Vapourware That Which Sleeps - Vaporware Strategy RP

I cannot brofist enough.



I'm looking forward to the post-KS phase.

edit: congrats on 75k, $85k might be achievable.

 

Here is a slightly more detailed account from how I understand the events. The game was funded with a few different sources. One being a loan from some German government entity(which may have been a factor in the later negotiations as I believe they had to approve some stuff), one being bitComposer, and I believe the developers themselves put money into it as well. During development things were not going so well, as they often do in game development, and the developers felt that they needed more time/money to really do the game justice and they didn't want to release the game according to the original timeline/plan as they felt the game would not be very good and would be a blow to their reputation that had a good chance of hurting their financial success in future projects.

bitComposer was not interested in giving more funding and was fine with the game being released on the original timeline so talks between the developer and bitComposer on this front didn't reach a mutually agreeable conclusion. At this point the developers began seeking additional funding from other sources(bitComposer didn't have as much control over this project as other publisher backed games because they didn't fully fund the development as is usually the case). The developers are able to find an investor willing to give them more money to increase the amount of time they have to make the game and here is where things really fell apart.

The new investor obviously wanted a cut of the money that was gonna be made in return for him providing this money. The developers didn't want the cut this new investor was going to receive to come completely out of their share of the money so both the developers and this new investor were of the opinion that bitComposer should renegotiate it's contract with the developers and accept a reduced share of the money since they were now going to have contributed a lesser % of the total funds once this new investor contributes some cash to it. BitComposer disagreed with this. While they weren't against more money being spent on the project in order to make it better(or more likely they lacked the control to prevent the developers from doing so), they were of the opinion that when they gave the developers money under the agreement that they would receive x% of the profits/revenue then they should receive x% of the profits/revenue regardless of whatever other deals the developers make.

This created an unresolvable impasse and the game never came to be. Who was in the right? From a legal perspective it looks like bitComposer was as they had a contract with the developers and were under no obligation to renegotiate it and the developers holding the game(and bitComposer's expected returns from their investment) hostage in an attempt to force bitComposer to renegotiate it in a way that is more beneficial for the developers was a deplorable act. Now was what was being asked of bitComposer reasonable? We don't really know because we don't know what any of the dollar amounts involved were, what any of the terms of the contract were, what any of the percentages were(or even what they were percentages of), or how the new influx of cash was expected to effect future sales. Depending on how much more money the game was expected to make based off of the new money it may have been economically reasonable for bitComposer to reduce their cut if the overall amount is increased enough for them to still make as much or more money than they would have without the extra money being invested. Statements from both parties indicate that bitComposer was willing to budge on this issue a little bit but not enough to satisfy the developers, or more importantly the new investor.

There are also differing accounts of how much effort each party was willing to put into resolving the issue. bitComposer claims that the developers didn't even show up for the final scheduled negotiation to try and resolve the issue and that the developers stopped trying to reach a negotiated agreement first while the developers claim they didn't show up because bitComposer wasn't willing to offer or accept a deal that was acceptable to the developers anyway. What had happened in previous negotiations previous to that neither side has commented much on so we don't know.

Who was right morally? Probably neither as they were both acting out of self interest. Who was right legally? It looks like bitComposer was in the right as far as the legal issue went as they were trying to enforce a preexisting contract that both parties had agreed to and the developers chose to break that contract by stopping development of the game under the original terms.

edit: I left out the part where the developers tried to just go around bitComposer and develop and release the game under their own terms with the new investor. IMO, ost likely done as a bargaining tactic to try and get bitComposer to just cave and agree to their terms since it was already happening and bitComposer could either agree to go along with it or lose their investment. bitComposer, unsurprisingly, filed some sort of legal motion to get the courts to order the developers to stop developing the game until this issue could be resolved and it never was resolved.

If you ask my opinion the developers were trying to pull some stuff that was from bitComposer's perspective against bitComposers interest and pretty shady so I can't really fault bitComposer's actions in this case. Now bitComposer is still a shovelware publisher so I wouldn't recommend signing any kind of deal with them anyway but I can't really consider them the bad guys in this situation. Not that I'm saying the developers are the bad guys in this case either but more of the onus of causing this problem rests with them than with the publisher. The developers were probably in over their heads regarding all this contract and legal stuff anyway and as a result probably weren't making the best decisions for what was a overly complex way to fund a game that involved too many parties.

 

Thanks for the write-up, sounds like generally an unpleasant situation for everyone to be in.

 

Backed. Too strong of a Warlords meets Dominions meets Lovecraft/Tolkien vibe to resist. Good luck the rest of the way, please no anime art in the end.

 

Fingers crossed for the last stretchgoal. Either way congratulations on the campaign.

 

We even made a video celebrating the death of the Anime art, around Update #2/#3 I think - so no fear on that account!

Thanks, time for me to get back to development.

 

I must be the only person on the planet who didn't mind the anime art at all.

4k and 11 hours for the final stretch goal, good luck!

 

I'm a few hours early, but wanted to say congrats and well done on the kickstarter.

 

Didn't mind the anime, but I'm sure the replacements will be better.

 

In a funny way it's probably better for you to just miss this stretch goal.

 

From the AMA, it sounds as if all the added gameplay (and art?) features added by the stretch goals after gods and religion will be rolled out after early access, so that getting the game in backers hands isn't delayed due to the expanded design.

 

That's the plan, and that was even before any of the additional goals were added - we're going to be doing some analysis and number crunching to get a more accurate timeline out as soon as we can. I think the Beta and main release may get pushed into the following month due to needing to prioritize the Map art assets, but other than that I think we should be alright.

 

Phew, lucky I spotted this thread, wanted to wait until the last stretch goal until backing and almost missed out.

 

Bonus-Bonus round has been met, counting the PayPal money.

 

What better than anime art for a game where things will be crudely violated by tentacled horrors?

 

Give the people what they really want KingDinosaurGames

 

Guess I know what any Codex custom events are going to pivot around

 

I know what mine will!


Either way, grats on making all of your goals. Guess I won't have to bump my pledge to get us the Knights of the Codex faction for racial purity and irrational hatred after all.

 

KingDinosaurGames



We expect great things from you. Don't dissapoint us.

 

Congratulations KingDinosaurGames Now for your next trick make an awesome game and don't piss off 4689 people. On a side note I'm really looking forward to some of the twisted shit that codexer's can cook up with the mod tools.

 

For accuracy, the Knights should be fighting for racial purity values of a race they don't belong to