Goodbye Universim.

[Justusbr_]

Post retreated. Talked with the original poster and decided to delete the post after his concerns. Time will tell the claims of Crytivo, although I have lost complete faith in this company. Read the latest reponse to Sasha.

[Guybrush]

Damn... This is sad. I just got the game from Humble Bundle and I think is great. Just sent a couple weeks ago a bug report to their mail, and I was wondering why I have no answer besides the typical automated response. This game deserved better, it has so much potential... Maybe they shold release mod tools and let the community have fun with it. If the fans can fix Bethesda, maybe they can fix this one too.

EDIT: So i got an answer from the bug report team! They said the bug I reported will be fixed for the 1.0 release, so there is that. Now I wonder if the answer has something to do with me posting here, but we will never know, I guess.

[Pesky]

Thanks for the news. I had wondered why I hadn't seen any updates recently. And as far as I'm concerned the game is still not playable, because your homeplanet economy is ruined while you work on the moon.

Very sad end to what might have been a good game I'd have recommended to my friends.

[APC227]

Man and there goes my last bit of hope.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

So, what you are telling me is that this game studio turned into Capitalistic Greeders? Akin to the likes of Electronic Arts? This should be considered theft, btw...

[Eichhorst]

To be honest i don't really find Dave that trustworthy he seems a little off at times i mean no hate by this and i am just gonna wait and see what happenes

[SpottedPineapple]

the game already isn't going to be completed as originally advertised... Theres no surprise there

[Eichhorst]

Originally posted by Justusbr_:

Originally posted by Eichhorst:

To be honest i don't really find Dave that trustworthy he seems a little off at times i mean no hate by this and i am just gonna wait and see what happenes

I completely agree that Dave has been "a bit off" at times. Yet, he is the glue that kept the community together and the closest source we have to inside information surrounding the "team" (or whatever is left of it) working on the universim. He has had his ups and downs going through a difficult period of his life in the last few months. However, he was the person communication to us as "consumers". Making sure we all knew exactly what was going on and fixing anything that needed to be fixed and making sure the devs communicated what they where doing. He kept this steam page running and the discord blooming. Now that he's gone, it's a graveyard in both of these. He has so far told nothing but truth that can be verified outside of him. The things he has said about the team, the way they work and whatever is left is all true and verifiable. It's all a big joke that goes under a "soon" knowing damn well they cannot deliver anymore what they promised. They have suffered substantial financial losses and shifted the entire team's focus to work on new games because they have new hype and money behind it. Aka, farm folk. It's time to dust off your black attire and attend the funeral that is "The Universim". Say your goodbyes, because this game will NEVER be fully finished. Even if 1.0 releases, it will not be an actual GOD game and won't get any insightful/actual updates afterwards. 1.0 Is seen by the "team" left working on Universim as a "we need to deliver so we can move on". No mod support will ever be added and no user feedback will ever be implemented and if something DOES get added from the community, it will be so minor that you wouldn't even know it was user feedback to begin with. Sadly, the universim and it's current state will probably remain it's last state. 1.0 might release and give us some additional content so we can finish the game and there it will rest and slowly die out. Dave is completely right, and sadly.. all the other's saying the same are too. Farm Folks is their new "hype game project" and universim is just dust to them. You can observe this your self by just going to the Farm Folks discord.. the dev's that where once 'oh so active and motivated' on the universim are now completely gone from the universim. But hey, here they are.. the devs.. being 'oh so active and motivated' in farm folk's discord.

But its been a long time since Dave worked for them alot could have chenged and he would know not more then us so i guess i wait and see

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

They need to start fining developer studios for theft of funds if they abandon games.

That is what it is - CRIMINAL THEFT

If any individual did this, they would be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law...

[Eichhorst]

Originally posted by Justusbr_:

Originally posted by Eichhorst:

But its been a long time since Dave worked for them alot could have chenged and he would know not more then us so i guess i wait and see

Originally posted by Eichhorst:

But its been a long time since Dave worked for them alot could have chenged and he would know not more then us so i guess i wait and see

You're incorrect. Dave still has access and can see what is currently going on. Everything he and others are currently saying is most definitely true and you can verify this yourself by doing some research on your own. For example by going inside the farm folks and universim discord or the several other page's of people talking on here in the discussions tab. However the message I am speaking on here isn't about Dave, it's about what is said, not only by him.. but A-LOT of people. It's lost hope to think you are still getting something salvageable by "just waiting and seeing". I know it sucks, but that sadly the reality of the state Crytivo has decided to let things rot in. You can verify each point on your own that I have stated on here or that was said by Dave, your personal trust towards Dave is of course a thing on it's own outside of the state of the universim, but to deny each verifiable critical point made on it's downfall for the pure reason of being a fan and wanting to see it succeed won't suffice. It's sadly the harsh reality and we have to accept that the Universim is just a dead concept even if 1.0 releases, it will NEVER be what was promised.

I can't do anything but wait and see i hope you and dave are wrong but i honestly don't know anymore i do believe you are trying to help us and not mislead us and i do appreciate but i am in to deep to give up now i just have to wait and see

[James]

This sucks, I've been looking forward to this game for years even the early days you could see the potential in the game and the updates were great then complete radio silence since June.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

Originally posted by James:

This sucks, I've been looking forward to this game for years even the early days you could see the potential in the game and the updates were great then complete radio silence since June.

Lack of heart with people these days. They lack willpower and only see money not heart of influence. It is a shame of failure humanity as a whole is going backwards not forwards.

[Etermes]

I'm also a former employee, I have worked with Dave, and Crytivo let him down in so many ways. We invested so many hours testing and supporting the project, but management doesn't deserve it. I don't want to explain deeper again, basically I moved on and forgot this game, Discord is pretty dead too and it's astonishing reading there are people still giving a s*it about it.

[Crytivo]

Originally posted by Justusbr_:

Crytivo is facing significant issues.

Their bug tracking system no longer exists, their dev log is broken, and they haven't released updates in months.

They suffered such substantial financial losses that they had to close their San Diego office and relocate to Texas.

I'll be astonished if this game is completed as intended. None of the original developers, like Jack and Chase, are with the company anymore. They've replaced them with less experienced, cheaper developers.

I still have access to the beta branch on Steam, and they haven't conducted beta tests for a long time.

I used to work for them and supported the company wholeheartedly. However, when the higher-ups decided to rush the game's completion in a few months so they could focus on their new project, I became disillusioned.

This game will most likely never be completed as promised. It may be rushed to some sort of conclusion over the next 3-4 months, with many features missing. Currently, they only have two programmers, down from the original six. With just two programmers, it would take several more years to properly finish the game. Expect minimal post-1.0 content, if any, due to the limited programming resources. Additional player suggestions are also unlikely to be incorporated, and if they are, they'll likely be very minor.

When they hired new programmers to replace the ones who left, they allocated them to a different project, Farm Folks, instead of prioritizing Universim. This was no secret; they acquired the Farm Folks IP last year and announced it. You could observe a decrease in the number of programmers on the Universim Discord and an increase on the Farm Folks Discord.

It's now too late to train new programmers for this project. It would take a new programmer 3-6 months to become proficient with the game. Thus, Universim will have to proceed with only two programmers, who are indeed talented and deserving of respect, but insufficient to properly finish the game.

This game could have achieved so much more with better project management.

The real issue is that if the game isn't completed as intended, it will reflect very poorly on Crytivo. I'm genuinely saddened by this situation; the game had immense potential." - Dave, former employee at Crytivo.

Goodbye Universim. It is sad to see that you never became what you could have been, and thank you Dave for all that you did for us, you kept the community glued together and now.. it seems the team has decided to let it rot. It will never be the god game it was promised to be. Even if it releases, the "Universim" will not be what it was set out to become, and it's god concept is non existent.

Hi Justusbr_,
I sincererely appreciate your support and all the concerns, but please lets stay away from misinformation.

Majority of the points listed here are completely false and just create panic and chaos.

Their bug tracking system no longer exists, their dev log is broken, and they haven't released updates in months."

The bug tracking system is indeed currently turned off. At some point, we switched our bug tracking tools as well as development tools to a cloud system instead of physical servers. All the Dev Log / Bug tracking bots located on the server were written to work with our old server, which is no longer being used.

They suffered such substantial financial losses that they had to close their San Diego office and relocate to Texas.

Completely false statement. A lot of our developers are working remotely and located all over the globe. The move to Texas had nothing to do with finances and was purely a move to gain an extra 2 hours, which we can spend with our developers and partners abroad. Though it might seem like 2 hours is not a lot, in one month, it amounts to an extra 60 hours, which is significant for us.

I'll be astonished if this game is completed as intended. None of the original developers, like Jack and Chase, are with the company anymore. They've replaced them with less experienced, cheaper developers.

When Jack and Chase joined us, they had no prior experience developing commercial games or working on a project of that scale. They started with rookie skills and grew, learning and becoming great developers with us. Jack and Chase were talented developers, and it is truly sad that they are no longer with us, but that's life. People relocate and change their jobs, etc. Throughout this time, many developers have worked on the project, and all of them were amazing. We love all of our developers. Now, we have a team full of developers who are very skillful and knowledgeable, with experience in releasing commercial and large-scale projects.

I still have access to the beta branch on Steam, and they haven't conducted beta tests for a long time.

We are running closed tests on separate branches. Quite a few people already testing and helping us to improve the experience.

I used to work for them and supported the company wholeheartedly. However, when the higher-ups decided to rush the game's completion in a few months so they could focus on their new project, I became disillusioned.

If we rushed the project just for it to be released, it would already be released and unfinished. The time that we take is all dedicated in order to improve the experience and polish it as much as possible.

This game will most likely never be completed as promised. It may be rushed to some sort of conclusion over the next 3-4 months, with many features missing. Currently, they only have two programmers, down from the original six. With just two programmers, it would take several more years to properly finish the game. Expect minimal post-1.0 content, if any, due to the limited programming resources. Additional player suggestions are also unlikely to be incorporated, and if they are, they'll likely be very minor.

Once again, completely false information. Currently, we have 4 programmers who finalizing all the systems. Not including designers, artists etc.

The game is indeed not far off from the completion. We worked for many years on the project and it is almost at the finish line.

When they hired new programmers to replace the ones who left, they allocated them to a different project, Farm Folks, instead of prioritizing Universim. This was no secret; they acquired the Farm Folks IP last year and announced it. You could observe a decrease in the number of programmers on the Universim Discord and an increase on the Farm Folks Discord.

Once again, completely false information. We did hire 2 additional programmers and they never worked on any other project, besides The Universim.

Now a little bit about the current state. The game is indeed almost done. Currently we are expanding the research tree which requires extra localization to be done for our localization team. Currently the game is 70% localized, and localization team with whom we are working, still needs to finish 30% of text. The Universim is extremely heavy on text.

Voice over. For quite some time we were trying to get a hold of our original narrator. Unfortunately, the original narrator for the game was in a hospital and we were waiting when he will recover. At some point, we almost made a decision to redo the entire VO, because we were not sure how long this might take. At the end, we are happy to say that more than 500 VO's were added to the game with original artist. We are still waiting for ~50-60 more voice over lines to be added and also localized.

We are working on a release trailer.

We are working on a credit scene and adding all the names of our awesome developers.
Working on the final scene video ( yes, the game will have a proper end game screen ), after which you will be able to continue your journey if you would like to.

Also working on bugs that we received during QA tests, as well as the bugs that we found ourselves.

Lastly, as we still waiting for some things from other companies and people with whom we are working ( Localization, VO ), we are trying to add new tutorials to the critical points of the game that need more clarification on how certain systems should be used.


We're happy to provide more info on any questions you might have, but I'll be locking this thread in a couple of days since it does not bring any value and actually misleading in many ways.

Sincerely,
Sasha

[Justusbr_]

Originally posted by Crytivo:

Originally posted by Justusbr_:

Crytivo is facing significant issues.

Their bug tracking system no longer exists, their dev log is broken, and they haven't released updates in months.

They suffered such substantial financial losses that they had to close their San Diego office and relocate to Texas.

I'll be astonished if this game is completed as intended. None of the original developers, like Jack and Chase, are with the company anymore. They've replaced them with less experienced, cheaper developers.

I still have access to the beta branch on Steam, and they haven't conducted beta tests for a long time.

I used to work for them and supported the company wholeheartedly. However, when the higher-ups decided to rush the game's completion in a few months so they could focus on their new project, I became disillusioned.

This game will most likely never be completed as promised. It may be rushed to some sort of conclusion over the next 3-4 months, with many features missing. Currently, they only have two programmers, down from the original six. With just two programmers, it would take several more years to properly finish the game. Expect minimal post-1.0 content, if any, due to the limited programming resources. Additional player suggestions are also unlikely to be incorporated, and if they are, they'll likely be very minor.

When they hired new programmers to replace the ones who left, they allocated them to a different project, Farm Folks, instead of prioritizing Universim. This was no secret; they acquired the Farm Folks IP last year and announced it. You could observe a decrease in the number of programmers on the Universim Discord and an increase on the Farm Folks Discord.

It's now too late to train new programmers for this project. It would take a new programmer 3-6 months to become proficient with the game. Thus, Universim will have to proceed with only two programmers, who are indeed talented and deserving of respect, but insufficient to properly finish the game.

This game could have achieved so much more with better project management.

The real issue is that if the game isn't completed as intended, it will reflect very poorly on Crytivo. I'm genuinely saddened by this situation; the game had immense potential." - Dave, former employee at Crytivo.

Goodbye Universim. It is sad to see that you never became what you could have been, and thank you Dave for all that you did for us, you kept the community glued together and now.. it seems the team has decided to let it rot. It will never be the god game it was promised to be. Even if it releases, the "Universim" will not be what it was set out to become, and it's god concept is non existent.

Hi Justusbr_,
I sincererely appreciate your support and all the concerns, but please lets stay away from misinformation.

Majority of the points listed here are completely false and just create panic and chaos.

Their bug tracking system no longer exists, their dev log is broken, and they haven't released updates in months."

The bug tracking system is indeed currently turned off. At some point, we switched our bug tracking tools as well as development tools to a cloud system instead of physical servers. All the Dev Log / Bug tracking bots located on the server were written to work with our old server, which is no longer being used.

They suffered such substantial financial losses that they had to close their San Diego office and relocate to Texas.

Completely false statement. A lot of our developers are working remotely and located all over the globe. The move to Texas had nothing to do with finances and was purely a move to gain an extra 2 hours, which we can spend with our developers and partners abroad. Though it might seem like 2 hours is not a lot, in one month, it amounts to an extra 60 hours, which is significant for us.

I'll be astonished if this game is completed as intended. None of the original developers, like Jack and Chase, are with the company anymore. They've replaced them with less experienced, cheaper developers.

When Jack and Chase joined us, they had no prior experience developing commercial games or working on a project of that scale. They started with rookie skills and grew, learning and becoming great developers with us. Jack and Chase were talented developers, and it is truly sad that they are no longer with us, but that's life. People relocate and change their jobs, etc. Throughout this time, many developers have worked on the project, and all of them were amazing. We love all of our developers. Now, we have a team full of developers who are very skillful and knowledgeable, with experience in releasing commercial and large-scale projects.

I still have access to the beta branch on Steam, and they haven't conducted beta tests for a long time.

We are running closed tests on separate branches. Quite a few people already testing and helping us to improve the experience.

I used to work for them and supported the company wholeheartedly. However, when the higher-ups decided to rush the game's completion in a few months so they could focus on their new project, I became disillusioned.

If we rushed the project just for it to be released, it would already be released and unfinished. The time that we take is all dedicated in order to improve the experience and polish it as much as possible.

This game will most likely never be completed as promised. It may be rushed to some sort of conclusion over the next 3-4 months, with many features missing. Currently, they only have two programmers, down from the original six. With just two programmers, it would take several more years to properly finish the game. Expect minimal post-1.0 content, if any, due to the limited programming resources. Additional player suggestions are also unlikely to be incorporated, and if they are, they'll likely be very minor.

Once again, completely false information. Currently, we have 4 programmers who finalizing all the systems. Not including designers, artists etc.

The game is indeed not far off from the completion. We worked for many years on the project and it is almost at the finish line.

When they hired new programmers to replace the ones who left, they allocated them to a different project, Farm Folks, instead of prioritizing Universim. This was no secret; they acquired the Farm Folks IP last year and announced it. You could observe a decrease in the number of programmers on the Universim Discord and an increase on the Farm Folks Discord.

Once again, completely false information. We did hire 2 additional programmers and they never worked on any other project, besides The Universim.

Now a little bit about the current state. The game is indeed almost done. Currently we are expanding the research tree which requires extra localization to be done for our localization team. Currently the game is 70% localized, and localization team with whom we are working, still needs to finish 30% of text. The Universim is extremely heavy on text.

Voice over. For quite some time we were trying to get a hold of our original narrator. Unfortunately, the original narrator for the game was in a hospital and we were waiting when he will recover. At some point, we almost made a decision to redo the entire VO, because we were not sure how long this might take. At the end, we are happy to say that more than 500 VO's were added to the game with original artist. We are still waiting for ~50-60 more voice over lines to be added and also localized.

We are working on a release trailer.

We are working on a credit scene and adding all the names of our awesome developers.
Working on the final scene video ( yes, the game will have a proper end game screen ), after which you will be able to continue your journey if you would like to.

Also working on bugs that we received during QA tests, as well as the bugs that we found ourselves.

Lastly, as we still waiting for some things from other companies and people with whom we are working ( Localization, VO ), we are trying to add new tutorials to the critical points of the game that need more clarification on how certain systems should be used.


We're happy to provide more info on any questions you might have, but I'll be locking this thread in a couple of days since it does not bring any value and actually misleading in many ways.

Sincerely,
Sasha

Thank you for your response Sasha.

This is the first time in MONTHS upon MONTHS that you have decided to respond to whatever has been going on. I stand by the things said behind the scenes about Crytivo's poor work ethic and bad decision making. Especially on the way some former employees where treated. You and others on the team have left us all in absolute and complete darkness, where any information is taken as granted. It's important to understand your community and I think the team behind crytivo/universim has in the past months utterly failed to do so. The sheer frustration and irritation behind the lack of communication from the team and lack of maintenance or support in the community and it's discord is astounding and enough for many to retaliate against it. I apologize if certain things where indeed actual misinformation, and I am glad to FINALLY hear something back from Crytivo to set that right on some aspects. FInally, Some actual insight. I would argue that the picked up "misinformation" directly reflects the state of the Universim and what the team of Crytivo have decided to let it simmer in with an eerie silence surrounding it. Again, my apologies if I accepted rumor as fact as a result from the frustration I encountered with the team's decision making as of lately. But, for me and many others that wouldn't have needed to be the case if some communication from the team was actually up to part. There is no need to give us direct spoilers, but you can surely communicate without ruining the update for us. "soon", is not insightful at all and causes more frustration then good. However, I'd still disagree with some things being called "misinformation", which I won't further touch upon. I have decided to retreat this post. Hopefully the team can set things right.. But a great start would be an update in the discord, fixing the bots and channels and responding when all this uproar is happening, because it's damn sad that a Post like mine was needed to get a response on the situation.

Greetings,

Justus.

[Etermes]

Crytivo can't disclose what happened with Dave or Jack, or Karen, the reasons behind lacking communication, Twitter and Facebook, both abandoned, that's bad press.

Also you can't replace a good experienced programmer, knowing the code with a new one expecting a smooth transition, they are not Lego pieces. And of course Dave was more than QA lead, he was the soul and essential piece of community, interacting all the time, but management forced him to leave, hurting him in the process.

I can't wish you good luck, Alex and Sasha, running a business can't justify certain actions.