What is the reason for this thread's existence? Is it to gather the people displeased with the topic in one place on the forum and discuss it in isolation? Is it to draw in the opposing views and argue? Or is it to somehow try and make Larian alert of the problem (would be weird because the OP themselves said Larian are not good at that sort of communication)? It'd be great if the OP clarified what exactly he wants this thread to focus on. Because it has potential of branching into the eternal argument nobody needs, imo.
Respectively : kind of, neither yes or no, yes somewhat (just because I think their communication is poor doesn't mean I think it can't improve, and drawing attention to what doesn't work is probably more useful than not flagging issues). Mostly, as I was about to post, I realised that my post would be sending the original thread of topic, and I don't like sending people's threads off-topic. So I opened a new thread, so that if N posts were to follow my opening one, that'd be N posts that won't be off-topic in the original thread (hence my "kind of" answer to gather/isolate).
A little aside. Some people took issue with the word "shady". Maybe that's not the best English word for this. Replace it by "dubious". Or "uncomfortably grey". Or "questionable". And "poor form".
Imagine you are president of an association, and the treasurer has been using the association's debit card for personal purchases. Maybe the treasurer made sure to transfer money each month from their own account to the association's account to balance things out, and was only using the association's card because it's easier to carry only one debit card, and this one had higher spending limits. Maybe an audit found that no money was embezzled, only a series of breaches of internal good conduct regulations.
Imagine that you run a state's intelligence agency, and one of your spies just sent their latest report to a colleague and friend, from a public wifi abroad, via Facebook or WeChat, instead of whatever secure channel they were supposed to use. Maybe a detailed analysis of the report showed it contained no valuable data. Maybe crystal ball technology showed the data was not intercepted anyway. And maybe zone of truth technology certified that your spy was not trying to leak information.
Imagine you run a taxi company, and one of your drivers was the subject of a customer complaint. The driver had shown up for a ride, drunk, underslept, drove in a jerky fashion, without seat belt, in a neighbourhood filled with residences and schools. Maybe you operate in a country with no regulation against drunk driving, maybe no speed limit was breached during that ride, and maybe no accident occured.
In all 3 cases, your employee may argue that they were not ill-intentioned and that no harm was done. Still, they engaged in behaviour that, to me, is very dubious, inapropriate, and poor form. And the outcome could easily go from a very strong formal warning to immediate sacking.
Anyway.
Coming back to the topic of Larian's stealthy edits, I've been following the EA for over 2.5 years. Over that time, my opinion of Larian's communication has slowly but steadily converged to "my oh my, they're really not good at this". And when it comes to maintaining a healty relationship with their community, I feel that it's either something Larian just doesn't really care much about, or something they are particularly bad at it.
So when I realised that, now, they engage in edits of past posts on the FAQ too, I couldn't help rolling my eyes and thinking that this is the kind of transparency in communication that can generate lots of goodwill and help foster a healty relationship with the players.
Also, and I'll largely reiterate a point that RagnarokCzD and Flooter have already made, if you update a source of information like the FAQ, and don't notify the people interested in said information that the FAQ was updated, then they won't know that the information has changed. So you don't quite achieve the goal of keeping players up-to-date. (And one may wonder, then, why bother ?)
I just want to look at this in more detail.
There is a group of prospective players, who may well have heard of BG3 during the recent game shows, and are considering buying the game on release. They may be searching for info about the game. (Some of them might have heard that there is a better deal if you purchase before release, might ask about about it on Reddit, and might have come across a user that tends to redirect them toward the official FAQ.) For those prospective players, who will first come across the FAQ in June, July or August 2023, the up-to-date FAQ is good, since it means they get accurate information.
There is a group of players, who have had the (EA version of the) game for years, who have hung around in the community for years, who may have already read the FAQ. Due to the stealty nature of the FAQ update, those players don't get the updated information. If Larian's reasoning is that those players have purchased the game already, so Larian doesn't need to give a fig about them, I'd like to state that I disagree with that approach.
Somewhere in-between, there are players who have known about BG3 and who have been on the fence for years, perhaps due to a couple of features that are deal breakers for them. Since Larian did not inform anyone of the changes to the FAQ, those fence-sitters may not know that a potential deal breaker to them is no more a planned feature of the game. Sure, they might learn about this 2 weeks after release. They'll probably not thank Larian for not keeping the community properly up-to-date. They might also feel that they would have liked the Digital Deluxe edition ... but know that there was a good deal before release, and might feel bad about paying full price for it now. Maybe they'll decide that they'll purchase the Digital Deluxe 2 years later, when it can be bought for half price on a sale. From the product manufacturer's point of view, making only a 30 EUR sale when minimum effort could have yielded a 60 EUR is not that big of deal I suppose.
