Dayz

It's the new game business paradigm apparently. Start a business, promise product, get people excited to support the project, mismanage it, blame "the community", leave before it's complete, start new business & project... profit??

I cannot fathom how they expect to get away with these schemes anymore, not with the All-Seeing-Internet dutifully watching - and scrutinising - thier every move. There's a distunct difference between what is acceptable - and expected - in a large, investor funded company/studio when starting new/multiple projects, and an singular indie studio project funded by the community moving on before the product is even complete; it's completely understandable that the "investing" community get a reasonable attempt put into what they funded, to believe the studio will follow through with said promise, before moving on; or be logically upset if the studio cannot (and have recourse to recoup thier lost investment).

When Hall announced the DayZ standalone, he implied that its development time would be much faster than a standard game's would take. Couple that with the supposed parallel development with the game it was branching from (Arma 3) and it gets murkier. Then, he rushed to post it to SEA way before it was ready. It's a recipe for disaster.

The worst part is that after 1.5 years of development, it's in a worse state than the mod it's derived from. Heck, to supporters, it looks like it'd have been gotten better traction by modding Arma 3 than give it a dedicated separate project. On top of that, the primary reason for the standalone is that it was the only way to address hacking. So, the community is stuck with the DayZ mod and insane number of hackers or a project with a glacial rate of progress. Neither is helping the community remain dedicated.