Frontier to offer refunds after canceling offline single player mode

Elite: Dangerous developer, Frontier Studios, is going to start offering refunds to those who are upset over the cancellation of the game's planned offline single player mode. The offline portion of the single player campaign was cut from the game as it featured a severely cut back world and didn't have the benefits of a persistent universe.

Upon announcing the news, some Kickstarter backers were upset that a promised feature was being cut from the game and felt like it should be included whether it was good or not. Other backers were much more level headed about the whole thing, agreeing that if a part of the game wasn't up to scratch, then there's not much point in including it.

Frontier is offering refunds to those who pre-ordered the final game and have not yet played. Anyone who participated in the Alpha or Beta tests are not eligible. The announcement was made in this week's Elite: Dangerous newsletter, in which Frontier boss, David Braben said:

“We want to make sure we treat each person's situation with the thoroughness it deserves, and have contacted each of them to ask that they bear with us over the next few working days if their circumstances do not fit either criteria above as we look into individual requests.”

“I am really sorry this has upset people, but we have a strong, consistent vision that we do not want to compromise. In retrospect we should have shared the fact that we were struggling with this aspect with the community, but we were still trying to find a solution.”

The post goes on to explain that any offline experience would be “fundamentally empty” and wouldn't deliver a compelling experience. Frontier may review the decision after release but the current priority is to ensure that it is not delivering a sub-standard game.

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KitGuru Says: The amount of backers actually eligible for a refund seems fairly low but hopefully this will help out those who were mostly interested in offline single player. An online campaign is still included in the game, it's not like single player was dropped entirely. What do you guys think? Was Frontier right to ditch the offline mode? 

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