Hello, team. Here we are for yet another week. Amazing isn’t it? Sadly, though, I’m afraid this week will involve rather serious conversation, and once again the blame falls squarely on your shoulders. I understand, really, I do. Considering myself minimally well-read I have often heard of the weakness of character some people exhibit, so it’s safe to say that I was expecting this chat.

This past weekend, like many, I downloaded the free “Beta” of Ubisoft’s recent project, The Division, and played it with a fervour not seen since I first started survival games. To summarize my experience, the solo player is rather boring, and unless you have a group to party with the PvP zone can be quite frustrating. Really it was nothing to write home about, but I don’t have any complaints against the game. No, what I have to complain about is MUCH greater, something that I’ve been noticing for awhile, something that I have previously touched on and waited foolishly to see if it was a one-off deal. Regrettably it looks like the issue is not an isolated incident, but may very well be a growing problem. I’m talking of course of the “limited time Open-Beta”.

These are not betas. A beta is a work in progress, a beta has blocked off areas, not because they don’t want you see them, but because they are not finished yet, betas, some betas, allow you to report bugs and problems with a hotkey in game, instead of having to leave the game to report the issue. Demos are basically complete games the withhold content from you to try and get you to buy the full version.

Subnautica is a beta game, with new features and patches to fix problems they stumble up as the finish working on the game. The Division is a demo, with content locked away and unable to be accessed. You start the game at level four, with the level cap at 8, and a separate PVP level that caps at 12. No matter what you do you will be limited to the same level and abilities as everyone else.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing wrong with demos, in fact, the devote of my stream will know that I hold a fond place in my heart for the lost art of the demo disc, it being my most played disc for years when I had a Sega Saturn. What I have a problem with is the mindset that is behind calling a demo a beta. Triple A companies are laughing at you, team. They think you’re mindless, they think you’re easy to manipulate. They think that if they call something a beta that it makes it seem more exclusive and that more people will want to experience, and in the long run increase sales for the full version. They’re playing you like a damn fiddle and the tune is starting to sound better each time around.

“But Jareth,” you say with baited breath “You participated, aren’t you just as guilty”?

A bold statement, but no, because I was merely putting myself in your shoes. I was viewing the world from your eyes, and it was eye opening to say the least. My first five minutes of gameplay I got stuck in a wall. It was only thirty minutes later that I was able to continue playing because I had to exit the game, go to the website, and submit a ticket. At first I firmly believed the game was in a beta state, but then I played more of it. The game isn’t in a beta state, the game is a chopped up, locked down, we-could-release-this-now-but-we-want-more-money-from-sales state. The only reason you can’t progress further and get more abilities is because they didn’t want you to. They put visors on our heads and expected us to look solely at what they wanted us to see and the amount of people who were so blinded to think it was an actual beta was staggering. I even got hunted down and killed by a group of people for trying to point out that the game was fine and didn’t have any feel of an early access title that was still in the works. Seriously, a team of 4 teenagers with end-beta gear made it their mission for the night to track me and gun me down like a dog in the street simply because I asked in game if anyone else was tired of companies mislabelling demos as betas.

Mark my words team, it started with Star Wars: Battlefront a.k.a. Battlefield: To Infinity Mod, now it’s Tom Clancy’s: The Division, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we were about to get a wave of mislabelled demos flooding the market, all in a selfish attempt to make more money upon the uneducated masses.