Depending on the game, it can be reversed, but it's not easy. Diablo 3 is a recent example. Bad launch with major server problems and gameplay issues. The 2.0 patch and expansion basically undid all of that, got rave reviews, and AFAIK did result in a sales bump. That's Blizzard, though.

Assassins Creed usually sells a lot up front, sells some DLC, then moves on. DLC doesn't provide a "reset" to try and win people back over the same way a major expansion launch does. For AC Unity, the damage is done. Fixing it makes sense to try and limit the damage to the brand and because some of those fixes can probably be used in the next game, not because they hope it'll generate more sales.

When you have the hype machine going a year in advance aimed at a certain date, promotion contracts with Gamestop and such for a certain date, and even something simple like shelf space at Walmart for a certain date, changing that date is not without consequences.

Digital distribution tends to make this easier, but this is predominantly a console game and so retail matters.

There is a reason they want you to buy the game before any reviewers or other users start commenting on it. It's what enables them to sell broken crap like this. They've already got your money.

The hype train, preorder bonuses, review embargoes are all meant to allow them to get away with selling broken crap. That's exactly what they've done. All the complaining in the world won't do a whole lot about that, now.

If you really want to put a stop to companies like EA and Ubi doing this - never preorder a game. Any game worth buying on launch day is still worth buying two weeks later, and you'll save yourself quite a lot of money by avoiding duds.

"Unexpected technical issues", as in "we knew there were issues but didn't expect them to become this big of a media story."

You're right. Game company management and PR want to meet the ship date no matter what because of the hype train and various retailer contracts for shelf space. QA isn't that high on the totem pole when it comes to influence, and are routinely ignored if they're saying what management and PR don't want to hear.

Hopefully, Ubi learns something from this.

Everyone already bought it, so it's all good as far as Ubi is concerned.

Usually, testers find these things and management decides that they can be fixed with a patch later, because missing the ship date would cause marketing problems.

Sometimes they get away with that. Sometimes the problems are worse than management thinks and a debacle like this happens.

Unlike the other candidates, Carly has a proven track record of spectacular failure.

Don't settle for less, vote for first rate failure in 2016!

Except that I can sign up for Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/G+/Whatever with a browser, and costs me zero dollars.

A Disapora appliance would have to cost more than zero dollars, because you're making and distributing hardware. Why would people ever buy it? What happens when it fails, or the baby spills juice on it, or it needs patching, or any number of other real world things happens to it?

It's a complete non-starter unless it also does something game changing.

" It isn't an open source, decentralized social networking technology."

I hate to break it to you, but people don't care. That's techobabble to the overwhelming majority of the audience. When it comes to social networks, people care about the following things:

1. Are the people I want to connect with using it
2. Does it look good
3. Is it easy to use
4. Privacy, sometimes

Disapora failed because it was high on technobabble and low on the other stuff.

She also would have hired two guys to write slashdot 2.0.

Google was paying Mozilla before for traffic driven their way, that will presumably end now.

So if I'm using Firefox and switch back to Google (because I don't want to use reskinned Bing), Mozilla won't be getting anything anymore.

The commonly thrown around number is that 90% of users never change the defaults.

In my experience, that number might be low.

This is very easily fixed - don't pre-order games.

Problem solved. Now you can wait two weeks to let the suckers who did pre-order tell you if it's good or not. It doesn't matter what the publisher tries to do to slow down the reviews, since in that case the reviewers can just get a retail copy and review without interference.

The moral here is to not be a sucker by pre-ordering.

So GamerGate is now Occupy, where it's about absolutely everything (even things that have been already an issue for years) and is thus about nothing at all?

Gotcha.

There was 145 billion of them sent last year, so the answer is probably "lots of people".