This will probably get deleted, but here's the fate of the game.

[Maester Silvio]

• Titan GameZ has closely collaborated with PlayWay since its founding in 2020. The publisher owns 43.47% of its shares.
  
• Soon after its opening, the studio took several loans from PlayWay totaling 3.4 million zlotys (880 thousand dollars), promising to repay them by the end of 2023. The funds were intended for the development of games Viking City Builder and UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR, but the amount turned out to be insufficient.
  
• In mid-2022, Titan GameZ once again approached PlayWay for financing but was refused.
  
• In August 2023, Titan GameZ held a shareholders' meeting where it announced it was in a difficult financial situation. It then adopted a resolution to save the studio, allowing the sale of any Titan GameZ assets, including Viking City Builder, without requiring PlayWay’s consent.
  
• PlayWay did not agree with this decision, so it sued Titan GameZ, accusing it of harming its interests. Ultimately, PlayWay succeeded in getting the resolution overturned.
  
• That fall, Titan GameZ found a certain Swedish investor willing to provide the studio with 1 million euros to settle debts and 3 million euros for the development of Viking City Builder as part of a "publishing partnership." PlayWay blocked the deal, calling its terms unfavorable. Allegedly, the investor planned to take 60-70% of the game's revenue, leaving PlayWay with almost nothing.
  
• On November 30, Titan GameZ released UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR. The game was commercially successful, but despite this, the studio did not manage to repay PlayWay’s loans by December 31. (NOTE FROM OP -- 'UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR' was not commercially successful, based on publicly available metrics. At best it generated 200k after Steam's cut and taxes)
  
• After several disputes, in September 2024, Titan GameZ and PlayWay reached an agreement. PlayWay forgave the studio’s debt, which with interest had grown to 4.4 million zlotys (1.14 million dollars), in exchange for taking over the rights to Viking City Builder. They also secured the transfer of further development of the game to President Studio — the creators of Crime Scene Cleaner.
  
• When Viking City Builder will be released is unknown. Currently, the game ranks 78th on the list of the most wished-for projects on Steam. To date, Viking City Builder has amassed over 370,000 wishlists on Valve’s platform.

Source[wnhub.io]

As a game developer myself, let me just warn you guys that stuff like this is super, super common. Be careful what you get hyped for, as it is far too often something that is meant to look pretty and garner interest while the developers grab money from whatever piranhas are close by.

[SoulSteppe]

Just wow.

[Atacuari Yavari]

Welp, another for the Vaporware box

[Britt]

Zlotyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!! He did it all for the zloty, on my momma!

So did anything even begin with making the game or did they just make an awesome trailer and then use the rest of the money on pierogi and mulled wine from Zabka?

[Maester Silvio]

Postat inițial de Britt:

Zlotyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!! He did it all for the zloty, on my momma!

So did anything even begin with making the game or did they just make an awesome trailer and then use the rest of the money on pierogi and mulled wine from Zabka?

From everything I watched on their Youtube, here's what I can discern:

• Their initial trailer from 4 years ago is entirely fake. This is likely the trailer used to drum up initial support and take it to PlayWay.
  
• Their "devlogs" are a mixed bag. They rarely show anything of note, apart from assets they created or UDS (sky/weather system - $40 on Unreal's store -- note here that this isn't a criticism, TONS of developers use UDS because it's cheap and amazing).
  
• More on their devlogs, often times the shots that appear to be gameplay are little more than looping animations or movement between points, which is easy to create and fake into being gameplay.
  
• Never do they show unedited gameplay, which is a big red flag.

Findings go a bit deeper from information on SteamDB, however.

• At no point, and I could be missing it, does it appear as if ANY package was ever updated or uploaded. This means that there was never even a build uploaded to Steam.
  
• Within 3 days, June 9th to June 12th 2023, they updated the release date to be 2024, and then back to "to be announced".

I do not know if anything additional was ever shared on their Discord, but if you ask me, this money was thrown away. Now, $700k is not that much to make a game, even in Poland, but it IS enough to make a damn good vertical slice of this sort of game...if the people making it know what they're doing. Clearly, this does not seem to be the case.

[Toomadtoplay]

Recon in shambles

[Krampus]

@Maester Silvio, need to remember, that borrowed money was for 2 games, not 1. That's going off of what you posted. Doubt it would be $700k for 1 game and $180k for another, but what do I know?

Wait, I knew this game wasn't coming out, so I knew something. Wishlisted 8 days shy of 4 years, and will keep it there until Steam removes it like they did 2 of my other games.

[Maester Silvio]

Postat inițial de Krampus:

@Maester Silvio, need to remember, that borrowed money was for 2 games, not 1. That's going off of what you posted. Doubt it would be $700k for 1 game and $180k for another, but what do I know?

Wait, I knew this game wasn't coming out, so I knew something. Wishlisted 8 days shy of 4 years, and will keep it there until Steam removes it like they did 2 of my other games.

Depends on the scope of the game, but here in Poland it's not uncommon to spend 700k-1m on a single game's development. That said, even here, a budget that small is unlikely to return super high quality results if the scope is large. My own game's budget is sitting around the $3m mark, as an example, and for most global publishers this is on the lower end for AA-III.

Using ~880k for 2 games is crazy, especially considering that VR development is a learned art (especially for performance optimizations), and an expansive management game is certainly no small feat of systems design. Even with a 2 year plan and a dozen people, I'd be hard-pressed to try and get the budget below $1m. Doubt I even could.

[Krampus]

Postat inițial de Maester Silvio:

Depends on the scope of the game, but here in Poland it's not uncommon to spend 700k-1m on a single game's development. That said, even here, a budget that small is unlikely to return super high quality results if the scope is large. My own game's budget is sitting around the $3m mark, as an example, and for most global publishers this is on the lower end for AA-III.

Using ~880k for 2 games is crazy, especially considering that VR development is a learned art (especially for performance optimizations), and an expansive management game is certainly no small feat of systems design. Even with a 2 year plan and a dozen people, I'd be hard-pressed to try and get the budget below $1m. Doubt I even could.

I'm aware that there are a lot of games that are relatively cheap to make that do well, and as you said, it's the scope of the game.

The scope of the 2 games they announced though... Yeah, $450k/game is nowhere near enough for the scope they were talking about. Just paying the people working on the games would eat up most of the budget with nothing really going into the games. I think I read in a previous post of yours(definitely somewhere) that there were 12 people working on this game. Looking up average salaries in Poland, I see it's all over the place(yay internet), but basically around 7000 PLN/month, which is around $1700/month. That's around $240k/year. 2 years, $$480k, which is over what they borrowed. No idea about over revenue sources, but all that is concerning for the end product. Keep in mind, the numbers I listed are for one game.

We all know games don't NEED super high quality results, but imo most do. Those that don't deliver even average quality results need to be fun and different though. I don't think this game would have delivered enough on the fun and different, and no, just having a Viking setting is not really different as that is basically skins. I don't make games, just play them, so I could be wrong.

Good luck on your game.

[Maester Silvio]

Postat inițial de Krampus:

Postat inițial de Maester Silvio:

Depends on the scope of the game, but here in Poland it's not uncommon to spend 700k-1m on a single game's development. That said, even here, a budget that small is unlikely to return super high quality results if the scope is large. My own game's budget is sitting around the $3m mark, as an example, and for most global publishers this is on the lower end for AA-III.

Using ~880k for 2 games is crazy, especially considering that VR development is a learned art (especially for performance optimizations), and an expansive management game is certainly no small feat of systems design. Even with a 2 year plan and a dozen people, I'd be hard-pressed to try and get the budget below $1m. Doubt I even could.

I'm aware that there are a lot of games that are relatively cheap to make that do well, and as you said, it's the scope of the game.

The scope of the 2 games they announced though... Yeah, $450k/game is nowhere near enough for the scope they were talking about. Just paying the people working on the games would eat up most of the budget with nothing really going into the games. I think I read in a previous post of yours(definitely somewhere) that there were 12 people working on this game. Looking up average salaries in Poland, I see it's all over the place(yay internet), but basically around 7000 PLN/month, which is around $1700/month. That's around $240k/year. 2 years, $$480k, which is over what they borrowed. No idea about over revenue sources, but all that is concerning for the end product. Keep in mind, the numbers I listed are for one game.

We all know games don't NEED super high quality results, but imo most do. Those that don't deliver even average quality results need to be fun and different though. I don't think this game would have delivered enough on the fun and different, and no, just having a Viking setting is not really different as that is basically skins. I don't make games, just play them, so I could be wrong.

Good luck on your game.

7k zl a month is pretty on point for an average, though note that employers (if they were on general work contracts and not B2B) also have to pay most of the taxes. A 7k/month employee likely costs over 10k/month for the employer, not accounting for equipment costs.

They might have diversified their funding, which would be smart, and had private investors....but I'm doubting it in this case. I agree with you, there's just no way that making a management game of this scope costs anywhere below half a million, and the quality would be quite lacking. As you said too, just having a Viking setting was clearly a ploy to capitalize on the success and recent interest from Valheim. There weren't truly any unique selling points here.

All of this is sadly super common in Poland. Lots of great developers here, but funding is minimal and some Polish publishers that will gladly give you money will ask for your firstborn as collateral.

[Recon]

Postat inițial de Maester Silvio:

• Titan GameZ has closely collaborated with PlayWay since its founding in 2020. The publisher owns 43.47% of its shares.
  
• Soon after its opening, the studio took several loans from PlayWay totaling 3.4 million zlotys (880 thousand dollars), promising to repay them by the end of 2023. The funds were intended for the development of games Viking City Builder and UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR, but the amount turned out to be insufficient.
  
• In mid-2022, Titan GameZ once again approached PlayWay for financing but was refused.
  
• In August 2023, Titan GameZ held a shareholders' meeting where it announced it was in a difficult financial situation. It then adopted a resolution to save the studio, allowing the sale of any Titan GameZ assets, including Viking City Builder, without requiring PlayWay’s consent.
  
• PlayWay did not agree with this decision, so it sued Titan GameZ, accusing it of harming its interests. Ultimately, PlayWay succeeded in getting the resolution overturned.
  
• That fall, Titan GameZ found a certain Swedish investor willing to provide the studio with 1 million euros to settle debts and 3 million euros for the development of Viking City Builder as part of a "publishing partnership." PlayWay blocked the deal, calling its terms unfavorable. Allegedly, the investor planned to take 60-70% of the game's revenue, leaving PlayWay with almost nothing.
  
• On November 30, Titan GameZ released UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR. The game was commercially successful, but despite this, the studio did not manage to repay PlayWay’s loans by December 31. (NOTE FROM OP -- 'UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR' was not commercially successful, based on publicly available metrics. At best it generated 200k after Steam's cut and taxes)
  
• After several disputes, in September 2024, Titan GameZ and PlayWay reached an agreement. PlayWay forgave the studio’s debt, which with interest had grown to 4.4 million zlotys (1.14 million dollars), in exchange for taking over the rights to Viking City Builder. They also secured the transfer of further development of the game to President Studio — the creators of Crime Scene Cleaner.
  
• When Viking City Builder will be released is unknown. Currently, the game ranks 78th on the list of the most wished-for projects on Steam. To date, Viking City Builder has amassed over 370,000 wishlists on Valve’s platform.

Source[wnhub.io]

As a game developer myself, let me just warn you guys that stuff like this is super, super common. Be careful what you get hyped for, as it is far too often something that is meant to look pretty and garner interest while the developers grab money from whatever piranhas are close by.

This is what as a developer, I try to tell other developers to, not take on publishers, alot of them will rip you off, they also will come to you as soon as they heard of your games, to try and rip you off, I worked with so many clients as a developer who did not listen only to be ripped off by these type of publishers .They are every where sadly not just PlayWay but many, many others...

if you make a game, plan on being pounded with invites, emails from so many publishers, promising you the world.... only to rip you off, I been in this industry well over 30 yrs and its got worse with this nonsense..

Sadly I agree its all to common.. but not always the developers them selves fault, but they fall for it sadly due to lack of experience in the business side most of them, do not understand that side at all..

This happen all the time, people bite off more than they can chew and yes it will be costly, the amounts you saying are small for such a game, atleast in the US... a game like this would cost a few million easy, due to costs of software, over head, employees, taxes and more..... we always get hammered more than another other country.....Which is BS...

But I would of never took on a publisher, that is foolish, find like minded folks and make it , and fund it your selves, today is the best time to do it, more than it was when I started 30 yrs ago... its the best time to be an indie/smaller team even solo team....

Publishers are NOT needed...


https://gessel.pl/en/case-studies/we-advised-playway-s-a/

PS: we don't know if it will be released but if they went to all this trouble, with legal and making new agreements, it looks like they are wanting to and trying....So, this happens with companies who are less experienced and make wrong decisions at the start, its possible they have figured out spending and such...

The media loves drama though to game dev companies they act like all of this is new, its not...

[Recon]

Postat inițial de Maester Silvio:

Postat inițial de Krampus:

@Maester Silvio, need to remember, that borrowed money was for 2 games, not 1. That's going off of what you posted. Doubt it would be $700k for 1 game and $180k for another, but what do I know?

Wait, I knew this game wasn't coming out, so I knew something. Wishlisted 8 days shy of 4 years, and will keep it there until Steam removes it like they did 2 of my other games.

Depends on the scope of the game, but here in Poland it's not uncommon to spend 700k-1m on a single game's development. That said, even here, a budget that small is unlikely to return super high quality results if the scope is large. My own game's budget is sitting around the $3m mark, as an example, and for most global publishers this is on the lower end for AA-III.

Using ~880k for 2 games is crazy, especially considering that VR development is a learned art (especially for performance optimizations), and an expansive management game is certainly no small feat of systems design. Even with a 2 year plan and a dozen people, I'd be hard-pressed to try and get the budget below $1m. Doubt I even could.

That is poland here is the US, they rip us off, for software costs, Taxes, etc which US base companies, we end up paying x100 more, than any other country, so we get nailed...Which is a total scam to US game developers, and indies..... So the costs is way more... Just like cost conversion is another scam, to many countries....as well, so you need to set it your self as a US COMPANY or you will get cheated out of sales as well....

So, I know many other countries get all sorts of tax breaks, where in the US we get hammered...

Thanks GOD, Harris didn't win, or it would of been worse for US base companies..!!

[Recon]

Postat inițial de Maester Silvio:

• Titan GameZ has closely collaborated with PlayWay since its founding in 2020. The publisher owns 43.47% of its shares.
  
• Soon after its opening, the studio took several loans from PlayWay totaling 3.4 million zlotys (880 thousand dollars), promising to repay them by the end of 2023. The funds were intended for the development of games Viking City Builder and UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR, but the amount turned out to be insufficient.
  
• In mid-2022, Titan GameZ once again approached PlayWay for financing but was refused.
  
• In August 2023, Titan GameZ held a shareholders' meeting where it announced it was in a difficult financial situation. It then adopted a resolution to save the studio, allowing the sale of any Titan GameZ assets, including Viking City Builder, without requiring PlayWay’s consent.
  
• PlayWay did not agree with this decision, so it sued Titan GameZ, accusing it of harming its interests. Ultimately, PlayWay succeeded in getting the resolution overturned.
  
• That fall, Titan GameZ found a certain Swedish investor willing to provide the studio with 1 million euros to settle debts and 3 million euros for the development of Viking City Builder as part of a "publishing partnership." PlayWay blocked the deal, calling its terms unfavorable. Allegedly, the investor planned to take 60-70% of the game's revenue, leaving PlayWay with almost nothing.
  
• On November 30, Titan GameZ released UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR. The game was commercially successful, but despite this, the studio did not manage to repay PlayWay’s loans by December 31. (NOTE FROM OP -- 'UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR' was not commercially successful, based on publicly available metrics. At best it generated 200k after Steam's cut and taxes)
  
• After several disputes, in September 2024, Titan GameZ and PlayWay reached an agreement. PlayWay forgave the studio’s debt, which with interest had grown to 4.4 million zlotys (1.14 million dollars), in exchange for taking over the rights to Viking City Builder. They also secured the transfer of further development of the game to President Studio — the creators of Crime Scene Cleaner.
  
• When Viking City Builder will be released is unknown. Currently, the game ranks 78th on the list of the most wished-for projects on Steam. To date, Viking City Builder has amassed over 370,000 wishlists on Valve’s platform.

Source[wnhub.io]

As a game developer myself, let me just warn you guys that stuff like this is super, super common. Be careful what you get hyped for, as it is far too often something that is meant to look pretty and garner interest while the developers grab money from whatever piranhas are close by.

I forgot to say, then you know as a developer, the profits are very small, for companies like this, when a publisher takes 43%, Steam takes 30%, Taxes can be another 10-30% depending where you live.....Overhead, employees, can be 20-25% or more... So, not sure where you think developers are like piranhas.... it leaves them with little to no profits depending on where you live...

So there other game, also took a hit and make 200k, which is nothing. after Steam taking its cut.. Now i'm not making excuses I would of never took on that publisher... to many of them take way to much, and in the end your left with little to nothing, I been there done that.


it sounds like to me, they are inexperienced, which is sadly all to common, in the business and expense side. So, they had high expectations and spent to much, with large goals in mind. Which also happens.

Publishers know this as well. But publishers are ones who do the most benefiting, if I was them, I would of never took one on....

[Maester Silvio]

Postat inițial de Recon:

Postat inițial de Maester Silvio:

• Titan GameZ has closely collaborated with PlayWay since its founding in 2020. The publisher owns 43.47% of its shares.
  
• Soon after its opening, the studio took several loans from PlayWay totaling 3.4 million zlotys (880 thousand dollars), promising to repay them by the end of 2023. The funds were intended for the development of games Viking City Builder and UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR, but the amount turned out to be insufficient.
  
• In mid-2022, Titan GameZ once again approached PlayWay for financing but was refused.
  
• In August 2023, Titan GameZ held a shareholders' meeting where it announced it was in a difficult financial situation. It then adopted a resolution to save the studio, allowing the sale of any Titan GameZ assets, including Viking City Builder, without requiring PlayWay’s consent.
  
• PlayWay did not agree with this decision, so it sued Titan GameZ, accusing it of harming its interests. Ultimately, PlayWay succeeded in getting the resolution overturned.
  
• That fall, Titan GameZ found a certain Swedish investor willing to provide the studio with 1 million euros to settle debts and 3 million euros for the development of Viking City Builder as part of a "publishing partnership." PlayWay blocked the deal, calling its terms unfavorable. Allegedly, the investor planned to take 60-70% of the game's revenue, leaving PlayWay with almost nothing.
  
• On November 30, Titan GameZ released UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR. The game was commercially successful, but despite this, the studio did not manage to repay PlayWay’s loans by December 31. (NOTE FROM OP -- 'UBOAT: The Silent Wolf VR' was not commercially successful, based on publicly available metrics. At best it generated 200k after Steam's cut and taxes)
  
• After several disputes, in September 2024, Titan GameZ and PlayWay reached an agreement. PlayWay forgave the studio’s debt, which with interest had grown to 4.4 million zlotys (1.14 million dollars), in exchange for taking over the rights to Viking City Builder. They also secured the transfer of further development of the game to President Studio — the creators of Crime Scene Cleaner.
  
• When Viking City Builder will be released is unknown. Currently, the game ranks 78th on the list of the most wished-for projects on Steam. To date, Viking City Builder has amassed over 370,000 wishlists on Valve’s platform.

Source[wnhub.io]

As a game developer myself, let me just warn you guys that stuff like this is super, super common. Be careful what you get hyped for, as it is far too often something that is meant to look pretty and garner interest while the developers grab money from whatever piranhas are close by.

I forgot to say, then you know as a developer, the profits are very small, for companies like this, when a publisher takes 43%, Steam takes 30%, Taxes can be another 10-30% depending where you live.....Overhead, employees, can be 20-25% or more... So, not sure where you think developers are like piranhas.... it leaves them with little to no profits depending on where you live...

So there other game, also took a hit and make 200k, which is nothing. after Steam taking its cut.. Now i'm not making excuses I would of never took on that publisher... to many of them take way to much, and in the end your left with little to nothing, I been there done that.


it sounds like to me, they are inexperienced, which is sadly all to common, in the business and expense side. So, they had high expectations and spent to much, with large goals in mind. Which also happens.

Publishers know this as well. But publishers are ones who do the most benefiting, if I was them, I would of never took one on....

The pirhanas I referred to here were the publishers, primarily Playway. As you said, inexperienced developers are just the victims.

The rush to value and fund a company, however, is just such a careless move. There's fault all around the table.