Where is the paid 'content' LEP holder get for 'free'

[Devari]

No.

Oddly enough, my "argument" is precisely what I wrote in the post you quoted; that bickering simply pollutes any message that might be sent to those who might find it enlightening.

But hey, let's bicker over that too.
You've already turned this thread into a dumpster fire which can be dismissed without concern.

Unfortunately, your personal attacks contribute nothing to this discussion and further derail the legitimate discussion that is still occurring in this thread.

 

[Red Anders]

That does explain some of the basis for your arguments, in the sense that many individuals will legitimately argue semantic differences that can successfully apply to the issue being discussed. In fact the differences between "tax avoidance" and "tax evasion" often relate to following the precise letter of the law and those arguments can certainly come down to semantics as an important part of the argument. I also agree that, in the case of medial ethics, the standards are quite different than when someone is making an argument about how a company is required to treat a customer. Fundamentally the issue there is that there is a fiduciary duty that exists between a physician and patient and that requires the physician to act in a patient's best interest. Obviously FD has no obligation to act in their customers best interest and simply has to follow a specific set of standards. Nonetheless I always try to hold all of my legal arguments to as high a standard as possible simply because that is how I'm trained and I expect my arguments to be required to withstand close scrutiny on multiple levels. That may not be necessary for a tax argument but it certainly helps if it is possible to create a robust argument that goes beyond mere semantics or technicalities.

It's also worth noting that I have seen purely semantic arguments fail even when they are applied to narrowly-defined tax laws. In Canada there was a legal challenge for how medical residents should be categorized because the Canadian Revenue Agency was rejecting claims for student-related expenses. They tried to argue that because a medical residency is predominantly hospital-based work they should treat them as employees and not students. This was challenged by several residents in Ontario and a judge involved in the case took a very comprehensive view of the work that medical residents do. He not only ruled that medical residents could claim student status for tax purposes, but that they had the option of choosing whether to declare themselves as students or employees as they desired depending on what would be most advantageous to them. Not only was the CRA's semantic argument rejected but the process actually strengthened the rights that medical residents have under Canadian tax law. That is why even when dealing with a technical issue such as taxation it is always better to go beyond a purely semantic argument because when it is subjected to close scrutiny it will often fail.

As a further example, certain universities tried to respond to this by refusing to issue tuition credits for medical residents by claiming that their tuition payments should be classified as "enrollment fees" and not tuition. This was subsequently challenged, using the Ontario decision as precedent, and subsequently overturned for exactly the same reasons that were used in that legal argument. Again, the purely semantic argument failed there because it was not being made with a substantive basis. Essentially the argument was "I am not going to call you an student" and there was no legitimate basis for it.

The issue here is that if your argument is based entirely on semantics, you should expect it to fail when subjected to a reasonable standard, even if it based on a narrow definition that relates to taxation or other regulations.

Unfortunately I can't make any direct comment about work I've been personally involved in; I try to avoid making reference to it at all unless it's especially relevant to a discussion because any comment I make here is of course a personal stance expressed in my capacity as a private citizen rather then an official position.

I will however say that I've had involvement in work relating to literally the exact same status issue as the one you cited there, in the same employment sector, only from a slightly different perspective - the same issues were being examined but for a different, although related purpose. The test case concerned went all the way to the Appeal Court and ultimately the finding was in favour of the appellant, which was not the tax authority in this case. I can assure you that it was both complex and nuanced, as are many areas of taxation and yet ultimately, as with any law that is tested (including the example you cited) the outcome is black and white.

 

[Devari]

I am not suggesting anything. I am explicitly stating that the promised content referred to here:



is something which is specifically related to the deferral of Horizons income and is not related to the LEP in general. For the avoidance of doubt I'm also pointing out that it isn't a matter of semantics.

The mention of promised content you're referring to in the post in question is the only mention of promised content in the 2017 annual report.

I am therefore stating that the report does not say what you are telling people it does.

I trust that's all clear.

What you are trying to suggest here is not clear at all to me and makes no sense. The Annual Report referred to the deferral of LEP revenue in the context of delivering that "promised content" by the end of 2021. I have no idea why you are trying to suggest that the planned paid content that will be delivered by the LEP is somehow not the "promised content" they were directly referring to.

 

[Devari]

Unfortunately I can't make any direct comment about work I've been personally involved in; I try to avoid making reference to it at all unless it's especially relevant to a discussion because any comment I make here is of course a personal stance expressed in my capacity as a private citizen rather then an official position.

I will however say that I've had involvement in work relating to literally the exact same status issue as the one you cited there, in the same employment sector, only from a slightly different perspective - the same issues were being examined but for a different, although related purpose. The test case concerned went all the way to the Appeal Court and ultimately the finding was in favour of the appellant, which was not the tax authority in this case. I can assure you that it was both complex and nuanced, as are many areas of taxation and yet ultimately, as with any law that is tested (including the example you cited) the outcome is black and white.

I suspect that many of those differences may relate to the differences between Canadian and UK tax laws and to the general approach to litigation in Canada. Even in comparison to the US we are far less litigious in Canada because the courts do not look favorably on trivial or pedantic arguments that overburden the legal system. On the other hand, when we do have a case that goes to court it is usually considered carefully and the decision generally goes beyond semantics or technicalities. In that sense I far prefer the legal system in Canada to that in the US. At the same time, you could also argue that frequent litigation has been used as a tool for social or political change in the US far more effectively than it has in Canada, which may or may not be a good thing, but it does reflect a fundamental difference between how we view and utilize the legal system in Canada.

 

[Red Anders]

Then why all the hostility?

To who? I can't remember replying to you before my last post.

If you mean Devari we're having a discussion as far as I'm aware. He has delivered quite a few verbal jabs in his comments to me, I have done the same back. We're both big boys, I think we can cope If you imagine I'm sitting here grinding my teeth and punching the wall between posts I'm not. I've actually just eaten a huge sandwich made of Italian smoked meats and cheese and I'm enjoying a cold beer before bed. Pretty chilled all things considered, especially given that I'm up for work in five hours.

Literally all I've said is that it being a bit crap that FDev don't talk more doesn't equate to a failure to deliver on the LEP. It can't because it's a lifetime expansion pass and we don't even know what the lifetime ultimately will be, let alone what LEP holders will have got for their money by then. Surely though the very fact that this thread exists means that even if FDev dropped an essay tomorrow about what they were intending to do over the next five years, it wouldn't solve any of the issues that the people I've responded to seem to have because it's still just talk.

I don't own the LEP by the way but I would have bought one (I missed the last sale of them by about four weeks, bought the game in October 2016) and if I had, although I would undoubtedly be sitting here thinking I wish I knew more about what was coming, I wouldn't be thinking 'I've been stiffed here' precisely because I couldn't possibly make a judgement about that until I'd actually got everything I was getting. It's like judging a meal before you eat it, or even see it.

That's what I can't get my head round - the bimonthly 'sky is falling/we're never getting any more content/LEP holders have been ripped off' threads that I've been reading for what, a year now? It's just dumb, I mean it's basically self-flagellation. See what you get by the time things are done, then have a look at it and decide whether it was enough or not. Seems a reasonable approach to me.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

If you imagine I'm sitting here grinding my teeth and punching the wall between posts I'm not.

That's what I can't get my head round - the bimonthly 'sky is falling/we're never getting any more content/LEP holders have been ripped off' threads that I've been reading for what, a year now? It's just dumb.

Part a is Star Citizen backer.

Part b, i can understand. If you love elite so much, you don't want such a slight against you by the makers to hang over the positive sentiment. The most expensive LEP offering players have a genuine concern, and personally wouldn't take that away from them. They deserve some kind of formal address given reality has changed from what it was when it was sold. Frontier of course can steer as they need to, but the LEP has never been formally addressed and made whole.

 

[Thatchinho]

What you are trying to suggest here is not clear at all to me and makes no sense. The Annual Report referred to the deferral of LEP revenue in the context of delivering that "promised content" by the end of 2021. I have no idea why you are trying to suggest that the planned paid content that will be delivered by the LEP is somehow not the "promised content" they were directly referring to.

Again I am not suggesting anything. I am explicitly stating it - The term promised content is specific to Horizons and the deferral of income from it. The term does not apply to the LEP generally.

I am stating it because that is how it is. There's no semantics involved.

To clarify further:

The Annual Report referred to the deferral of LEP revenue in the context of delivering that "promised content" by the end of 2021.

No it didn't. The promised content bit is specific to Horizons and the deferral of income from Horizons. It is not referring to the deferral of LEP revenue.

I'll try to reformat the sentence in question to clarify further. It's as follows.

The deferred revenue is in respect of

• Elite Dangerous lifetime expansion passes purchased during the financial year
• Elite Dangerous: Horizons revenue in respect of future promised content.

 

[Devari]

There's no semantics involved.

Yes you are. You are intentionally reading that sentence wrong. It refers to the promised content that was planned for both Horizons expansions and LEP content. The sentence is very clear, you are deliberately choosing to ignore half of it.

 

[Thatchinho]

Yes you are. You are intentionally reading that sentence wrong. It refers to the promised content that was planned for both Horizons expansions and LEP content. The sentence is very clear, you are deliberately choosing to ignore half of it.

No. I am reading the sentence correctly. And I'll thank you not to make false statements about me.

 

[Devari]

No. I am reading the sentence correctly. And I'll thank you not to make false statements about me.

It's not a "false statement" that you are reading the sentence wrong. That is an entirely objective statement based on basic reading comprehension.

At this point you're either trolling or you are trying to derail this thread, neither of which constitutes productive discussion.

 

[Jenner]

C'mon guys. Keep the discussion on the topic and not the poster.

 

[WR3ND]

This may be a bit redundant this deep into the thread, but we did hear at least something about this from FD toward the end of last year. If we don't see some sort of "premium content" by the end of this Beyond season and based on what they announce for the game in 2019, I think maybe then we have a case for at the very least wondering what Frontier plans for the game and our stakes in it going forward. Before then, well they've already addressed it to some extent, though admittedly and somewhat understandably perhaps not sufficiently for some.

I think the Beyond season at no additional cost for Horizons owners was a good and needed move on their part in general.

Personally, I'm hoping for a lot more for the game and am not sure what to realistically expect at this point. We'll see.

Cheers.

PS: I'm not interested in ship paint jobs nor similar (beyond what I've already bought for the game and may buy in the future) as part of my LEP. I want expanded gameplay content and I want the game to progress as much as is viably possible toward its previously discussed potential, which is of course the main reason I bought into the game and got the LEP in the first place.

 

[Mole HD]

Well...this thread has been an interesting read so far...

I can't wait for the threadnaught surrounding the paid DLC when it turns out to be Fleet carriers and Squadrons instead of atmospheric landings and space legs as optimistically envisaged [yesnod]

 

[WR3ND]

Well...this thread has been an interesting read so far...

I can't wait for the threadnaught surrounding the paid DLC when it turns out to be Fleet carriers and Squadrons instead of atmospheric landings and space legs as optimistically envisaged [yesnod]

Assuming you're not just joking here, of course... Hasn't that already been mentioned as being part of the normal Beyond series of updates?

 

[Mole HD]

Assuming you're not just joking here, of course... Hasn't that already been mentioned as being part of the normal Beyond series of updates?

Just stirring the pot a bit...to avoid more renditions of UK and Canadian consumer law reposts

That humour aside and purely reading between the lines...I'm pessimistically half expecting the paid DLC to be of a similar nature to that...as opposed to currently overly optimistic expectations of both of the popularly speculated candidates for the DLC.

 

[Devari]

Just stirring the pot a bit...to avoid more renditions of UK and Canadian consumer law reposts

You mean you don't enjoy tax law discussions? I thought everyone enjoyed discussing how much of their hard-earned income they are legally required to hand over to the government.

 

[Mole HD]

You mean you don't enjoy tax law discussions? I thought everyone enjoyed discussing how much of their hard-earned income they are legally required to hand over to the government.

It's been a proper read at this time of the morning...enjoyable too when compared to insomnia [haha]

 

[babelfisch]

Just stirring the pot a bit...to avoid more renditions of UK and Canadian consumer law reposts

That humour aside and purely reading between the lines...I'm pessimistically half expecting the paid DLC to be of a similar nature to that...as opposed to currently overly optimistic expectations of both of the popularly speculated candidates for the DLC.

I don't think that anyone seriously expects to see space legs or atmos this year. It's more like 'wouldn't it be great' and 'if we assume they are already working on it for some years it wouldn't be entirely unrealistic'. FDEV did a pretty good job at keeping expectations low on this one.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

S'funny, I was just about to say something similar.

People need to ask themselves who their intended audience for a thread is.
If Devari does just want to argue for days on end, that's great I suppose, but it's not going to achieve much.

The best way to approach a thread like this, really, is just to post up an opinion and leave it at that.
If it turns out that 90% of people agree with you, at least you've established that you share a commonly held opinion.
If it turns out the majority of people disagree with you, you should probably accept that too.

As it is, Devari, alone, accounts for nearly 20% of the 1,000 posts in this thread, more than double the post of the next most frequent poster and more than 4 times as many as other interested parties.

All that does is pollute the message a thread like this should be sending and allows the dev's to dismiss it as yet another poopshow.

I'm just have a laugh reading Devari's rubbish and the way he dismisses people who show him up to be wrong and puts them on his ignore list.

I gave up a while ago and just enjoying the show. I have had some great laughs reading this thread. It's so obvious Devari has no knowledge of what he's talking about I am beginning to pity the poor fella.

 

[Thatchinho]

It's not a "false statement" that you are reading the sentence wrong. That is an entirely objective statement based on basic reading comprehension.

At this point you're either trolling or you are trying to detail this thread, neither of which constitutes productive discussion.

The following were the false statements about me from your previous posts:

You are intentionally reading that sentence wrong.

The sentence is very clear, you are deliberately choosing to ignore half of it.

For general reference, I'm just making sure people aren't given a wrong impression of what that bit of the annual report says.

As for derailing the thread, no, as I said I'm just making it clear about what the annual report says.

As for trolling, well I'll put that one out to the jury.

The situation is made clearer elsewhere in the following:

"The deferred revenue is in respect of Elite Dangerous lifetime expansion passes purchased during the financial year, Elite Dangerous: Horizons
revenue in respect of future promised content and Planet Coaster pre-orders."

As you can see the delineation here is into three sets of deferred revenue. The first is from ED lifetime expansion passes purchased during the financial year. The second is from Horizons revenue in respect of future promised content. The third is from Planet Coaster pre-orders.

Horizons was sold as a defined set of releases. A such one would expect the recognition of revenue from Horizons sales to be apportioned out to the individual releases, and at a given time any revenue recognised for the releases which were out, and the revenue deferred for any releases that weren't out, as they were promised for the future. FD's annual reports cover a period of 1st June in the year previous to the year of the report to 31st May in the year of the report. By the end of the period covered by the 2017 annual report, there were only 4 of the 5 Horizons releases out, and hence it would be expected that the revenue in respect of the 5th release would have been deferred until the future. And sure enough, in the report we have seen a statement corresponding to this.

I suspect that the source of your misunderstanding is that how non-current deferred income will be treated is defined, and it then goes on to define what constitutes the current deferred income, but doesn't explicitly say that it's the definition for what constitutes the current deferred income. It might be good to take a fresh look at it all bearing that in mind.

So... ladies and gentlemen of the forum jury, I ask you... was I trolling?