14 DAY TRIAL // The CEO of independent developer and publisher Stardock has apologized for the way he responded to criticism of his new strategy video game, Elemental: War of Magic, saying that he has hurt the loyal fan base who have helped his company deliver the title.
Brad Wardell, who is the Chief Executive of Stardock, has told Joystiq that, “It should be said that some of the issues in question from the PC Gamer article, in fact, did not appear in any of our beta testing. We were surprised by these issues and, after working days on end with little sleep, I was very frustrated.”
He then went on to add to his apology, saying, “I should not have engaged in an online debate about these issues, as my haste to defend what we feel is a great product only served to hurt the fans who have supported us and the team who has been so dedicated to this project.”
PC Gamer published a very straight forward article in which the magazine staff recommended players not to pick up Elemental: War of Magic because of the issues the game has, saying that they are also holding back finishing their review until bugs are fixed.
Elemental: War of Magic is a pretty complex video game that has been in development for and beta testing for some time.
Those players who pre ordered the title received access to the beta stage and were able to offer feedback and deliver bug reports, with quite a few of them opting to do so judging from the activity on the official forums.
Elemental: War of Magic was launched without any Digital Rights Management, with Wardell saying that he aims to persuade players to pick up the game from Stardock rather than pirate it by delivering constant updates.
Most of the players commenting on Elemental are acknowledging its huge potential but still maintain that the game needs a lot of work, mainly in the bug fixing department, before it can fulfil it.