Seems like a classic bait and switch sceme to me.

I consider it akin to going to the store buying a box on the shelf getting it home opening it up and find out that there is a postit note on the inside saying "sorry delayed untill... well we feel its ready" dispite the fact we advertised it would be ready and sold you the box already.

Mark my words.  In these tough economic times it will continue to be worked on, the mini-dumps wont be fixed because it will be determined that it was a deeply rooted bug and would take to many hrs to reprogram around it, hrs that management isnt willing to spend. Any subsiquent mini-expansion packs being built on top of the bug will continue to also experience problems so the decistion is made to abandon it all together. So it will just be released after one or perhaps 2 more beta updates.  its still bugy softwere and we essentally payed $10 for a beta version.  Stardock closes the book on Sins and looks for a buyer take it forward.  5 years from now its bought up and they rewrite the code and release a game thats not nearly as good as the orginal was hopeing to suck in all the true Sins fans from when it was a DRM free simple .exe download well playing relitivly bug free great RTS game.

Why are you complaining when you could be playing the current beta?  Do you think that you'll get to play the sims3 when you plop down that empty box at bestbuy?  You'll lose five bones plus tax and get a receipt!  My SO got me the pre-order for Entrenchment for Christmas!  And I'm still happy about it, 'cuz I can play the best version they have right now.  Considering video games are continuously updated, it's kinda like you only really have a 'beta' of the next version anyway.  Do we complain about updates?  Do we say 'Damn the future!  And it's self-improving products?'  You people who want something for nothing for any reason concieveable make me sick!

your right i havnt.  I pride myself on ONLY buying off the shelf games to play.  you know not stealing copies from friends or torrents which im shure you do from the sound of it.  And yes your right i did suffer through a Crysis "shelf beta" only to find that the developers stop supporting it after 6 months for purely financial reasons and move any "new bug fixes" to a new expansion which they could sell to continue development of a game that should have had those bug fixes in it when it hit the shelf.  The consequence, I refuse to support crysis wars and pay more for a "shelf beta2"

Normally i would not have the Entrenchment beta but a friend who owed me some money (and we play sins together) Pre ordered it for me and then installed it himself so that if I wanted to play with him I had to also load it.  That only meant i had to suffer through impulse to get it.  And now if i want to uninstall it and NOT play a beta game i have to manually edit my registry. (truly a short sided move by the developers to lock the 2 together, unless you consider the ONLY logical reason which would be to try and stuff the DRM free SOASE into a DRM bag.

I gave Stardoc plenty of credit back when it was a simple .exe DRM free download able to be DL’d at any of a 100 different mirror sites.  but when it went all DRM <cough IMPULSE cough> stardoc jumped the shark and went the way of EA or Valve with its overly complicated bug ridden DRM software aka Impulse.

The jury is still out weather or not I will continue to support Stardoc in the future.  With there public statement moving SINS forward sans any tangible media will likely mean it falls by the wasteside like crisis.  If and when a shelf (boxed) version of the expansions finally hit the shelves (if they ever do)  Id be happy to fork over my hard earned cash. 

Which is ironic as I consider an expansion as fundamentally game changing as Entrenchment to be well worth a box version I would pay $25 for.  (yes over twice what they are currently selling just DRM’d digital copies for)

For those who are whining about the product being pushed back, keep in mind that game companies are hit hard by the economy. In Vancouver where Ironclad is based, there has been a series of lay-offs in the game developing industry and many studios (both small and large) closed down. There are probably over 500 industry professionals now out of work. Count yourself fortunate that a small company such as Ironclad is still around!!!

Just to throw in a vote, I do not feel that delaying a game to ensure it is a quality product (especially when there is a beta available to those that want in just that badly).  I mean, if you don't want to wait, play the beta.  If you're not happy with the beta, wait until its released.

Go cry in the blizzard forums or something.