I will try to make this short.
On the one hand, at the start we could all download the game from Steam but a further step had to be made in order for us to play the game. Call it unpacking call it downloading more call it installing or whatever.
On the other hand, people should realize that such decisions are not being made by steam but from Lost Ark HQ.
The outcomes would be two and they knew it beforehand.
A)Flood the steam and apply less-steady pressure on the game servers.
B)Flood the servers of the game str8 ahead.
On scenario A people would point fingers at Steam and Lost Ark team.
On scenario B people point fingers only at Lost Ark team.
On scenario A steam will not get stained from this because it is a giant compared to scenario B where Lost Ark team would receive all the negative reviews and get hammered.
So from a strategic marketing standpoint this decision makes sense.
In order for this pressure to be soaked at more than 40% (which I believe was 20% at best), both Steam and Lost ark (in scenario A) would need to dedicate more servers for the launch and then shut them down on a later date because they would not be needed (or shut most of them), whereas in scenario B Lost Ark team would need to do this on its own.
We have witnessed that none of the above happened and they PAYING customers to receive and in turn spread huge negativity which does not help anyone.
If we want to compared this incident to Blizzard Classic WoW or recent D2R releases we can see that it would be more reasonable to compare it with scenario B (where no third party is involved aka Steam). The question that arises here is, does the Lost Ark HQ think they are at the size or popularity of Blizzard to mimic their moves ??? This is very often seen where small shoe companies try to mimic Nike and Adidas and they end up closing doors.
Moreover, we had more issues with the launch.
A. Server Capacity
B. Server authentication errors.
In case A, Lost Ark team thought it would be fit to tell people where they would play or not. So in the scenario where a guild wanted to play together on a server was not “lucky” enough to create characters on time they would have to either WAIT for the dev team to increase capacity or tell them to f*ck off to another server. Mind that meanwhile, people are losing precious paid time, losing reserved names etc.
In case B, people to this time of writing the post are having the same errors and the dev team as incompetent as they proved to be had to rely on workarounds that were proposed by people on reddit 3 months ago.
What do you think is going to happen on Friday the 11th or even during the weekend ???
Do people deserver a compensation for all this mess ???
What is the end game of this ??? Forget it in a week and go on with our lives ???
Finally, my personal view on this is that a small company tried to make a huge jump when not being ready. I am 100% against the decision of having to download/unpack more from Steam. I am 100% against the server capacity limitations. I am 100% against initial amount of servers. I am 100% against not knowing how to fix a simple networking error when you have programmed it and know the basics. I am also 100% against the release time on EU as opposed to NA where people had to go to sleep after waiting for so long that it became very late.
I can really keep on writing but I want to see what people has to say first and elaborate after.
Thank you for your time,
Xasa.