Banner Saga was one of the earliest "big" Kickstarter-funded games, which is probably why they were able to slip under the radar with a vague stance on DRM. No game on Kickstarter is able to do that these days, one of the first questions backers will always ask is whether it will be DRM-free, so the developer needs to give a definitive answer on DRM during the campaign, or backers will keeping bugging them and it can easily result in negative publicity if the comments get clogged up with DRM questions.

I'm interested if you still have Broken Age, please and thank you.

That sucks about getting told off when you wanted a refund, I'm sorry to hear that. :(

You can't put refunds on pledges. It would produce a clusterfuck of unwanted extra work for the developers (usually smaller teams) and, most importantly, create an atmosphere of repression where if you deviate a little bit from your KS goals, you could get a landslide of refund requests that would put you on a deadly spiral where you'd have to downsize your goals and again get a huge amount of refund requests...

Anyway, people, get one thing straight: when you pledge on KS or anywhere else, your money is gone. Poof. You might get what you expect, or not, but the money is bye bye. If you can't live with that, don't pledge. You just bring in unwanted bad blood and for that, thank you but GTFO.

Edit: that doesn't mean your/our complaints aren't valid. In fact, I think bitching about anything we don't like about the "finished" game is absolutely the right thing to do, because these developers will probably come back to the community sooner or later for more funding, and they can't afford too much bad publicity.

Umm, I was showing empathy for being told to "fuck off" I wasn't really referring to whether they should, or shouldn't have gotten a refund. If that was not the tone in which they were talked to then I'm sorry, but I took it as them being out and out rude, and again that's why I said I'm sorry they were treated as such.

At first I misread what you wrote and throught you were telling me off personally. That being said, I am not getting into the middle of the whole debate, as I do not contribute to Indie-go-go or KS. Nothing against those who do, but I rather just wait and pay for a product when it is released, it's just none of my business because I don't involve myself.

edit: Whoops, you weren't talking to me my mistake. I thought you were when a quote from me was the only one that showed up. Wow, I really feel like a royal lunkhead now, shows you what all work and no sleep will do, haha. :P

Actually, yes, you can, it's in the rules. There are timeframes and whatnot for a reason. I shouldn't expect a refund, but I am absolutely right to request one when the project creator goes against the letter and/or the spirit of the original offer. I paid 3.5 times the current price 1.5 years ago, I don't want to be shat on.

And yes, I know how kickstarter works. I pledged $250 to my first project and $500 to my second one (both were for DRM-free singleplayer games), back in 2009. One of those didn't deliver the product for 2.5 years, the other hasn't yet delivered (it was a time of chaos and darkness before a genetically modified skeeter bit Yancey in the ass). However, the two of them, together, saved my life and got me two jobs. You can see why I wasn't exactly excited about a steam-infected multiplayer wallet leech.

I just looked at the Banner Saga page on GOG to satisfy a curiosity and noticed something: Next to the phrase "coming soon" (in the area price and the "add to cart" button occupy for released games), there's a small icon that resembles a page of a flip calendar with the number 31 on it. Does that mean the game will be released on the 31st of this month (Fri Jan 31)? Has this already been discussed? I haven't read the entire thread.

I think that's just an icon, usually if they have a fixed release date they will put the month and day of release. I hope this clarifies things, I was once confused by that when I had preordered Retro City Rampage. :)

Not sure if this will achieve anything but what score do people give Stoic in terms of customer satisfaction and managing customer expectations? (im not asking for feedback from dev's). Would you recommend other products to friends ,from Stoic in the future??.

And they are treating every backer equally. They're giving every backer the option of playing the game right now on Steam or waiting for the DRM-free version.

To be very honest, it's pretty naive to expect that every single version will be released at the same time on every platform. I backed the Mighty No 9 KS project and they have promised console versions, but i don't expect the console version to come at the same time as the PC version. It's not realistic to expect that, especially considering the amount of work to get things release on consoles. Same goes for Armikrog (i want the Wii U version).

Now you could argue that making a DRM-free version is not even close to being as hard as making a port. Yes, this is true. However, making a DRM-free version also requires more coding and testing. Developers just can't flip a magical switch to turn off Steam and release it. I mean, c'mon, the DRM-free version is already confirmed for a GOG release. If they took months to release the DRM-free version i would agree that they took too long, but we're talking about weeks here.

Whether I recommend a product is mostly depending on the product itself. I don't tied that to past works of the dev / publisher. If I would, there would be about 2 left to buy games from.
Would I back another kickstarter from Stoic? At this point, probably not.

And no, this will achieve absolutely nothing. The behavior I see here, is similar to a unsatisfied visit at a restaurant resulting in leaving the place, swearing to never come back again, but WITHOUT telling the owner / personal why or what went wrong for you.

I asked you guys more then once (last time 2 days ago) to actually get to their board and asking them there, instead of continually ranting here where they likely won't check. There's a kickstarter section for backers only and the longhouse section with general talk for all, both with (as far as I saw) exactly 1 thread about the DRM-free release.

Now guess how many posted in them (both threads combined), asking about it or showing their displeasure? Less than 10 guys, me included.....
/sarcasm Way to go and be taken serious. Maybe you guys should consider an Internet Petition? /end sarcasm

It's quite impressive we still don't get any official response . Isn't it ? :)

To be honest, I work at a major software firm and our (paying and subscribing) costumers would throw a shitstorm at us if we update our PC platform before the others, who all pay the same fee. It's all about what we promise to deliver, and these guys promised to deliver a DRM-free version to its paying costumer base. Though they're having technical problems, which has to be understandable -- they should keep an open communication.

Except i DID actually email them using their contact form around about a week and a half ago.

And I wrote many times on their Facebook page and still no answer :)

Still no official answer in the Kickstarter forum although this is the most recent thread on top of the forum.