I've never met her but I have mutual friends with Rebecca and they speak highly of her character so I'm just going to say that I would have handled the situation differently myself and leave it at.

With that said, the Epic deal is almost too good to be true and kind of a no brainer for an indie dev. I understand the problem from a consumer side but releasing a game these days is a gigantic risk and having an entire year of projected profits put straight into your pocket before launch is massive. A lot of these large scale indie games just wouldn't exist without some sort of help. For example, I went to a talk by the Armello devs last year and they explained how 40% of their dev time was spent on actual development while 60% was spent on acquiring funding. Dead Static Drive is another recent example. The game started as a one man project but through grants and funding he was able to expand the team and scope thus making a bigger/better game. One thing I will never live down is when I was displaying my game at PAX and the head of games funding in my state introduced himself by saying "hey why didn't you guys go for a grant, you would have got it for sure." If we did get that grant then I could have increased our budget for art and especially audio. My audio budget was $3k and despite what was there being well received, we just didn't have enough and were criticised for the same tracks being used so often. Then there's things like marketing, localisation and paying ratings boards(PEGI, USK, ARB) in the different regions etc. There are so many costs outside of actual development costs that it all adds up and when over 100 games are being released daily across all platforms, you're basically playing the lottery unless you have some insane buzz. Being an indie developer can be extremely stressful and scary. I will never forget experiencing The End is Nigh for the first time because of it's theme.

Also about the "baby gamers" stuff: I wouldn't generalise as much as other devs do but it is absolutely a thing. At work we have a channel on slack dedicated to emails we get from angry people and it gets updated daily. Other developers do the same. A good friend of my works at Facepunch and you can probably imagine the emails they get over the character stuff in Rust, some people are insane. Then there's the youtubers that double down on the whole devs vs gamers mentality. Mouth breathers like TheQuartering, SidAlpha and Jim Sterling do way more harm than good for both devs and gamers. I'm not saying devs shouldn't be called out when they do shady **** but it's almost like people actually get a high out of drama and creating a divide between devs and players. People also need to realise the difference between a developer and a publisher and who of those is in charge of business decisions, marketing and release etc.

A grant from who? How much money do you think it would've been?

The grant for our game would have been from the government - https://www.film.vic.gov.au/funding/games-funding/

It could have been anywhere from 10K-150K depending on what we were going for.

There's a bunch of other ways to get funding and grants though. The Armello story is kind of crazy, they got money from all over the place.

I had no idea that the government gave funding for games. I'll have to look up Armello.

Thanks

Not many governments do, I'm very lucky that my state has a program like that.

Absolutely and I don't think anyone is arguing that - the amount of whining and entitlement some "gamers" do is nothing short of amazing.

That's not the issue here though - their rants about entitled gamers and cry babies came before anyone had even gotten the chance to whine. It was also used to reply to people who had rational comments and questions.

I'm pretty sure everyone gets why a developer, indie dev especially, would take a deal with epic - sure there'd be some complaining about it, but the backlash here isn't because they took the deal.

Here it almost seems like the developers were so prepared for a huge massive backlash once the deal was made known and they went way overboard to preemptively defend themselves.

this and bluegrass gets it too.
I'm pretty shocked at some of the responses here especially kabong.

there is no difference at all here, all devs and marketing people are all singing the same song.

and then the tim sweeney beautiful tweet... totally gonna validate the devs/publisher attitudes.
It's like they are live memes, idk maybe it's to appeal to fortnite gamers that are 8 year old in average and think trolling culture and zero respect is cool.

I change my mind about potentially buying something on EGS one day, I don't like their attitude to fuel the fire and condoning toxicity towards consumers.
Won't spend money there ever.

What about my response is shocking? All I said in regards to Ooblets is that I would have handled their situation differently, I never supported or defended anything they did. I don't agree with the way devs are acting towards their own fans/patreons and also don't agree that you have a right to choose who gets to enjoy your game and who doesn't regardless of what you think of them. I also think that if someone gave you money for your game then they are absolutely owed your game.

The rest of my post was about the Epic deal in general and the reality of releasing a game in 2019. Ooblets is self-published, my comment about there being a difference between developer and publisher didn't apply to them. In my situation, I'm employed as a lead for a studio on a game that is signed to a publisher. Even though I have a lot to do with the making of the game, if my publisher decides to do pre-order DLC, ads or go Epic exclusive or whatever then do I deserve backlash even if I have no say about it and don't talk about it publicly? This kind of thing has happened to me, my co-workers and a bunch of friends way too much and was what I was talking about when I said people need to realise the difference between developer and publisher. 1 or 2 loud voices don't represent the feelings of an entire team.

To be 100% honest though, if I was ever offered that Epic deal I'm snap calling.

The game just isn't very good. It has great flavor, but the gameplay sucks because it is both slow and rng heavy. It came with humble monthly year+ ago.

Oh I have it lol. Yeah it was not very good, felt like an unfinished game. There were no boss fights and the storyline mechanic to keep you replaying was pretty transparent and not fun. Had no idea they got tons of funding though, I'll have to check that out.

Yeah I never even played it, video game board games just aren't my thing so didn't interest me. The developer is involved in a lot of local events so I thought I would check out their talk and the funding thing really blew me away. I'm not really cut out for that side of development. I just like making stuff.

Lol, no one blames the devs for taking the Epic deal. They blame them for being total asshats about it.

I'm not so sure tbh. I'd liken it to taking a 50% of your equity final table chop as the chip leader in a big MTT - i.e. Looks like a very large number - but actually a pretty crap deal, however better than running horrendous and busting out first. Basically predatory on the fears of a busto indie dev. And I think a very ill-considered idea for the medium sized pro-indies, but they obviously think otherwise which I suspect is a matter of ego (gamers will put up with anything to play our superb games! (Randy Pitchford)) or poor bankroll management (easier said than done, I know).

There is very little remaining of the "gigantic risk" at this point where these devs are taking the deal. Ooblets is/was a top 50 wishlisted indie game on Steam. It's been shown at multiple E3 conferences. They had a publishing deal with Double Fine until very recently. There is no way this was ever going to go unnoticed on it's launch day. Despite the "saviour of indie devs" bluster, Epic are not going after "at risk" devs - they are going after sure thing dead certs to generate maximum splash.

As a small dev, you get a year's projected income. You give up any chance of being a runaway success - a Stardew Valley, a Hollow Knight, a Slay the Spire. You tarnish your brand - time will tell how much, if at all, or if the damage is irreparable. A larger dev may tank a franchise/IP where it otherwise may have continued..

Taking the deal demonstrates a lack of confidence in your product's ability to sell. Which may well self-fulfilling-prophecy affect it's sales.

Push come to shove though, I too would at least strongly consider taking the deal in the hypothetical scenario I had a game Epic were interested in. Def wouldn't be a snap.

If you are going to take an EGS deal, the ideal response so far is that of Rebellion Games.

I didn't like their business practices/attitude at the start, said I wouldn't be buying anything from there, and nothing that has happened makes me think I made a poor choice. Hell, I even decided I'm not even breaking it for Borderlands 3 so I can't imagine anything makes me at this point.

Agreed on the Kabong shocking thing. As someone that's been taking C++ classes hoping to be able to make a game some day, it was just surprising to see over the last few days just how many devs/publishers seem to have a strong dislike for the people they make games for. Talking about how youtubers are creating a divide between players/creators and then in the same paragraph talking about how your entire place has a slack channel devoted to making fun of people that email you was the shocking part to me fwiw since you asked what was shocking about it.

I guess I just never realized how big that divide really was. Then again, it's probably because the game I play the most is Final Fantasy 14 and their dev team is the absolute best. They give constant updates about whats coming next, they hold live letters every few months where they address any issues that have been happening and give a hopeful timetable for fixing it (or discuss why it shouldn't be fixed), they have a friendly relationship with their playerbase, and they genuinely enjoy doing the thing they are doing. It probably skews my perspective being around something done so well so often.

As for the game that caused this discussion, it's not hard to see the person saying "we got epic money now, we don't need the patreon people anymore" is an asshat and deserves all the negative publicity his comments bring.

Also read up about Curt Schilling

The slack channel isn't devoted to making fun of people, I never suggested anything like that. The channel's purpose is to highlight the abuse and ask advice from other team members on how to do deal with it. We don't make fun of the people and we absolutely never respond to them negatively. I'll give you a recent example. My studio works on a game that I have nothing to do with it. I'm not even in the same city as the team working on it and haven't even played it. This is an email I got sent to my personal address:



Yeah it's kind of funny but that **** happens on the regular, isn't always funny and is kind of creepy that these people track you down to send you these things. What I was pointing out in my previous post is that even the smallest developer isn't immune to hate and it barely gets talked about because most of us don't respond to the people or bring it to light. That doesn't mean I have some sort of anti-gamer mentality because I know those people are in the minority.

I also don't hate the people I make games for, I'm the complete opposite. I'm passionate over what I make and obsess over seeing people my games. Every day I search google and twitter for any mention and always thank people shouting us out. I've sent merch and game codes all over of the world to people just because they were early supporters of us on twitter. We updated the the switch version to be 100% colourblind compatible because someone got in contact with us about it. If you think I hate consumers because I hate those youtubers then you have it completely wrong.

I also never said I supported the Ooblets devs. I never would have done what they did after signing the deal or speak to people the way they did, don't know how many more times I need to say that. I worked for 2 years without pay and no guarantee of success on my game so to see developers act a certain way when they get deals like this probably affects me more than it affects most of you here. I've also called Tim Sweeny a piece of **** plenty of times on this forum. As a consumer, I feel the same way as everyone else about the EGS and this whole situation but as a developer I see why so many are eager to do it. I said I would snap call the deal but I also said I would have handled it a lot differently. Dave brought up very particular situations and I can only talk from my own.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here, their statement about going to Epic was maybe a little too glib and jokey and twice as long as it needed to be, but how perfect does the rest of your life need to be before you can start allocating "feelings hurt" points towards that ****? It'd be silly to get mad over an actually rude statement, but their statement wasn't!

I had never heard of the game before and will immediately forget about it after this story fades, but what the ****.

Does anyone have any CKII DLC codes left? I already have the base game, kinda sold on getting in to it from this thread but not sure I want to spend $15 right out the gate even if it is a sick deal because there’s always the chance I never play it. Is the $1 tier (old gods, republic, sunset invasion, legacy of Rome , sword of Islam) sufficient or should I go for a higher tier?

islam and old gods is good, but I have a spare old gods key if you want

To my shock I'm not sure if I like Dead Cells... I spent just 2 hours in it but I'm already finding it a bit annoying. I went to check the negative reviews for this game (to see what could be the reason for my impression) and a lot of people mentioned that they changed way too many things in the latest update (which I guess was already many months ago) and made things less enjoyable than it was in early access. I'm not sure what to think about it. I'll play Celeste instead and try to come back to DC afterwards.

I'm guessing if Australian indie game makers eat everyday that they're doing way better than most.

IndieGala has Kerbal Space Program in a bundle for $6.99, if anyone is interested. Never bought from them before but pretty sure they’re legit.

Ooblets dev "Perplamps" responds: https://medium.com/@perplamps/regard...g-3af0f27d863c

I recently started Prey: Mooncrash and I have to admit, they did a hell of a great job with it. Would be dope if there were a few more personal missions, but for the 4€ I paid for it I can't say it's not 10/10 value.

I loved Prey, still mean to do a 2nd play through sometime. I bought Mooncrash in the last Steam sale but haven't played it yet.