38 Studios Apologizes for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning’s Buggy Demo, Explains Online Pass

The folks at 38 Studios certainly seem to want to keep in touch with the gaming community at large, as exemplified by this post Curt Shilling wrote on the NeoGAF forums, in which he apologizes for the bugs present in the demo of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning:

Let me start by apologizing. The demo? Ya, it is way way WAYYYYY more buggy than anything ANYONE should ever release, much less a demo.

A demo is supposed to be a DEMONSTRATION of the game. In some ways, for you without buggy demos, it sort of is, but it’s just impossible to convey the depth of breadth of a game that has anywhere from 40-50 hours (main quest line play) to 2-300 hours (for completionist) in it at launch. It’s like saying you hate baseball after the 1st pitch in the top of the 1st inning.

That was EXACTLY why we argued EA in favor of not having the demo. It’s also exactly why I was wrong, and EA was right. Yes there are people that were on the fence who now will not buy it, there were people who weren’t buying it anyway, who still aren’t, but the massive awareness and the insane amount of ‘had no idea about this game, now it’s a day 1 buy” and “Was on the fence but am now sold” posts mean EA hit this one perfectly in INTENT.

The demo has been a God send, especially when I realize even in this thread, how many people became aware because of the demo.

In a partnership there is a lot of give and take, and I believe in my team, they are world class, but when you have a publisher there are things happening you’d rather not choose. Shipping old code out 3 months prior to gold master to a 3rd party with no stake in the demo success can be problematic. I am sure they made the best demo they could but as a studio packed to the gills with gamers, we refuse to believe code has to be unplayably buggy at launch, it doesn’t.

So to those that have had a horrid demo experience, I’m sorry, it’s on us, our name is the name on the box we care about.

I promise you, my word, that demo from a bug perspective is in NO WAY representative of the final code or product.

Meanwhile, over at the developers’ official forums, community manager Muse has attempted to clarify the situation with the game’s Online Pass:

The House of Valor content is, for all intents and purposes, our first DLC content. Instead of holding onto it for a month or more and charging everyone for it later, we opted to give it to those who purchase the game new for free.