They will always get flak especially in this day and age for their antics and whilst I'm tired of seeing the same stereotypcial hate being banded around at them; they fucking deserve every bit of it. This wasn't a case of time constraints, budget restrictions or technical limitations - this was a calculated deception of continuous lies for three years leading up to release. Even Sony called them out on their whole strategy and even went against their own policies to refund angry users months down the line.
Sean Murray 12 days before the delayed launch still stated to various media domains that the game could be played with other players online but the chances of meeting them was virtually non-existent. Day one and this was already debunked as complete bullshit and it was clear he talked up a feature that didn't exist hoping that nobody would ever discover it to be nonsense. It was then proven that the game was played locally with only the data packet that was transmitted online which means it is technically impossible for players to meet, see or communicate with each other. He even dropped at text at the 11th hour before launch telling people not to go into the experience if they were looking for a multiplayer one - this was after the game was heavily pre-ordered and the tight media embargoes were lifted. That was just one of a catalogue of blatant lies. After Murray was exposed barely 24 hours after release; he disappeared from the media for months not to be seen until January.
There are also so many other allegeded features that was talked about or he answered 'yes' to in his many biased media interviews and virtually none were ever seen or talked about again. This wasn't a case of them being simply omitted - they clearly didn't exist and HG had no intention of producing them. Even if his back-catalogue of BS features did ever make it into the game years later; that's not what people paid for at launch a year ago and it's not an early access listed title either. He always talked about not wanting to spoil or give too much away but it's clear why these were his motivations. I do think many people did perhaps get a bit over-hyped and carried away and the media were far too generous in swallowing everything Murray said rather than questioning each detail and asking for some evidence rather than a simple 'yes'. Just his body langauge alone was a dead giveaway for me.
This was definitely worse than anything Peter Molyneux, Dean Hall, EA and even Ubisoft have ever pulled. I usually champion British-based develoeprs but this lot have brought utter shame and embarrassment to the industry and let a lot of people down on a level I have never ever seen before and that's against the usual AAA suspects of today. Not even Ubisoft have ever sunk to this borderline-illegal practice.