Hello reddit, My name is Jennifer. I come here today because I want to share a bit of a story about StarForge. I want to go over its past and cover to its present.
On May 29th, 2012. A new link was posted here, in the
/r/Gaming. It was a YouTube video of a new game being developed by two people. This game was called StarForge, and it became an overnight hit. Receiving a lot of followers and interested members, one such person was myself. I was extremely excited for concept of the game, it really appealed to me. I jumped over immediately and signed on to their forums, something I almost never did. I followed the game closely, and I was courteous to everyone who signed up.
On June 3rd, 2012. Typical of a forum, trolls began to surface and would post obscene things, as well as being generally rude to other users. A few users stepped up, and did their best to keep them at bay, it was a success. One of the developers logged in, and was happy that they took care of the problem. He realized it would be a good idea to have some help, so all of them were made moderators. Time passed on, the community flourished and thrived with a lot of friendships made. Months passed as we all waited for new updates to come along.
October 25th, 2012. StarForge launches an Indiegogo campaign, it is set to run until November 29th, 2012. Funding was initially impressive, but slowed down rapidly. Things began to look grim, then seemingly out of nowhere, a lot more people began to fund the project. The campaign reached its goal of $75,000 and passed it, before settling at a final total of $135,453, a rousing success over which we all rejoiced. Time ticked on, things were silent, and no one really knew what was going on.
On December 21st, 2012. We got our first big update in months since the campaign. Our first look at procedural terrain generation. Excitement grew, and everyone’s anticipations were high. Then there was silence, no one had a clue what was going on. No one from the team talked to us; they never were big on posting on the forums. Months passed…
March 20th, 2013. Steam release hit with no warning. Suddenly, StarForge was on Early Access, which shocked everybody because no one told us about it. The community started to demand better interactions with the developers, they were going to need it with all the new people flooding in. A developer was talked to by some of the moderation team, and someone was picked to represent the community as the new Community Manager. It was the first step towards improving PR with the community.
In case you hadn’t figured it out yet that person was me: Juno. If you were a visitor on the forums, you probably saw my name once or twice. I had been a very active, well known community member since the day I joined and dedicated a lot of time to helping it grow. Despite the fact that we were equals, most of the moderator team asked for my opinion before acting. I was sort of the unofficial mod team leader, in a way, though I never embraced it. The job was a surprise to me, I was pulled into a Steam group conversation and it was dropped on me. I was extremely shocked, and at first hesitant. I accepted after I was encouraged to do so. I signed a contract on May 29th, 2013, officially starting my new job.
Time passed on, months went by. I can say that, while it was stressful to deal with the people, it was to be expected. The main flaw that came with the job was my lack of communication with the development team. I did not work in the office with the rest of the developers, as I live in the United States, they resided in Canada. I had the team members on Skype, communication lines were open, though they never seemed to contact me. Throughout the rest of the year until December, I had only talked with the head of the team six times over the course of 7 months. I was constantly told I was under NDA, and not allowed to discuss any features. I pushed and pushed, trying to get them to open up to the community more. Trying to remind them that they are community funded, and that we need to embrace our community for support. My comments were shrugged off.
My contract was due to expire December 31st, 2013. I was informed several times I was being rehired, I would have a new contract. It never came, and I was cut via an email at 11:33pm on December 31st, 2013. After being led on that I was keeping the job, just 2 weeks prior. My cut was not made public, it was clear it was tried to be done discreetly. The community caught on the next day, asking why I was demoted on all sites. No developer response for multiple days. The thread grew, filling with angry forum members that lashed out over the decision. A response was finally given, stating it was because they wanted someone in-house.
Nearly a month passed before a new man was hired. I feel bad, as this man suffered the same thing as I did. He was heavily controlled, and while he did community updates, they didn’t feature much in the way of actual information. Due to his hiring at my expense, he was harassed by long time community members throughout his time there. Even still, developer interaction did not improve with the community. They were left in the dark as they have been since the Steam launch.
Suddenly, StarForge started to release updates more frequently. Even though these updates were tiny and didn’t contain too much, they were somehow causing very large jumps in version numbers. 0.5 > 0.5.5 > 0.7.5 > 0.8 and now 0.9. All these updates happened over the course of 4 months, March through June. The game was declared “Beta” with version 0.7.5. An announcement was stated on yesterday, August 12th 2014 that the game is nearing 1.0, and will be release “soon”.
Step back to the beginning of August. A forum regular by the name of danjvelker, a longtime supporter of the game, gets suspicious at what is going on. The current Community Manager was being very quiet, he went on leave of absence starting July 24th, 2014. He was meant to return at the beginning of August, but he never came back. So this forum member started to look around, and he found some pretty shocking truths.
He wrote up his findings, and posted it on both the official forums and the Steam forums. The original post was deleted, so unfortunately I cannot link you. However, the entire thing was captured via screenshots which can viewed in this album.
http://imgur.com/a/i7OG5.
Including the community manager seven of their most experienced employees, some with years of game development experience, were fired. Members with multiple years of experience working at companies like BioWare, gone. This was done in secret, and the community was not informed of this, even though it happened weeks ago. The post went viral on the official forums and Steam, garnering 100s of posts each. In light of the evidence, people could not argue with what they were seeing. It took over a full day for a developer to respond, as the moderators quit and did not care.
The results of this post? All members involved, including myself for posting in support of it, were banned from the Steam hub. Even though no rules were broken we expected this of course, CodeHatch has history of removing anything that could affect them negatively. That being said, none of us really expected what happened on the official forums. Our accounts were not banned, they were deleted. Now at first I thought we were banned, but when the realization hit me it was rough. I was rather distraught that two and half years of my life was removed from existence. Though this does not come without consequences. Being the old Community Manager, and having my account erased. They just removed virtually every news, patch log, stickied help post, forum rules, FAQ, etc… from the forums. Between myself, and a few other extremely prominent community members, nearly 20,000 posts were removed. Most of which date back to the beginning of StarForge’s existence, and contained a lot of invaluable information about the game. It was stated we were making rumors and speculation, and that it was not true. So then why ban nearly 10 people, and erase their accounts? It was only rumors, right?
Leaks say these people were cut because of a dwindling budget, stating they are running out of money. Now, we only need to really put 2 and 2 together. Rushing to version 1.0? Staff cuts for a shrinking budget? It is pretty clear they are rushing to 1.0 because they are out of money and trying to fulfill their contract to Valve to finish the game. Even if 1.0 is the “final” version it is hardly even complete. It is missing a multitude of promised features, a list of which I have. Stretch goals from Indiegogo have not been implemented at all, which were promised in the final version. The game is hardly beta, if you can even call it that.
In Closing
I understand this can be taken as speculation, but the history with CodeHatch has been rather sketchy. I know some of you are dismissing me, calling me “an angry ex-employee with a grudge”. I can understand why you would think that. Though, I want to let everyone know something about that. While I was ethically, legally and contractually obligated to CodeHatch. My true moral standing was, and always has and will be, to the community of the game. I have always cared for the community where I have worked, these people are important and deserve to be treated as such. I made a lot of amazing friendships in my time, and the community is worth every bit of the time it took to write this.
The core community wanted this truth, and I cannot blame them. So I supported them as best I could. I had no moderation power, it was stripped from me when I was cut. I only had my voice, so that is what I gave to them. I feel a powerful movement was started, and the community is ready to see something done about it.
I also want to clarify. I worked for CodeHatch, I did not break any part of my contract. My contract’s NDA stated that I am not allowed to do what I am doing now for 6 months after my contract ends. I was released on December 31st, 2013. Contract law recognizes a month as 30 days, so 6 months is 180 days. Which was June 30th, 2014. You can argue it was ethically wrong for me to do this but nothing I have done is illegal.
Games are taking advantage of Steam’s Early Access, making legitimate, honest developers suffer. Maybe some of these people want to jump in the limelight, maybe they want to scam a few dollars or maybe they just got in over their heads. The point is stuff like this is happening. People need to stop and take a moment. They need to open their mouths and let their voice be heard. People need not stand for this kind of thing anymore. How many more people are going to be given an incomplete product that will never be done?
If you read all this you are a true saint. I appreciate it and I hope your support is with us. We have a medium size group of people trying to contact press sites so we can be heard. If you want to help in any way then you are more than welcome to.
Sincere thanks,
Jennifer (Juno).
