And this is why Frontier have shot themselves in the foot, at least twice over this.
As well as the bad publicity that is going to roll out regarding this in the next couple of days Frontier have also harmed their future revenues from the game. There will be many ways this will facilitate itself, they are as follows:-
- Lost sales from this badly implemented and communicated decision and fallout on popular sites and media.
- Having to issue refunds to x amount of backers, some who backed to a high level.
- Lost revenue in terms of micro transactions, through both of the above and people now being more 'wary', once bitten twice shy and all that.
- The possible scenario of Frontier coming to its fan base in the future and saying, 'we need x amount of money for y expansion', (I know they have stated this is a done deal but look at Friday!), again, people are gong to be much more wary.
All of the above may only affect a relatively small amount of backers/offline advocates/future sales/MT transactions etc but I tell you what, if you add it all together and only put it down as 'potential' lost revenues then that will have a knock on effect on share price and other factors. It may never be enough to be a 'game changer', we may well never know, but, on the other hand, it could have larger ramifications than we ever expected.
