The situation on "Dead/Abandoned"

[Multi]

Figured I'd make a thread since this *constantly* comes up to try and explain a few things for those that ask this regularly.

The game is not nor will ever be dead, as this is a passion project created by a single programmer and 2 artists. When we answer this question we reference the discord, this is because inside said discord there's a channel dedicated to just posting updates of when the dev commits changes to the Beta branch and this happens nearly 3-7 times per every few days.

Point 2 is that the dev wants each update to be something substantial, which is why the smaller updates still are mainly ones that add a decent amount of new buildings and the like, however because it's still just a single programmer it takes a long while because they made the engine themselves from scratch and regularly have to remake parts of it to do the things they want the players able to do in game, as a result this causes a lot of time to be taken up as they work. A prime example is the Dungeons update, that alone took so long because the Dev had to remake entirely different parts of the engine to get Dungeons in the form that they are now, and even before the dev started working on that he asked his community in the discord how they wanted Dungeons to work, even telling the community straight up that making it so that the way they work as they do currently in-game would take a long while due to having to rewrite parts of the engine entirely, but the community wanted that kind of capability anyway and said they were fine with waiting.

Point 3 is just that, well the dev is a programmer, what that means is that they're not great at communication because that's not their purview. They DO communicate all the time in the discord, but that's much easier to do, outside of it they just kind of forget because they're constantly working really hard on the game itself with their small team. We in the discord have regularly told the dev to make constant updates and devlogs on the steam page, but they've just kind of forgot because they're just so focused on working on the game itself. This isn't a bad thing (in my eyes at least, opinions differ from person to person), as the dev is proven to be really dedicated to their project, it's just that they have trouble communicating in a more official manner.

Finally, point 4, is that you can see from the roadmap alone that this upcoming update and future ones coming are massive changes and adjustments to the game, especially since the dev doesn't just want the updates to typically be just that, normally when they do their major updates they add a lot more then just what's on the roadmap, they want the updates to have *loads* of content for players to enjoy all in one go, so as a result these updates take a longer while then they initially would because the dev wants people to have more things to play with as they work on the next huge update.

Hopefully this helps explain the situation a bit more to those that are wondering but aren't in the discord.

And like always I do highly recommend joining said discord, it's *incredibly* active by both the community and the dev and his team, and you can see just how much work they're putting into the game itself by the "build info" channel alone.

[Mokona]

Sorry going to have to call bull on some of the points. "Its just one dev there is no team" excuse is used so much yet doesnt hold water. Rimworld was build by a single guy, it took him 5 years. There are other examples of a solo guy making a whole game that doesnt take 20 years to do because "hes just one guy". Yes I know this game has only been out for 5 years so on track right? Not from the little content I see.

Two "he communicates but on discord" discord is not a place where the customers buy games. Steam has a perfectly usable forum system and he clearly has a steam account, he chooses not to use it because he knows he will be called out on this bs. You dont just "forget" to go make a steam update post when you are talking with people about a steam update post. You get off your ass and go do it, unless you dont want to.

[Mystery404H]

Originally posted by Mokona:

Sorry going to have to call bull on some of the points. "Its just one dev there is no team" excuse is used so much yet doesnt hold water. Rimworld was build by a single guy, it took him 5 years. There are other examples of a solo guy making a whole game that doesnt take 20 years to do because "hes just one guy". Yes I know this game has only been out for 5 years so on track right? Not from the little content I see.

Two "he communicates but on discord" discord is not a place where the customers buy games. Steam has a perfectly usable forum system and he clearly has a steam account, he chooses not to use it because he knows he will be called out on this bs. You dont just "forget" to go make a steam update post when you are talking with people about a steam update post. You get off your ass and go do it, unless you dont want to.

1. Did the creator of Rimworld build the engine as well? That's a substantial difference between these two programmers. I highly doubt Rimworld has its own engine. And if it does, who cares, because programming takes time, and some people are slower than others at it. Would you rather updates be relatively bug-free, or get incredibly bugged updates? Your choice.

2. Most games, and communities even, have discords or some other form of social media presence. Why? Because if you only advertise and communicate on steam, you're actually RESTRICTING yourself. It's illogical. Would I like for them to update us on steam more often? Yes. Which is why I joined the discord. Again, you either deal with it or don't.

[Stealthkibbler]

Rimworld took something like a decade of development, the dev covered this in an AMA done ages ago but it took him quite a few years (I forget the exact amount because it was so long ago) before it even went to the steam store in early access. He pretty much scraped by for years hoping the game would find success and there was many other prototypes before the first iteration of rimworld was concieved and thats with him using Unity as the Engine.

Originally posted by Mokona:

Two "he communicates but on discord" discord is not a place where the customers buy games. Steam has a perfectly usable forum system and he clearly has a steam account, he chooses not to use it because he knows he will be called out on this bs. You dont just "forget" to go make a steam update post when you are talking with people about a steam update post. You get off your ass and go do it, unless you dont want to.

Steam is a cesspit of entitlement and impatience, the idea of interacting with the community, especially discussions is probably the least palatable thing to a game dev. There is next to no moderation in almost any steam discussion because its not worth any game devs time to go through the effort of appointing people to waste time reading these threads when it should be steams responsibility in the first place.

A good example is Kenshi, they had pretty much no interaction with the steam community during their development but if you went to their official forum, reported a bug it would be patched in a fix within a day or two. Gamers are just too lazy to click a few extra buttons and connect with the official community hub of a project.