@HKFF
Yeah, and I agree that some of the wording were unnecessarily offensive. Just as another old-timer, I understand the needs.
@chimp
That is Larian's view and I'm happy with the digital distribution but the point here is not everybody share the view. Even in this era of digital distribution, I know some people who rather stick to buying boxed copies. To be honest, I was surprised by the demands of physical goods in different crowd-funding campaigns while everybody knows they are talking to digital game developers-not toy makers. This, however, confirmed that physical box collectors I know are not just a minority.
Also, after supporting some projects, I felt the tendency in which developers overlook some "obvious" things from the side of the players/consumers and vice versa. In such projects, developers have to do things they wouldn't as long as working as a part of conventional business model. I think it's a good move for Larian to have used the marketing company, which cooperated with CD Projekt ReD and GoG.com. So, it covered the marketing sector but, judging from some outputs (eg no dice for CE), they seem to have underestimated the distribution sector while some consumers are accustomed to getting games "in perfect condition" through retailers-otherwise, they will complain to the section which is responsible for this (Larian can end up with playing the role of a poor shopkeeper at times).
What would be possible lessons for both sides, then? I think there are some benefits in the traditional business model: For example, consumers/players don't need to risk/spend a cent before products are finished or, when they found the products are flawed, there are often established systems of replacing them. Crowd-funding projects are rather new and not all the people are ready for some clumsy occurrences. Some common sense helps but expecting everything is not possible, well, at least, for me.
