Is the game abandoned?

[LyaranTirel]

So... before I bought the early game people said that the developers were active and the game was progressing.
When was the last update again?

[LyaranTirel]

Originally posted by Zenthyr:

Originally posted by Paratech2008:

No but they abandoned it on GOG. I wonder if this will be released there and if parts of Slime Rancher 2 won't be available on GOG as happened with Slime Rancher.

I happened to but Slime Rancher on GOG and Steam to support them.

Slime Rancher 2 isnt yet available on Playstaion. This does not mean it is abandoned. The game is in early access. When slime rancher was complete people nagged for a 2nd game. Now we got the second game, people want constant updates whilst saying that the game is abandoned. TDLR: The game is not abandoned <3

Edit; I have actually no clue on how GOG works so.

yes, people nagged about a 2nd game. Just like they did with Hollow Knight.
But here is the diference: One is developing without any update BUT don't promise anything, the other already made people PAY for the Early Acess.
Early Acess IS all about updates and how they are progressing to GET OUT OF EARLY ACESS. If they are not updating, they are abandoning the game and people just trashed their money. It is a actually comum occurency on Steam.

So yes. it has been 4+ months since the last update ON A EARLY ACESS GAME. That is bad. The game IS being abandoned by the developers

[Zadavi]

Originally posted by LyaranTirel:

Originally posted by Zenthyr:

Slime Rancher 2 isnt yet available on Playstaion. This does not mean it is abandoned. The game is in early access. When slime rancher was complete people nagged for a 2nd game. Now we got the second game, people want constant updates whilst saying that the game is abandoned. TDLR: The game is not abandoned <3

Edit; I have actually no clue on how GOG works so.

yes, people nagged about a 2nd game. Just like they did with Hollow Knight.
But here is the diference: One is developing without any update BUT don't promise anything, the other already made people PAY for the Early Acess.
Early Acess IS all about updates and how they are progressing to GET OUT OF EARLY ACESS. If they are not updating, they are abandoning the game and people just trashed their money. It is a actually comum occurency on Steam.

So yes. it has been 4+ months since the last update ON A EARLY ACESS GAME. That is bad. The game IS being abandoned by the developers

Okay. As a Slime Rancher moderator I can 100% Garrentee The game Is NOT abandoned. Monomi park are hard at work.

[purplecharmanderz]

Originally posted by LyaranTirel:

So yes. it has been 4+ months since the last update ON A EARLY ACESS GAME. That is bad. The game IS being abandoned by the developers

This i do need to call out as riddled with a few issues - namely the fact it 100% ignores all the known information we do have.

1) monomi with sr1 had a fairly consistent update schedule, with major updates taking about 3 months, give or take a little bit. (the one big exception to this is 1.4.0)

2) song of sabers took about 4.5ish months from initial launch to release

2.5) if we are to believe a statement nick stated around the time 1.4.0 did release is still true, they have a second game in development alongside sr2. Which would explain being a bit slower.


its been roughly that 4.5ish months duration, and song of sabers saw no word of its release until afterwards. I wouldn't say it being the same duration, with the same level of communication, from a company known to have some deadlines they do aim to achieve based on their track record with those deadlines landing at fairly consistent intervals, is evidence the game has been abandoned.


This ignores the lesser checked, but still publicly available steam API queries. Which notes a playtest build getting launched yesterday... which assuming everything goes well with it - given habits, would have me guess an update on one of the following dates:
june 28th or july 5th

[Toripatton]

everytime i try to go to the part where the split rainbow tree is the game crashes i hope they fix that bug

[OrganizationOatmeal]

Originally posted by LyaranTirel:

So yes. it has been 4+ months since the last update ON A EARLY ACESS GAME. That is bad. The game IS being abandoned by the developers

You know that these people have lives, right? Families to take care of, doctor's appointments to go to, children to run after. Not every single waking moment of their lives is dedicated to this game development -- nor should it be. Monomi Park is dedicated to keeping the team's work-life balance and making sure that everyone is healthy and that there's absolutely no crunch.

4 months to wait for an update to a game as complicated as Slime Rancher...is nothing. You know so little about game development that you are so sure of yourself, Dunning-Kruger, but in the real world this is a perfectly reasonable gap for /any/ sort of content update let alone just improvements upon what is already available to play.

The problem isn't that MP is taking too long to update. It's that you want everything on your own schedule. There's no evidence that MP has "abandoned" Slime Rancher 2. No one forced you to buy the game while it was in Early-Access. There's no need to try to trash MPs reputation just because you can't wait a while for an update.

[purplecharmanderz]

Originally posted by OrganizationOatmeal:

Originally posted by LyaranTirel:

So yes. it has been 4+ months since the last update ON A EARLY ACESS GAME. That is bad. The game IS being abandoned by the developers

You know that these people have lives, right? Families to take care of, doctor's appointments to go to, children to run after. Not every single waking moment of their lives is dedicated to this game development -- nor should it be. Monomi Park is dedicated to keeping the team's work-life balance and making sure that everyone is healthy and that there's absolutely no crunch.

4 months to wait for an update to a game as complicated as Slime Rancher...is nothing. You know so little about game development that you are so sure of yourself, Dunning-Kruger, but in the real world this is a perfectly reasonable gap for /any/ sort of content update let alone just improvements upon what is already available to play.

The problem isn't that MP is taking too long to update. It's that you want everything on your own schedule. There's no evidence that MP has "abandoned" Slime Rancher 2. No one forced you to buy the game while it was in Early-Access. There's no need to try to trash MPs reputation just because you can't wait a while for an update.

and this sadly i do need to call out for going a bit too far in the other direction of the whole debacle - ignoring some actual logic present on the other side of the argument.

4.5 months honestly can be quite long compared to the update cycles some early access games use. Even slime rancher itself wasn't this long between updates (there's some additional information that could be factored in to make it a bit more reasonable, but that information is not something that you'd easily find as just a newcomer).

It doesn't help that monomi has decided to go even more radio silent than most other studios for the matter as well, something many individuals caring to defend it and say there's no evidence its been abandoned do not want to draw any attention to from what i've noticed.

And coming from someone with my own game in development in my free time outside of work, factoring in team size, game complexity, and the dev teams history - if i weren't aware of some other factors, i'd be inclined to also be of the opinion 4.5 months for the size of updates they seem to be presenting, and with the existing content already in the files, is a bit long.



This goes more for calling out a single individuals ignorance, but also seems to mark itself as a biased nearly blind defense of the developers - and expressing some of your own ignorance of the matter at the same time.

[purplecharmanderz]

Adding to my last comment here's somethings to keep in mind when you make the claim "there's no evidence its been abandoned".

1) sr2's dev team is roughly 3x as big as sr1's was when it started.
2) sr2's development is done with a crap ton more radio silence compared to sr1.
3) sr2's first major update took 4.5 months - 1.5x as long as sr1 major updates tended to take (excluding 1.4.0)
4) monomi has stuck to its 'no crunch, promote work life balance' mentality since its inception.

And that about sums up the available, verifiable, evidence someone can see without being either:
A) tech savy enough to monitor steam's servers for changes to the depots for sr2, where the only verifiable evidence that its actually being worked on exists.

B) been here long enough to know they mentioned a second game in development, and factor that into your time assumptions (which still would make 4.5 seem long, but at the very least could seem more reasonable)


I'd be very keen to question if a game was abandoned, or at least in the process of being considered to be abandoned, if it was taking longer to develop a game with a team 3x larger than its predecessors, while the values of the company often cited as the primary slowdown remains unchanged - and is being dead silent about it...

[purplecharmanderz]

unrelated to the above for the most part and more just an update:

playtest branch was updated again today.

[Watros]

We had this same topic going right before the last update we did. Ultimately, the proof will be in the tasting of the pudding and I don't think there is too much that can be said right now to convince anyone.
The next update should set this to rest.

But hopefully after our next update it will be established that, like we said, we are having longer development cycles, and that if anyone has concerns they can be pointed at these previous threads.

[purplecharmanderz]

Originally posted by Watros:

We had this same topic going right before the last update we did. Ultimately, the proof will be in the tasting of the pudding and I don't think there is too much that can be said right now to convince anyone.
The next update should set this to rest.

But hopefully after our next update it will be established that, like we said, we are having longer development cycles, and that if anyone has concerns they can be pointed at these previous threads.

just since you brought it up, where did you guys mention having the longer development cycles? I had figured that much based on your behaviour but don't recall you guys ever explicitly mentioning it.

Would be handy to add to my list of sources to link to if you can at least get me pointed in the right direction to find that.

[Watros]

Perhaps I misspoke, but taking more time between updates is effectively having a longer dev cycle, and we covered that here in our news:
https://www.slimerancher.com/news/slime-rancher-2-future-content-updates

It's not like we changed the development process itself if that's what I gave the impression of.

[OrganizationOatmeal]

Originally posted by purplecharmanderz:

and this sadly i do need to call out for going a bit too far in the other direction of the whole debacle - ignoring some actual logic present on the other side of the argument.

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm just pointing out that people going so far as to say that the game has been /abandoned/ because we haven't had an update /within a reasonable amount of time/ is absolutely ridiculous.

MP has reputation and everyone seems so happy to ignore it. This isn't a developer that's scammed ppl before -- they're doing exactly what they did to make SR1 successful. The game is just bigger and more complex and therefore /taking more time/ -- and more people makes things /more/ difficult, not easier. If you've ever run a production you know that adding more moving parts only makes everything that much harder to run.

Again, no one has forced anyone to buy an EA game so if you're not willing to wait a few months between updates without kicking up a fuss about it, maybe don't buy an EA game.

[Watros]

I mean, I'm not going to pretend I don't understand people's concerns. We can't assume everyone is going to take the time to get familiar with our history and several months between updates is less common.

For many we need to rebuild that same confidence from the first Slime Rancher again, and that's just how that is. The way I see it, we're fortunate this time around that there are folks who remember what we did before :D

[purplecharmanderz]

Had a little more detailed of a response i wanted to make, but watros does sum it up quite nicely:

the issue boils down to the newcomers complaining having 1 of 2 main groups - those new to slime rancher, and don't have the basis to formulate an opinion based on monomi's reputation, or those who for one reason or another lost some trust for monomi (which after going radio silent for over a year, and then not doing much talk even after that - can cause a rift.)

Criticism for them basing ideas off the information they have won't really do much, and at least in your original comment you had only really alluded to the reputation, an easy to miss detail if you are familiar with that rep. But not necessarily easy to pick up on if you aren't. And that's where my remarks of you seeming to ignore their situation come from, its ignoring the fact you have more information than what they may even know how to properly find given your previous experiences with monomi.

[Lunatic]

Originally posted by Watros:

Perhaps I misspoke, but taking more time between updates is effectively having a longer dev cycle, and we covered that here in our news:
https://www.slimerancher.com/news/slime-rancher-2-future-content-updates

It's not like we changed the development process itself if that's what I gave the impression of.

Thanks for the info and yes, it's possible, but there is a tab for events and announcements.
Use it to give us news, it will take as much time as you spent justifying yourself here and the people who follow you on Steam know where the development is.