Do not buy: 7 Days to Die (on consoles)

As much as I hate to do this to The Fun Pimps, do not buy (on consoles)

There is no good way to say this beyond do not buy, particularly when zombie survival games are our preferred niche. 7 Days to Die is targeted directly at our niche. Still. Do not buy.

Here is the quick reason why:

7 Days to Die is a Steam Early Access game. Clearly marked. Yet, on Xbox, it is in the regular store, released as a complete game, unmarked as an Early Access game (Game Preview in Xbox terms). 7 Days to Die, very clearly, is a game preview game. Very clearly.

This is the worst case of pay to beta test that I have seen and, worse, it is in no way fair to the original developers, The Fun Pimps.

As much as I want to buy 7 Days to Die I find it difficult purely on principle. I don't want to reward this process. I don't want to show publishers that this kind of deceptive behavior is acceptable.

Essentially, Telltale Publishing, a new publishing arm of well respected developer Telltale Games, hired developer Iron Galaxy Studios to port 7 Days to Die from PC to consoles. Which they did. Iron Galaxy took an Alpha build of the PC version of 7 Days to Die, ported it to consoles, and Telltale Publishing then turned around and sold it as a finished product. Somehow taking a game that is still in early access on the PC and making it a finished product in the Xbox One store.

There is no way this is a legitimate business practice. Legal? Probably. Legitimate...?

Here is how 7 Days to Die is sold on the Xbox online store:

By comparison, here is how ARK: Survival Evolved (Game Preview) is sold on the Xbox online store (note how Game Preview is in the game title):

Just like ARK: Survival Evolved (Game Preview), 7 Days to Die should very clearly be marked as This game is a work in progress because it still is.

Long story short - do not buy.

Kudos to The Fun Pimps for taking ownership of their game and working toward a fix on the console versions. I cannot imagine that fixing a version they did not port themselves can be easy.

How they progress will make a impression on my possible future purchase of 7 Days to Die. Do good. Because I really want to buy it. I just don't want to reward Telltale Publishing right now.

A good first step? Changing the write up on the Xbox/PS4 stores to include This game is a work in progress.

I learned most of this from forum posts. Here are some excerpts from the one I could find again:

Huge difference. This game wasn't even advertised as an Alpha on the game store, or the physical copy. I know you feel entitled and are upset your closed off PC community has been invaded by other people, but maybe you should embrace the fact more people actually want to play the game you play instead of feeling threatened or upset your Alpha 15 might be delayed.

Now that that's out of the way, let's go on to our next topic. Customer service and compensation. This is what companies do when they mess up.
Yes it was ported by Iron Galaxy however the burden is; and should fall on TFP. It was their judgment call that they would do a good job, and unfortunately they made the wrong call. Now, let's take Assassins Creed Unity for example, launch was so bad with bugs they compensated people and saved their reputation. You have hundreds, maybe thousands of players that spent $30 on a game that is deleting their progress and/or freezing every few seconds. I'm sure though if you had bought a fan from a retail store and brought it home and it would only work on the first fan speed, and not any others you would be back at the retail store returning it or exchanging it the same night.

Don't fall pray to the illusion that this is any different, I have bought a piece of content that is essentially unplayable for weeks-to-months with no mention of it even being in an Alpha in the games store. If TFP have any hope of saving their reputation they will do something. This petition is to spark conversation and convey the frustration of many gamers that feel cheated out of their money. And let's be real, who are you to try to dismiss that with a irrelevant comparison?