What happened?

[NJ97]

Last time I played this game was in 2016, now i come back talking about pirate games to a friend and see tons of recently added bad reviews, and I'm confussed, i thought the game was finished back then?

[[ZSU] Dave247]

The old story years ago was the company went bankrupt, and there was some serious beef the CEO and producer had against each other. I had to do some searching and found some of what remained to refresh my memory as I can't remember what happened much either.

Years passed, and the CEO came back and took over the game to do some updates (which were just fixes) to the game. Then he announced he is burnt out and won't be updating the game anymore, despite previously having said there was another patch he was working on.

Now he's switched to working on a new game title, a pirate MMO, and seeking people to give him money to help fund development.


I guess it's the fact that he announced a future patch, but then later and decided he was done and wanted to move on. The optics aren't the best, so I get why people would find it hard to trust him. At the same time though, this game is old. The fact that he even came back to work on it at all after 7 years is a miracle in itself. It was technically already a finished product back then, so anything beyond that is just a bonus.

That's what I was able to gleam from going over old posts and comments. Maybe if the PR was better then people wouldn't have been so negative, but playing what-if games will get us nowhere.

The only thing I'm confused about though is why change the associated developer with the other game he is also currently working on[steamdb.info] unless to try and shield/hide it from the negativity?

[NJ97]

Thank you, that clarifies everything, and I think the game was finished long ago. I don't think the dev switching his focus to a new project is a ♥♥♥♥ move. Maybe he worded it wrongly, but I believe it's ridiculous to expect that a dev works on the same thing forever.

[[ZSU] Dave247]

I went and added links to the news post that I was taking the information on for people who come across this and want to look into it themselves.

To me it seems overblown, as he even did say ahead of time that the end of 2023 was when he would likely stop working on the game. Even int he lead up to that he announced hos time spent working on the game has reduced, so it's not like it came completely out of left field.

I think there might be a few more minor things that require a lot more time to dig up, which I don't care to do. For example, regrading his other unrelated game that is is working on that I mentioned I found odd why he changed the associated developer, I made a post on the games' forums asking about it, only to get banned for "trolling"[i.imgur.com], which going off what I have seen some people say in their reviews, is unfortunately typical behavior for him.

[Unrecognizable Face]

While Dave kinda covered the most of the what happened to the game dying. that last bit is really what got it to so many negative reviews. It is a great game and I really enjoyed it, but the jist of it is that the owner came back after so many years and started to reawaken the playerbase that was dormant. When he realized that there were so many people still interested in Pixel Piracy he dropped a DLC (which was cool) then announced the MMO pixel piracy game. At some point people started to feel like he was just trying to bank off of the old playerbase like a cash grab. People started posting on the forum about it and the owner started getting pissy and really immature and basically banned everyone who spoke in a negative way of any type.

So I mean play it if you want, cuz it's a cool game

[Unrecognizable Face]

Let me just clear something, people started to feel like it was a cash grab after he announced the MMO. B/c the MMO looked nothing like the old game and so people started to feel like he was just using the name because the IP already had a following that was clearly present after so many years. So when people started talking negatively about his new MMO and the beforementioned ordeal it just all spiraled out of control.

[acemi]

Originally posted by ZSU Dave247:

The old story years ago was the company went bankrupt, and there was some serious beef the CEO and producer had against each other. I had to do some searching and found some of what remained to refresh my memory as I can't remember what happened much either.

Years passed, and the CEO came back and took over the game to do some updates (which were just fixes) to the game. Then he announced he is burnt out and won't be updating the game anymore, despite previously having said there was another patch he was working on.

Now he's switched to working on a new game title, a pirate MMO, and seeking people to give him money to help fund development.


I guess it's the fact that he announced a future patch, but then later and decided he was done and wanted to move on. The optics aren't the best, so I get why people would find it hard to trust him. At the same time though, this game is old. The fact that he even came back to work on it at all after 7 years is a miracle in itself. It was technically already a finished product back then, so anything beyond that is just a bonus.

That's what I was able to gleam from going over old posts and comments. Maybe if the PR was better then people wouldn't have been so negative, but playing what-if games will get us nowhere.

The only thing I'm confused about though is why change the associated developer with the other game he is also currently working on[steamdb.info] unless to try and shield/hide it from the negativity?

This was always a cash grab. He paid YouTubers to play it in the 2010s. Vitali Kirpu, if you go to his LinkedIn, has been part of dozens of projects, none of which have ever been finished. They are always abandoned after reaching beta.

Pixel Piracy's price was jacked up $5 and he released a DLC, promising to do better. As soon as that happened, an image of George Floyd popped up as the banner for this game. Kirpu banned all discussion posted who brought this up.

[D Sonla]

Originally posted by acemi:

Kirpu banned all discussion posted who brought this up.

Big red flag.