I'm still not inclined to see deliberate naughtiness from FD, here. And I am not exactly one of their biggest fans. They used to be very bad at weasel words, but have been getting much better. However, they have done this sort of thing before: witness my regular comments on the missing 'near God-like powers for the DDF. That cost me £300 with an absolutely black and white promise (DBOBE has subsequently apologised for not delivering (so they know they have to) but they have still done nothing about it). However, I don't think this was a deliberate ploy to defraud people (as, to be fair, I don't think the near God-likes was a deliberate ploy). I see this as just, well, institutional incompetence, which they also seem to be quite good at. I have little doubt that it was always intended to be 'available but you have to buy it', but someone got it wrong when they wrote the bumpf on the shop, and that was changed when someone noticed the problem a little later. Now THAT was the mistake: you cannot just cover up something like that and expect to get away with it unnoticed. When they noticed the mistake, they should have come clean: probably to clearly notify us of the mistake, and offer refunds to anyone who bought on the strength of it. Embarrassment all round, but line drawn under it and everyone moves on. However, just like offllinegate, this will become a problem not because of what they did (really, a small free ship is of no real consequence to anyone with much time in the game), but how they did it.
Bottom line: the only sensible way out of this now is an apology, and we all get the ship free. Even if the beta players dismissed it as worthless.
