Huh. The bill of rights thing has started a sub-war in the sea of turmoil that is Elemental commentary. People are insisting that nothing changed; some of the more ... colourful personages suggest that it's all a conspiracy to make stardock look bad. Meanwhile others continue to insist that the site's gone.

Before posting the above I checked the rumour myself. It's gone. That is, the version on stardock's own site is gone. That version is the first links you get when you google 'stardock gamer's bill of rights'. The bill's own stand-alone website remains. I found it only by following the link given by one of the people insisting that it was still up.

The state of the game is subject to a similar war of opinion. I say war because it's really getting quite nasty out there and there's increasingly little middle ground. Supposedly the version burned onto retail discs and released on Impulse is not the final game. It's an unfinished version, possibly or possibly not intentionally buggy. I keep seeing the pro-Elemental folk mentioning an official declaration that content was ripped out of the game in order to release this version but not a single one of them has linked to or quoted the source of this info. It was supposed to be fixed up with the release day patch. That might explain a lot. It doesn't make the situation look any better - it leaves Stardock knowingly selling a bad version of the game to customers, and then releasing a bad version as a 'bonus' so people purchasing directly from them didn't lose out compared to those buying at retail. Why oh why oh why do this?! And why not get that release day patch up at the same time as the game download? It's insane! They've ensured that a lot of the early word of mouth is negative and that's often a killer.

Crazy. Whether it's got any truth in it or not, it's crazy. Crazy truth or crazy excuses.