their words in your own way is not going to cut it. You need to prove intent, which you cannot do. (p.s. Im just being blunt so please dont take this as a personal attack, Im also angry and Im NOT trying to take you down or attack you 
)
Look at the recent controvery surrounding The Crew:
Ross from Accursed Farms youtube channel is, rather sucessfully!, fighting the industry games being removed even tho you paid for them, he is gaining traction and might even get enough weight to change the industry removing games and features you have paid for.
This is for a clear cut case, they removed a game you paid for, its against the law in the UK. And still, there is no guarantee this is going to work.
Btw I highly recommend signing the petition and adding your weight to this. It might just save games like DT being shut down 20 years from now and forcing publishers to make games available after they stop support.
What we have with DT is nowhere near as clear. I wish I was wrong, I wish it was different. Maybe if Ross is successful it will set a precedent that companies need to be more transparent, but the court system is not in our favour for a whole slew of complex reasons, most of which involve lobbies, money and legalise.
If you have the energy, get people to sign a petition to have this talked about in parliament like Ross is doing. Or something. Idk, Im just an idiot that doesnt know anything. Im not David to Goliath, Im the ant behind Davids sandle.
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Whether we like it or not, the forum is a small portion of players. Someone would need to prove it’s representative of those who felt harm and had irreparable harm done to them and/or it’s why they purchased the game and could not get their money refunded (likely weighed against the fact of how many hours have been played–it’s a murky area). And that’s very hard to prove.
I’m not defending the RNG. Crafting is a problem; but the lawsuit argument really doesn’t hold up well.
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“The nature of randomization and repetitive actions sometimes seen within crafting is something that we are steering to avoid in the crafting system within Darktide. Meaningful choices will be made with strategy and goals behind them, as you set your eyes upon that perfect combination of melee and ranged weapons for your class.”
Really? Perfect combination? I don’t have a single weapon that has a perfect combination in any sense. No one does…
It clearly states they meaningful choices with strategy…
I haven’t seen any of this.
The laws aren’t really designed for digital content anyway, so it’s problematic to take anyone to court unless it’s something really serious. Games are also entertainment, and you won’t see a movie production company be taken to court because a trailer for the movie misrepresented how good it was. Many trailers even have scenes that don’t make the final cinematic cut of the movie.
The laws would have to be far more granular and/or open to interpretation in order to apply in this case. Even if you could prove that Fatshark is intentionally and maliciously lying (which I think is actually easily proven), there’s the fact that it’s entertainment and a software product. Software changes over time, to the point that version 2.0 of a game (or product) might be vastly different from version 1.0 that you purchased at the time of release. Dedicated servers may be added or removed, entire pieces of content may be removed (Destiny does this, I think?), the class/car/weapon/mechsuit that was awesome at release may be nerfed to uselessness and so on and so on.
Most of that should not and cannot be illegal.
False advertising is and should be illegal, but the laws don’t quite capture entertainment products and software in the same way they might a physical product.
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But you there is a difference between watching something and buying a product.
To very different mediums.
I know, but not in the eyes of current laws. I agree with most of what you’re saying in principle, it’s just that the laws aren’t such that you can really successfully sue for things like these.
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I dont really think it’s quite like that. I think it’s probably what Heretical_Cactus said. They made a tepid attempt at transparency, found they were bad at and instead of acknowledging that and trying to do better, they figured the more intelligent decision was to shy away from it even further. Now, they were wrong about that, obviously. They have far more to gain from transparency than they have to lose, so long as they avoid talking about deadlines as they seem to struggle with meeting them.
A total absence of transparency or communication about the future of your product (which is meant to be relevant across a considerable span of time) fails to build any excitement or increased interest amongst consumers, especially when the product is in a dodgy state and in need of improvement.
As for the whole legal side, I doubt it’s courtworthy so I’m not even taking it into consideration really. What I will say, as one of those pesky f*cks who believe in right and wrong, is you shouldn’t even want to be deceptive whether you stand to gain anything (materially) or not. If you end up being accidentally deceptive, you should acknowledge it and make amends. Having as clean of an ethical slate as you can as a person shouldn’t be an afterthought to people or corporations (who in turn are made up of people making decisions).
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I do have to disagree with this, because I judge a studio by its actions, not its statements.
And Fatshark has consistently only given communication when the game drops below a certain player count, all the while silently pushing ‘hotfixes’ that are really just a cover for the cosmetics rotation. If not for player counts dropping early in the year, we probably would’ve never gotten the ‘what’s coming up in Darktide’ announcement.
In addition to this, you only have to look at how Fatshark balances things to see they don’t test, or attempt to gain wide-scale feedback, on anything. They hammer out nerfs that are cumulative and drive well-performing weapons into the dumpster, they try to avoid changing pain points whenever possible despite overwhelming consumer feedback, and they never, ever preview changes for community discussion. Contrasting this with a studio like Paradox, where patches get weeks or months of weekly dev posts discussing specific changes or upcoming dlc content, with a functioning beta branch and loads of testing, and you see that Fatshark as a company is very averse to letting its player base have a say in things.
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I don’t disagree with any of that but I think I attribute that to studio leadership (ie, specific people) more than the studio at large. It’s been said before that the talent is certainly there, but it’s being hamstrung by a ceiling of turds put in place by detached corpo androids. The no QA, rushed release, poor comms and all the rest I think are unlikely to be a genuine preference for most of the people there. The corpos just think this is how they maximize their profits by avoiding acknowledgement of the game’s shortcomings.
Just trying to make sure we’re pointing fingers in the right places is all.
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Oh yeah I don’t blame the devs per se. This ain’t a ‘Alex from HD2’ situation where a specific individual is being looked at as the problem. When I say ‘Fatshark as a company’ it’s mostly referring to the actual decision makers, aka the suits.
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Oh yeah, for sure. We are in agreement then.
Suits are daemon’s of Tzeentch of some kind. I’m about 98.6% sure.
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Nah. Infinite escalation, the drugs usually involved, and how they regard their ‘lessers’ point to Slaanesh.
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That’s a good point. Excess certainly seems to be a keystone in their alleged philosophy. We just need them to start murdering people and doodoo on people and we’ve got a full blown Chaos Undivided situation on our hands.
Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure they already do both those things…
Throne save us 
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Honestly, I dont think you could, even though its obvious they werent entirely upfront about some things, we dont know the reasonings behind it i.e. whether it was intentional or malicious. They might have had the best of intentions, it might be malicious suits driving these decisions behind the scenes, they might not care, they might care. Its all heresay and assumption.
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Yeah unless you get the email from a project head going ‘yeah we know this isn’t what’s in the press packet, f*ck those people they’ll buy it anyway’, there’s no legal basis for prosecution.
Unrelated: real tired of the censorship Fatshark. Looking like an American corporation with how gore is fine but cussing ain’t.
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If they are breaking the law, then the reasons why generally don’t matter. The Nuance of the Law comes in the sentencing of any judgement made.
The problem they have is that crafting is a core component of their game, they still to this day, some 18 months after release, are claiming what I have already posted above.
Despite crafting being basically a glorified spread sheet and it’s not like it is re-inventing the wheel and no justification for why it is taking so long. I am all for giving developers time do things. I would rather CDProjectDead, waiting on the release of 2077, rather releasing an unfinished game, and pandering to investors or worrying about gamers with zero patience.
However, 18 months after a release and they still haven’t addressed the very issue has driven large chunks of the community away.
I for one would like to see the improvement online trading standards, but the problem is, the gaming industry is wealthy and powerful, it’s easy to fund lobbyists promoting methods in Parliament or what ever your countries political house is.
It is why, I people who buy into micro-transaction are the problem in gaming, as they are the one’s reinforcing this toxic behaviour by those that push it.
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If the law was in a place where FS would end up in court, presumably all kinds of internal emails, slack communications etc would be required to be produced and presented.
I think it would be laughably easy to prove, but obviously I can’t be certain.
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Not really.
FatShark is a Swedish company and I don’t expect them to fully British law, or the law of any other country.