An Open Letter to the Community
As often happens in an information vacuum, wild and unfounded speculation breeds accusations and unnecessary emotions. Allow us to clarify some of what has happened over the past week.
Firstly and most importantly, the security of the retail version of the Russian release of DCS: Black Shark was compromised. Understandably, in this situation 1C and ED/TFC had to reconsider their release plans for both the Russian and western versions to make sure the product and the interests of the company are protected as much as possible under the circumstances. Among other changes to the release plan, it was decided that an online version of the Russian release would no longer be offered to western consumers as we had announced earlier. We do not feel it would be appropriate to explain this decision further, except to say that ED/TFC felt it warranted by the circumstances and deemed necessary to best protect the product and the company. It is your right to disagree. Other changes to the plan include increased protection of the western version by means of required activation for both the online download and retail versions. Also, ED will now attempt to provide a western demo of Black Shark sooner than planned. We want to avoid date estimates and exact feature sets for now, but certainly a functional demo before the holidays is the goal. Please remember, these plans remain subject to change and, as you have seen, very well might.
There have also been a lot of questions in regard to the “staggered” release plan and why ED/TFC chose this method. It’s quite simple and relates to ED/TFC’s contractual obligations to 1C, which is their publisher for the Russian release, as opposed to ED/TFC’s independent release of the western version. ED/TFC is under contract with 1C and had to deliver on that product first. Naturally, 1C wasn’t going to wait for ED/TFC to finish the international release while their product set ready to ship. With the Russian release out, ED/TFC can focus on finalizing their independent western release as well (which has now been made significantly more difficult by the events described above).
I also want to address some of the issues I often come across in regard to ED/TFC's relationship with the community and our forum.
We have spent a tremendous effort over the past year to keep the community well informed and up to date with product plans. I would like to remind you of our continual presence on the forum and openness to product questions, nearly monthly development updates, Producer’s Notes videos, general screenshots and videos, feature explainers (radio modeling, AI routines), sneak peeks into some of ED/TFC’s future plans, etc. By “us,” I mean not only ED/TFC staff, but also members of the ED Testers and ED Partners teams, many of whom have been actively supporting product discussion.
Open product discussion does have a price - it may not always turn out to be accurate. Plans change and if we’re going to discuss the product openly, we have to do so with that understanding. If ED/TFC is accused of bad intentions every time something changes, it may be easier to simply not discuss anything at all, which believe me, can be a tempting option, because the level of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is often disheartening.
In regard to our forum moderation policy, I would like to point out that this is an official company forum and yes, it does in some ways run a stricter moderation policy than some open community forums. Our forum rules are available for viewing and if you find them too strict, you are welcome to use another forum. In general, we ask that members steer clear of insulting each other as well as our products and the companies involved in making them, which is probably the most frequent problem that earns a warning on our forum. There are ways to be critical without being insulting and our forums are full of such examples as well as such critical posters. The other frequent problem would probably be redundant postings after ED or the forum staff have already acknowledged and addressed the issue. Some of the popular themes in this category would be StarForce and missile modeling issues. We make an effort to acknowledge such issues and once we do, continual complaints on them are generally viewed as spamming/trolling the forum and treated as such.
As some of you may know, we had performed a “ban amnesty” earlier this year, where many of our formerly banned accounts were unbanned and allowed back on the forum. This action was not blind and we evaluated accounts on a case by case basis. Unfortunately, some members continue the actions that had led to their original ban and will as such remain banned.
The final issue I want to address is the string of bans on our forum over the past few days. Let’s be clear and please spread the word wherever you see us accused of “random bannings” and otherwise unreasonable moderation – we have recently issued temporary (6 month) bans to over a dozen members after confirming their participation in the illegal distribution of the product. Promises to buy later don’t excuse theft. We continue to track this behavior and will certainly continue to ban any forum member found to be stealing our product. Naturally, we have been actively deleting posts/threads which undermine the security of the product.
Although the western forum remains open to discussion and we will continue to answer questions as we have in the past, product support is now limited to the Russian forum, as the Russian release is the only version currently available for purchase and is limited to the CIS. Product support will be provided on the English forum when the western version is released.
In conclusion, there is a reason we are spending time writing this letter. There is a reason ED/TFC spends time and money keeping a forum and participating in it. If we didn’t feel you were an important part of the product, we wouldn’t be here, talking to you now; we wouldn’t be keeping a 100+ page Q&A thread and we wouldn’t open wishlist threads asking for your input. Just don’t confuse this with the idea that forum members drive development. Forum members contribute to the development process and are certainly on the developers’ minds, but there are many other considerations that must be accounted for to secure the product’s success and the company’s future, without which, none of this would even be possible. We understand and accept the reality that we can’t please everyone all the time. Do you? |
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发表于 2008-10-24 18:00:27
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