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Author Topic: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop  (Read 56632 times)

Cthulhu

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #300 on: March 13, 2019, 01:07:30 am »

Thankfully I had no interest in Metro, I've no longer any patience left for Russian games.
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Malus

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #301 on: March 13, 2019, 05:40:46 am »

Well, at least the refund process was painless. I picked up the $80 tier a year ago and was looking forward to it, too, but reneging on their stated contract is not cool. If they were offering the game on their site DRM-free as well, then okay, whatever, I wanted (and paid for) a Steam key, but I could accept that -- but I'm not supporting Epic exclusivity. I'm sure this is a good business decision for them: Epic offers "sales guarantees" and, from what I hear, more money than they even raised on fig + preorders, up-front, but still, it's a terrible way to treat your earliest, most avid supporters.
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Chiefwaffles

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #302 on: March 13, 2019, 06:08:14 pm »

Eh. It's just a goddamn store platform. And considering they offered full refunds too, I think it's perfectly fine on their hand whether you care about the store it's on or not. If they were to go "no refunds, deal with it" then it'd be a problem regardless of your opinion of the Epic store, but that's not the case.
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Quote from: RAM
You should really look to the wilderness for your stealth ideas, it has been doing it much longer than you have after all. Take squids for example, that ink trick works pretty well, and in water too! So you just sneak into the dam upsteam, dump several megatons of distressed squid into it, then break the dam. Boom, you suddenly have enough water-proof stealth for a whole city!

E. Albright

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #303 on: March 13, 2019, 08:35:29 pm »

No refunds would be them defrauding you to steal your money under false premises. This is "merely" them defrauding you to obtain an interest-free loan under false premises. Is the latter as bad as the former? No. Is it unremarkable? Also no.
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Persus13

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #304 on: March 13, 2019, 09:08:27 pm »

No refunds would be them defrauding you to steal your money under false premises. This is "merely" them defrauding you to obtain an interest-free loan under false premises. Is the latter as bad as the former? No. Is it unremarkable? Also no.
That's a bit excessive. False premises and fraud would be if they planned the whole time to release on Epic, and were never planning on offering Steam/GoG support. And they still are offering Steam support. I'm not saying their decision was a smart one, or the right one, but calling it fraud is definitely an exaggeration.
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Chiefwaffles

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #305 on: March 13, 2019, 09:39:40 pm »

They switched to a different storefront and are giving easy full refunds to anyone who no longer wants to buy/play the game.

call the police
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Quote from: RAM
You should really look to the wilderness for your stealth ideas, it has been doing it much longer than you have after all. Take squids for example, that ink trick works pretty well, and in water too! So you just sneak into the dam upsteam, dump several megatons of distressed squid into it, then break the dam. Boom, you suddenly have enough water-proof stealth for a whole city!

E. Albright

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #306 on: March 13, 2019, 11:00:05 pm »

They specifically committed to releasing on particular platforms, and then weaseled around outright breaking the campaign promise by releasing it to those platforms a year later (and yes, PR firefighting via refunds - that they are offering those upfront is a sign that they're not total bastards, but also that they understand they're reasonably vulnerable to criticisms of going back on their very-explicit campaign commitments). They obtained the initial crowdfunding by making commitments that they did not take seriously, and they would not have received the same funding had their end decision - which is why I referred to it as obtaining interest-free loans under false pretenses rather than theft. They are not honoring their commitments, they are a prominent and high-profile crowdfunding project whose behavior (and public acceptance of said behavior) will be carefully observed by developers, and while this is better than e.g. crowdfunding for a PC game then releasing it exclusively on consoles for a year, painting it as benign moves us a step closer towards a situation where that would be argued to be acceptable.
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Egan_BW

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #307 on: March 13, 2019, 11:59:51 pm »

I don't expect to die any time in the next year, so even if I refuse to play it on anything but steam my overall ability to play the game at some point in my life is not decreased at all.
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nenjin

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #308 on: March 14, 2019, 11:32:19 am »

First they fund it with the whackadoo Fig process. Now they double dip by getting guaranteed income from Epic, while also bait and switching the backers who expected it to be on the platform it was promised for.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. This shit had greed written all over it from top to bottom from the start, and is why I didn't let XCom Nostalgia make a sucker of me.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2019, 11:33:57 am by nenjin »
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Reelya

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #309 on: March 14, 2019, 12:34:58 pm »

I think "greed" is even too strong a word.

Game studios are closing down or going out of business all the time. This decision is about survival. Look at Telltale Games recently closing down. Then, try and tell me that Gollop's studio is in a better position that Telltale Games was, a studio with a number of bonafide hits under their belt.

I bet if Telltale had the opportunity to sign a deal with Epic (thus not having to close down) gamers would be freaking about about the bald-faced "greed" of Telltale Games.

Game studios are one flop away from bankruptcy most of the time. We're not talking publishers here. Going for a guaranteed income means they can guarantee that they can pay people, thus staving off those near-constant layoffs or studio closures that people also put down to greed.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2019, 12:45:52 pm by Reelya »
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Chiefwaffles

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #310 on: March 14, 2019, 12:45:38 pm »

You can talk about “greed” when he doesn’t need money to fund the development of an entire AA-like game and also keep himself alive.

Don’t expect other people to be starving artists just for ~you~. Passion alone does not make a video game.
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Quote from: RAM
You should really look to the wilderness for your stealth ideas, it has been doing it much longer than you have after all. Take squids for example, that ink trick works pretty well, and in water too! So you just sneak into the dam upsteam, dump several megatons of distressed squid into it, then break the dam. Boom, you suddenly have enough water-proof stealth for a whole city!

LoSboccacc

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #311 on: March 14, 2019, 12:52:58 pm »

You can talk about “greed” when he doesn’t need money to fund the development of an entire AA-like game and also keep himself alive.

Don’t expect other people to be starving artists just for ~you~. Passion alone does not make a video game.

he got the money tho  :P
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Reelya

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #312 on: March 14, 2019, 01:08:09 pm »

Basic math helps here. They have 30 employees, and raised $765000 from fig. Exactly how long would that money keep paying wages? This is not a big budget.

Since the game isn't finished they have two main choices.

First choice, would be to release a half-finished game and start selling it to get the money they need to fix it. Then, have people complain about the bugs, get bad publicity and bad reviews, and have people upset about having to patch it. This would be a PR disaster.

Second choice, is to get additional funding (that's where Epic comes in) and actually complete the game and do bug-fixes before it's released. People aren't going to be happy about that, but that avoids the slew of shitty reviews they'd get if they instead funded ongoing development by selling a half-finished game.

Third choice would be to keep their integrity and merely state they ran out of money and can't complete the game at all. No option is going to make the uber-entitled modern consumer happy.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2019, 01:12:11 pm by Reelya »
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Malus

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #313 on: March 14, 2019, 02:21:06 pm »

They raised $765,000 on fig and continued selling the game on their site: this article from last Summer tells us they'd raised a total of $2,000,000 at that point in time. Looks like they were bringing in ~100k-200k per month back then, from their preorder sales through their site. Obviously not enough to sustain their company indefinitely, and maybe not even enough to finish the game -- I don't disagree with you there -- but still a lot more than $765,000.

Taking the Epic money is just good business, and I don't fault them for that, but the preorders they were selling explicitly stated they'd give you Steam/GOG keys and access to backer builds. I don't think it's "uber-entitled" to wish for the fulfillment of that contract. Snapshot Games was already delivering the backer builds directly: I have their launcher kicking around on my hard drive somewhere. If they can't offer Steam keys because of their exclusivity deal with Epic, the very least they could do is continue providing DRM-free builds to their current backers/preorderers, similar to how Steam preorders of Metro Exodus were handled after the Epic deal.

The issue, I think, a lot of people have is that Epic is actively taking agency away from us. Phoenix Point is easily the worst offender so far, because we've already given them our money and now they aren't letting us play their game (for a year) unless we download and use Epic's launcher, which just validates Epic's strategy. If Epic wants to bankroll exclusives, I don't really have a problem with that -- I'm only frustrated in this case because I already bought the product and the terms have been changed under my nose.
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Glloyd

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Re: Phoenix Point : In the works X-COMlike from Gollop
« Reply #314 on: March 14, 2019, 02:33:01 pm »

In Gollop's AMA they confirmed they didn't need the money from Epic to release the game. So it's not entirely a matter of survival.
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