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Discord link unavailable
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Authorship is more than claiming an idea
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incredobby
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DEADLOCK INVITES
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Is this game doomed?
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🛠️ v1.1.0 Update
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Play the Orignals or the remakes
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Joeystick
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huh?
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[H] flip knife black laminate, playskins [W] offers
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It's Not Too Late to Support Paleo Pines! 🦖
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Jankies
Yeah...I'm consistently amazed by how out-of-touch many gamers are with the reality of being an indie dev. The amount of people who genuinely think indie devs are getting all profits from sales would be funny if it didn't result in people spinning controversies out of nothing.

Look it up if you don't believe me: Between storefronts like Steam and publishers both taking generally 30% each out of every game sale, for a 29.99 USD game like Paleo Pines, the devs might see ₤2 per game sale BEFORE taxes. All the "math" people have done to claim this team have "mismanaged funds" fails to account for these kinds of percentage cuts (which are applicable to Makeship crowdfunding projects as well, although I've been unable to find exact numbers) and ALWAYS assumes that gross revenue is the same as net revenue. It also fails to account for employee payroll and makes no attempt at determining whether, when split between a team of people, the figures even before standard deductions would be sufficient and fair—if even livable—for so much as a month, much less the figures AFTER standard deductions.

People also forget that this money isn't dropping into the devs' collective lap all at once—it's trickling in over the course of months and is entirely dependent on a variable that can fluctuate dramatically: sales, which means the team is limited in what they can work on at any given time, otherwise they could potentially overextend themselves financially. If you can't pay members of your dev team a fair amount of money every month, then team members inevitably won't be able to justify working full-time or even part-time on further game development and will be forced to seek other work opportunities.

Do you know what is a good way to continue game development when you have a highly-variable and limited budget? Prioritizing the release of small QoL updates, bug fixes, and small content additions depending on what team members are available or able to be retained, which Italic Pig did consistently throughout 2024. I was actually surprised they were able to develop and release Sarcosuchus and the Halloween DLCs last year, which they attributed largely to the success of their Makeship crowdfunding campaigns.

As Italic Pig stated in the post I linked to, with extra money from late pledges on Kickstarter, their team can possibly be expanded to make production easier and allow for more flexibility and creativity, but they would be able to deliver on the campaign promises without that extra money—and by extension, without those extra team members.

I refuse to give in to this unreasonable notion that indie devs launching crowdfunding campaigns at any point in development, whether through Makeship or Kickstarter, is "greedy" or "sleezy." Full stop. Indie devs consistently rely on their communities for continued support after a game is released because publishers typically impose time and budget constraints on game development that force devs to cut entire features and limit their scope prior to release, and publishers are generally uninterested in funding updates and expansions to existing titles. This is not new or shocking.

The publisher decided this game was ready for release in 2023. Italic Pig had no obligation to continue developing new content for this game after that. In actuality, they could've taken their profits from this game at any point prior to this Kickstarter and moved on to other projects and that would've been entirely kosher. You have to be naive, misinformed, or actively slandermongering to believe this dev team is "taking advantage" of their playerbase by launching plushie campaigns and a Kickstarter for a game expansion.

As long as Italic Pig delivers on the promises made during their Kickstarter campaign, there is no actual reason to be upset here. If you don't want to contribute money to their crowdfunding campaigns, you don't have to. It really is that simple and straightforward.
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