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3
New update damage F4SE ?
5
Ошибки
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DolZ
62
1
Remember to pay extra so the devs let you play the game early!
26
1
BE HONEST, IS IT STILL SCARY?
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Myth Alric
1
Quando lança algo relevante?
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lotado
0
Was there a reason Behavior didn't bring new killers to 2v8?
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Number5
90,974
87
How high can we count until silksong comes out?
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A Post-Mortem
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RedSpades9
I did some research a couple years back to figure out what on earth happened with this thing, but didn't initially post it because I was worried someone else might try to track some of the original team down and harass them or something, but after reflecting on it recently I realized if anyone wanted to do that, they could have already, and the information I have might provide people a bit of closure. Figured now would be as good a time as any to give a sort of post-mortem to this mess. Based on what I could find, with a BIT of speculation to fill in certain gaps, and some intentional vagueness to make it harder to track down anyone:

A person gets caught up in the early 2010 indie game dev scene and culture. This person eventually hires some people using money from a game jam game they turned into a mobile game. This person does not have real, solid experience doing game design, running a large team, programming, making art, running a business, etc., but they have a lot of cool ideas! (You likely know the type and see where things are going.) They have this team put together some early development stuff for a farming sim game that they'll pitch on kickstarter. (Also, if I'm right, they were YOUNG when they founded this company. Like, late 20's at most.)

In fairness, at the time this was a pretty unfilled niche, it was not like today where every other month there's a new one. At the time few were coming out and most had not done a lot to innovate the genre or shake up the plot. So this person thinks "Hey, we can do all that!" I'll hand it to them, they identified the market well. Unfortunately, all the stuff they didn't understand will now begin a slow crumble as the person makes bad business decision after bad design decision after bad communication decision, etc etc. (If you want something easy and tangible to understand as an example, their official game studio website was a hodgepodge of stock Wordpress... and their current professional website is much worse.) The cracks were there from the beginning, but most of us were too new to crowdfunding (which itself was pretty fresh and novel at the time) to see them: the earliest gameplay footage for the game was a pretty bad, bare-bones phone game, as an example.

Eventually the kickstarter money is gone, and the person realizes "Oh no, I can't pay anyone and we can't finish the game!" So, they put it into Steam Early Access, to try and get some more money in. Then, when that doesn't work enough, they decide to make the game episodic so that they can release "officially", and even admit to everyone in their blog posts that they are running low on funds, but claim that the super long dev time was because they had to tweak/program a whole engine for their stuff, and that making the actual game now with that engine was going super fast, etc etc. They say they think it will be between 40-70 days between each episode if episode 1 sells well enough for them to upgrade their hardware, low key sliding blame to the hardware for slowing their workflow. They also shifted blame to perfectionism and their players giving them feedback but presented it as a good thing? It was pretty surreal honestly. They also defend themselves in a comment saying they aren't doing a cash grab, they have "significant outstanding debts" and that completing the game is the only way they have to pay off those debts.

You'll all remember, the game was nowhere near ready for release, let alone approaching "perfection" they claimed to have taken so long aiming for. It was a buggy mess of an experience and a sad state for a game that had been in development for its amount of time. Make no mistake, it was a Hail Mary pass. The founder wanted to secure more funding and get data to show potential investors. They may have even gotten some decent funds from this, because they managed to plow through into 2016. Unfortunately/fortunately for them, Stardew Valley released in Feb 2016. It was unfortunate because it highlighted just how inept development had been that they were, as a whole "studio", with supposed professionals, over the course of around 2-3 years, unable to match what a complete newcomer to game making did by themselves in 4.5 years. It was fortunate because it likely helped maintain their funds via sales from people looking for more games like Stardew valley. So they push through a good part of the year before it happens: the studio shuts down, whatever debts the person has have likely caught up with them.

I looked into it and if I've got my stuff straight, the main person responsible for all of this is now into crypto, nfts, and AI image generation. Just found that amusing given that the early part of their career was essentially a rug-pull (albeit likely unintentional... keep reading for more on that later).

For anyone who is wondering "Well if we know who the person is and where they are, is there any way to hold them accountable?" No, for several reasons.
1. They have likely met the minimum legal standard for delivery of product, even as much of a mess as the game is.
2. Even if they hadn't, if the studio's debts caused them to declare a bankruptcy on the business, they are generally not liable for undelivered product. Someone would have to prove a crime like embezzlement or INTENT to defraud to get around this.
3. Even if both of those weren't an issue... they are not located in the U.S. Without getting TOO specific, I don't even begin to pretend to know what would be involved in filing a lawsuit against them given their location, let alone the statute of limitations that might be at play for how long ago this was now.
4. This is my own opinion but... it's been like a decade. It's time to let go. A lot of us lost some money and some of us suffered from their bad communication (MVP Rika for doing their best to be a community manager through all that), but at the end of the day no one (to my knowledge) was seriously injured or died or anything as a result of this kickstarter. I'm not saying its wrong to feel wronged here. I'm saying that it's better for anyone still hanging on's own well being to forget about it.


For what it's worth, I think the person largely responsible for this mess was mostly just inexperienced and MASSIVELY outside their depth. I don't think the kickstarter was an intentional rug-pull. They seem like the type of person who gets easily caught up in hype around new things. Before it was indie game dev, then it was like some kind of organic vegan company or something, now it's crypto and AI and such.
For reference, I ran the known kickstarter funds through an inflation calculator and converted to dollars. In today's money they made just over 50,000 dollars. Even with the main dev studio being in a country with insanely wayyyyy less pay than the U.S., that is not remotely feasible for a team of developers to bring a game to market. I did some napkin math based on pay in that country for programmers and even if they only used the original team they started with AND didn't pay their artists at all AND never had to pay to keep the website up or to fulfill physical kickstarter rewards AND paid near entry level salaries for all their "senior" devs, the budget would only go for like 3 years max, Now, they certainly raised more through alternate channels and then later sales, but it gives you an idea of just how little they had to work with from the start, and how the initial asking goal was BEYOND optimistic. Since we did have regular updates for around 2-2.5 years showing work was being done, I genuinely believed they burned through everything, even the money from game sales. And when they ultimately couldn't find an angel investor to save them, they got scared and just ran from the project rather than face the crowd of angry backers.
Now, that doesn't excuse them for what they did, and additionally I'll note that since going down the crypto rabbit hole, I wouldn't super trust them with any monetary investment. But at the time at least, I think they were just a fairly young person who didn't know how to run a business trying something they thought was really cool without understanding the practicalities of it. I also think they feature creeped themselves pretty hard, not knowing what ideas to scrap and what to focus on. (This is especially evident given that the game was funded at the tail end of 2013 and they originally thought they'd deliver everything, full game AND physical products, by October 2014. This is the mind of someone who worked on a phone game and has no idea how long developing a real game takes.)


Now, for the final questions someone who stumbles upon this might ask: Who on earth are you and why do you know all this?
I am one of the game's original backers, and someone who participated in the community on and off in things like their website's forums. I was attending college at the time so I was not nearly as active as some of the people you'll find in the discussions here.
As for why I know all of this... I've researched on and off about this whole mess since the tail end of 2018. My original intent as a fairly fresh college graduate who was pretty naive (and kind of stupid) was to try and find the person responsible and potentially pursue legal action, or maybe just get them to open source what work was already done. I pretty quickly realized that wasn't something that would pad out and stopped research. Then, I was thinking about starting a youtube channel and thought the first video could be about the history of the studio that made the game, and that I could try to interview the original team. Thus, more research. Then, I eventually gave up on that and stopped researching again. Finally, a couple of years ago I got a reply on this forum and it reminded me of how much I knew, and I figured I could write up a post-mortem for everyone. 90-95% of this information was gathered by the end of these three research stints. Like I said, I was concerned about the team's safety and the potential for them to get doxxed if I posted it though, so I sat on it. Randomly came across the draft today, and I realized "Well, if someone wanted to do any of that they already would have, the vast majority of the information I gathered is trivially easy to find with some google searches, and a lot of the personally identifiable info they gave out themselves, very publicly, already." So, I did one final check up to try and polish what I had and obfuscate SOME information cause I was still a bit paranoid and don't want to make it EASY for someone to be bad, and the above is the result. This post-mortem is to kind of put a lid on this for me. I don't think about the project often but when I do I often feel... unfinished. Kind of like the game itself, lol. I think posting this will provide the closure I want.

As long as they aren't too specific about the founder, I am happy to answer any questions anyone might have. (Assuming I see them, this forum is fairly empty and only gets a random post every year or two at this point.)
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Why did the game flopped? (It did, this thread is not about arguing whether it did or not, because it did)
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AimNot
Originalmente postado por SuperCarlSaganCosmosSNES:
Where to begin...
I will start from the conclusion and work my way down.
This was not a game meant for the playerbase of neither classic doom nor nudoom.
This was a game meant to push the Nvidia series 5000, the Gamepass and Bethesda.
The requirements are insane comparable of that of UE5 slop and just NOW the enemy count was increased but it still pathetic.
Your pristine $2000 GPU bells and whistles are wasted on MOAR raytracing because that is exactly what I want in a game, be blinded every other second by particle effects, awesome.
DLSS or whatever is called and all the crap the new series do only increase input lag, the fake framerate boost only makes the game feel worse.
Quite frankly the RTX5000 series is a sham but thanks for making RTX4000 series owners feel poor with your half baked mostly unsupported GPU Nvidia, totally worth not having support for games that use Physx like Arkham City. STUPID.

The Gamepass spells DEATH for any and all studios, that idea was always stupid and it will never be profitable. Another game sacrificed to the diabolic altar of games as a service.
Funny how the game was meant to showcase Nvidia power and yet most people played it on consoles where they get to experience raw mediocrity.

Bethesda and Microsoft absolutely meddled with the game, the writing was done by a Bethesda import named Avacyn Shurmon.
"Hey that is not a real name? and why isn't this person credited anywhere else?"
Because Avacyn is a fake fictional name from Magic The gathering and the person in question changed T H E I R name to that of a fictional female character.
If you know, you know.

It is sad when I have to leave the gameplay for last but...
The enemy count is bad, the placement is worse, worse than Doom 3 monster closets.
Enemies just spawn whenever since there is no level design.
There is no level design, look Eternal was not brilliant in that department but I can name a few good levels, there wasn't even an attempt here.
Any modern Boomer Shooter and Salughtermap pack blow this game out of the water.
Heretic + Hexen just kicks its ass.
It is just mere regression.

The titan is boring, the drake pet is worse and... oh noes they killed the cute wittle wragon! On no!
I don't f* care and neither does Doomguy, you absolute HACKS.

A doom game that does not feel like doom and you played a 20 hour game and don't lie you barely remember any of it.

Notice I have not bring up the soundtrack, because it is absent.
Finishing Move has never worked in a good game and this is not the exception.
I will mark them as a red flag.
you are completely spot on especially when you said the game doesnt cater to fans of classic doom or doom 2016/eternal. really they should have tried to make another quake game instead of trying to outdo what they did in eternal. even the last dlc of eternal was kind of overstaying its welcome imo
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🔋CHARGE YOUR INV🔋|☢️KNIFES🔹GLOVES☢️
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wizard12
A apresentar 21-30 de 294,962,034 entradas