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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Developer Sorry for "Buggy" Demo

The founder of 38 Studios, Curt Schilling, has apologized for the demo version of the upcoming RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, describing it as "way more buggy than anything anyone should ever release". Ouch. The demo for the fantasy RPG launched earlier this month, and while Schilling says it has been a "god-send" in terms of generating publicity for the game, he admits some users have had a "horrid demo experience" and has promised to fix these problems in the final build.

The lengthy post by Curt Schilling on NeoGAF contains some frank admissions about how the demo has been basically an unplayable mess for some users:

"Let me start by apologizing. The demo? Ya, it is way way WAYYYYY more buggy than anything ANYONE should ever release, much less a demo...

In a partnership there is a lot of give and take, and I believe in my team, they are world class, but when you have a publisher [Electronic Arts] there are things happening you'd rather not choose. Shipping old code out 3 months prior to gold master to a 3rd party with no stake in the demo success can be problematic. I am sure they made the best demo they could but as a studio packed to the gills with gamers, we refuse to believe code has to be unplayably buggy at launch, it doesn't.

So to those that have had a horrid demo experience, I'm sorry, it's on us, our name is the name on the box we care about.

I promise you, my word, that demo from a bug perspective is in NO WAY representative of the final code or product."

However, Schilling also believes that EA was right to publish the demo, even a faulty one, because more people are aware of the game than before. You can read the full post here.

In other KoA: Reckoning news, EA has also confirmed that console gamers who purchase a used copy of the game will be locked-out from some single-player content, and will have to pay an extra fee to access it (similar to the "online pass" required for the Catwoman side-missions in Batman: Arkham City). This is basically a way of ensuring people buy the game new.

It's still unclear if this "online pass" feature will be included in the boxed PC version of the game. However, if you plan on buying KoA: Reckoning from Steam, Origin, or some other online service, you can breathe a digital sigh of relief, because this extra content should be automatically downloaded on day one.

As for what this content is... well... we don't really know. It's called "The House of Valor" and it features seven extra single-player quests.