Is this legit?

[Owlie]

I mean it's not the first time someone outright try to sell this game on another platform. Plus this game is basically open sourced soo... whos guranteeing that this is legit?

[Erk]

Thanks for the detailed reply. The iOS version I'm referring to is the more regularly maintained one, the other is abandonware afaik (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cataclysm-dark-days-ahead-0-f/id1577366679) - it costs 4 dollars (USD I think unless it's adjusting to cad automatically for me) and has been around a few years. The price is just for the effort of compiling it on iOS and paying the apple store to host. The Steam version asks more, but implementing the steam API and making steam-unique art has been a fair bit of work already, with more planned, so I don't think it's that unreasonable.

Bear in mind that making a full professional tileset for cdda would probably cost at minimum five to ten times what the steam release has made in revenue so far, and would have been more money than anyone could have put up ahead of time by a factor of about a thousand. It sounds lovely but it's just not realistic. At some point (soon for a few things) some of the steam money is probably going to get turned back to use for community benefit in ways besides "Korg can program for us more now", but a pro tileset will never be it, and I believe most of that money is planned to go back to the main project rather than steam alone (it's not my call though, I specifically elected for it to not be my call)

The previous steam release had incorrect credits and then just faded out. One of the delays on this release was giving that person time to decide if they were going to go through with it or not. While I prefer it being a cleverraven dev doing the support here, I was prepared to be collegial with the other person, particularly had they turned out to actually support the release.

I'm getting rambly but I hope I replied to the repliable things here.

[Erk]

Qrox, I realize not everyone feels the same on these matters, that's why I'm openly soliciting feedback.

For the iOS version I'm not trying to whatabout it. Its existence and the community's general okayness with it was a major reason I didn't expect this level of strong emotional response.

As much as I hate it that someone might leave the project over this, I also think if they've been contributing and not understanding what cc-by-sa is for, maybe that's for the best. I really wish they wouldn't because I don't think it's as ground shaking as all that, but I'm not them. I don't really know how else to respond to that. For my own part I made very sure I understood what I was agreeing to when I started contributing, and while I am certain not everyone does that I assumed anyone *who had strong feelings on the matter* would. That's kind of victim blamey and I don't like it much but I don't really know how else to think of it. The license was voted in unanimously when the project began and this was considered a feature at the time, as I understand it.

For your other bit you kinda make it seem like if a third party publisher was monetising the game you'd be more okay with I and I can't really wrap my head around that

[Qrox]

> Its existence and the community's general okayness with it was a major reason I didn't expect this level of strong emotional response.

> it seem like if a third party publisher was monetising the game you'd be more okay with I and I can't really wrap my head around that

Yet this level of strong emotional response happened, so I hope that'll help you wrap your head around it.

> As much as I hate it that someone might leave the project over this, I also think if they've been contributing and not understanding what cc-by-sa is for, maybe that's for the best.

Why can't someone leave the project for reasons other than the license?

> For my own part I made very sure I understood what I was agreeing to when I started contributing

I'm not sure if you understood my point. The license is not the whole of the project, and agreeing to the license is only the bottom line. People come to this project for different reasons, it can be that the project has a welcoming atmosphere, it can be that the project is not monetized, it can be that it uses a CC BY-SA license, of course. If someone decides that the reason they joined the project is no longer the case, they may choose to leave. If there's no reason to join the project apart from that it uses a CC BY-SA license, I'm not sure how many will decide to stay.

And I have to go to sleep now, so forgive me if I don't reply to you in fourteen hours again.

[Erk]

I don't know how else to approach this man, you don't seem to be hearing me and I don't know why.

> Yet this level of strong emotional response happened

Yes, I'm aware. It's almost like I'm spending a ton of time actively asking for help understanding it.

> Why can't someone leave the project for reasons other than the license?

You're describing people leaving because of the license.

If you don't want a project to be monetized, and you agree to a license where it can be monetized, and then you leave because it was monetized, you're leaving because of the license. You might be also leaving because of different things at the same time, because people are complex, but the license is crux to it.

Let's put it differently. Say the license is "cc-bear-sa" and this license says that you agree to have bears released into your home at any time. If you feel strongly that you don't want bears to be let loose in your house **you must not agree to this**. You can't agree to it under the assumption that no reasonable person would let bears into your house. I think we can both see that would be unwise.

Similarly if you agree to cc-by-sa, I don't think you really have a place by which to say "yes I know I agreed my work could be used like this but I thought nobody would ever do it". I don't think it's any different to agreeing to the bears.

Sure there are reasons to join the project besides the license, but if you would leave the project when the license is used as it is intended to be used then you should consider that a deal breaker from the start. Don't agree to the bears as a bear-hater just because the community associated with the bears is friendly and you're sure they'd never use it, and then get upset when it turns out they were serious. I think in this scenario "I disagree with the manner in which bears were released into my home" isn't a great argument either, you agreed to the bears so we assumed you were okay with them.

[76561188078797539]

Originally posted by Erk:

Thanks for the detailed reply. The iOS version I'm referring to is the more regularly maintained one, the other is abandonware afaik (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cataclysm-dark-days-ahead-0-f/id1577366679) - it costs 4 dollars (USD I think unless it's adjusting to cad automatically for me) and has been around a few years. The price is just for the effort of compiling it on iOS and paying the apple store to host. The Steam version asks more, but implementing the steam API and making steam-unique art has been a fair bit of work already, with more planned, so I don't think it's that unreasonable.

39 so... again, not much impact in terms of market share.

By comparison, Steamspy shows "50,000-100,000" copies for this version (though I do realize it's incredibly wonky with short sample time window).

Originally posted by Erk:

Bear in mind that making a full professional tileset for cdda would probably cost at minimum five to ten times what the steam release has made in revenue so far, and would have been more money than anyone could have put up ahead of time by a factor of about a thousand.

It could also pay off in terms of increased appeal to the average Steam user, though the price tag probably wouldn't.

My point was more along the line of "derivative work with added content" being perceived differently than "core community project" in terms of individual monetization, though.

Originally posted by Erk:

At some point (soon for a few things) some of the steam money is probably going to get turned back to use for community benefit in ways besides "Korg can program for us more now", but a pro tileset will never be it, and I believe most of that money is planned to go back to the main project rather than steam alone (it's not my call though, I specifically elected for it to not be my call)

I noticed another person detailing issues with this approach in a post elsewhere, so I'm just going to say I do hope this will benefit the project in the long run. I have nothing but appreciation of KorG's work, even if I disagree with the decision made.

Since Steam release does nothing to secure exclusivity of distribution, the possibility of someone else monetizing all the combined effort still exists. Funds for full-time employment could've been handled by a GoFundMe or similar donation drive, although we are both aware it'd have much more limited impact than Steam release.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to the crux of the issue - Steam release was chosen precisely because of the reach, and financial return, it offers. The decision might have been supported by the current core development team, but that's with the emphasis on "current," and with dismissal on the chilling effect it can have on future contributions toward the project. I like to think everyone involved acted in good faith, but, in my opinion, this was still not the right decision.

That said, again. I do hope my pessimism will be proven unwarranted, even though, from what Qrox wrote, you are already experiencing blowback from it.

Originally posted by Erk:

The previous steam release had incorrect credits and then just faded out. One of the delays on this release was giving that person time to decide if they were going to go through with it or not. While I prefer it being a cleverraven dev doing the support here, I was prepared to be collegial with the other person, particularly had they turned out to actually support the release.

I'm getting rambly but I hope I replied to the repliable things here.

Thank you for the additional information.

I guess in the end the license is the problem, since it has no provisions against controlling parasitic attempts at monetizing the communal work (and by that I do not mean this release, no matter my feelings on it).

Originally posted by Qrox:

I'm sure you know that one of the CleverRaven members just decided to leave because of this.

Sadly, pretty much what I've seen and experienced with other projects that went from "no money involved" to monetization, no matter the intentions.

Originally posted by Erk:

You're describing people leaving because of the license.

If you don't want a project to be monetized, and you agree to a license where it can be monetized, and then you leave because it was monetized, you're leaving because of the license. You might be also leaving because of different things at the same time, because people are complex, but the license is crux to it.

If I can chime in, the counter-point is that the license was not as much of an issue until that part of it was actually utilized. The original author's decision to release the code under it was a legacy you had to work with, but until now, the issues stemming from it existed only in potentia. It was the decision to commercialize the project, on the most expansive platform, that caused license to become an immediate issue.

I suppose the way I'd summarize it for clarity is,
"just because a legacy license allows for commercialization, legally speaking, does not mean the community expects it to come into play."

Hence the negative reactions.

Though, admittedly, the mere existence of the commercialization potential is exactly what I'm afraid will lead to only core team remaining in active development, and that slowly dying out as people in it lose interest over time. Now that Steam release made its potential for quick-buck scams all the more apparent.

[Erk]

I don't know the numbers at the moment but before I reply in full I'll tell you that steamspy is *Incredibly* overestimating the project, like more than an order of magnitude or so. We had an interesting talk about it in the dev channels and concluded it must use SEO and things in its assumptions, so a well established game completely throws off the algorithm.

Wanted to share that before I forgot because it's interesting, and I won't have time to read the rest for a while.

[Icedfate]

i could never figure out how to play the ios version of this, because every time i try to download it from the app store, it comes in russian cyrrillic language by default and i can't figure out how to change it to english. . .

i'm actually more annoyed that nobody has ever put angband on ios. angband has always been my favorite old school roguelike.
there are multiple versions of angband on android, but they always put banner ads in it and ♥♥♥♥ that. i'll just play modern games then.
putting banner ads in an open source game is even worse than charging for it. .

[Erk]

> If I can chime in, the counter-point is that the license was not as much of an issue until that part of it was actually utilized. The original author's decision to release the code under it was a legacy you had to work with, but until now, the issues stemming from it existed only in potentia. It was the decision to commercialize the project, on the most expansive platform, that caused license to become an immediate issue.

I've written up a whole bunch of clever replies and then deleted them. Ultimately you're assessing correctly I think. I have troubles with this point of view because, personally, I would consider it woefully irresponsible to agree to a license I never wanted to see used... But I think you're accurately summarizing feelings, and many of the people articulating those feelings are people I have a lot of respect for, so obviously my own gut reaction is irrelevant.

I don't hold nearly as much concern for the long term prospects of the project as you do, but I suppose only time will tell.

[Fris0uman]

I think that the workforce that the dda project currently has is not somethign that anyone could afford, which means that any competing for profit attempt at dda outside of the CleverRaven project is doomed to get steamrolled (lol) by the amount of work we're outputting. But maybe I'm wrong and a small full time team couldmake a smaller but more polished work that sells better, but then doing that would be actual work, would produce a different game and then maybe it'd be different enough that it wouldn't be a competitor anymore.
Also, my personal feeling here, is that I was never expecting any money for my work, the fact that someone might get money with it now doesn't chage anything, I'm not losing because someone might profit from it.

[Chryseus]

I'm going to make a simple suggestion that should satisfy most people, put the money into a community fund and use it for code and bug bounties as well as anything else that could benefit from more professional work (I.E music, sound, graphics, etc), this will help incentivize development of the game and will certainly be of much greater benefit than giving the funds to a single developer.

This system has worked very well for other open source projects such as Unitystation so I don't really see why it could not be done for CDDA as well.

[BigRowdy]

As someone on the outside, way on the outside not knowing a thing about coding this whole affair feels shady. Banning RiggedQuarter for questions and then someone going through the effort to Jester award every dissenting argument? It is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

Like I said I am just a player and in no way involved with this project at all. I was excited to see this on steam simply because it would be an easy way to keep up with the latest builds and potentially experimental builds.

I think this game is great and definitely do not mind spending money on it but I do have questions and a few assumptions. And those assumptions are exactly that assumptions.

My first assumption is that since only Korg. is getting the money, he will eventually become the sole developer. Well maybe not the sole developer because there are other people like myself who do not care about money, but still I see a lot of people leaving.

There will now be a tremendous amount of pressure put on Korg. and he will be expected to deliver some impressive results or why would anyone pay for a free game in the first place?

So my question as a person being way on the outside is Just how much of this project's work was done by KorGgerff percentage wise? 75%, 50%, more or less than those examples?

And my final thought will be to say that whomever "jestered" many of the post here, you did not help the project in any way. And banning Rigged Quarter was a bs move, and no I don't know him.

[Gringo]

This whole argument feels like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg35NlghZZE

[Erk]

Rigged quarter was banned days later than his posts in this thread for, if I remember right, interrupting multiple threads to detail them onto this topic. When he was asked to stop he immediately opened a new thread specifically about complaining about the developers. My memory may be crossed as two or three people were banned at the same time for similar things, and since then it's been a lot more civil here. You can see this thread is still open and we've spent the last page or so discussing people's problems with the steam release; it's not a forbidden topic of discussion, but it's reasonable of the mods to kick people out when they can't share their concerns like civilized people, and are only here to prevent others from using the forum to discuss the game.

I have no control over who assigns jester emotes but I feel you may have some confirmation bias there. There's no shortage of developers, mods, and contributors getting jestered for not jumping on the steam hate bandwagon. I advise just ignoring it and accepting the bonus steam points, not much else you can do for people that want to be so juvenile.

--

Korg is the sole developer for the steam release. Stuff for the steam API falls on him, others may elect to help out but generally probably not since that's one part of why he was the one to take it over... No one else really wants to.

While there have been a few folks leaving over this, and that really really sucks as I mentioned above, by no means is it a large part of the project. Only time will tell what the large scale ramifications are but presently the free dda version hasn't had any change in pr rates. Remember that when we have a hundred or so active contributors, four or five leaving angrily is awful, because it means they are upset over something we all wanted to be a fun chill time, but it's not the end of the road.

[Pangolin Legends: Arceus]

If 5% of your devs leave over something then it's pretty obvious it was a mistake.

[Icedfate]

is that john dimaggio(Bennder, Jake. . ) doing the voice of that buffed bottom half?