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Rune II: Decapitation Edition - abandoned by Human Head Studios, still causing drama

ADL

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Oct 23, 2017
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I got it for free and it wasn't even worth the space on my SSD after the abysmal testing events I participated in. It's not too late to refund you know.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
:hailcthulhu:

https://www.rune2.com/june20update/

RUNE II Monthly Update — June 2020

Seer-hut-for-monthly-update.jpg

This last month on RUNE II, we’ve been hard at work on bringing a new narrative experience to RUNE II’s campaign. It’s one thing for us to tell you about it, but I’d rather tell you when you can play for yourself.

Coming Soon to a PTR Near You
The revised tutorial for RUNE II and Chapter 1 of our narrative update will be landing on the RUNE II Public Test Realm later this week. The PTR is available to all customers of RUNE II. You can learn more about how to download the RUNE II PTR in this post. As with previous PTR updates, we are looking for detailed feedback to ensure that we are on the right track.

Any feedback that starts with “I had / did not have fun with Chapter 1 of the narrative update because __________” or “I feel that the tutorial doesn’t do a good enough job to teach ________, and this is why I feel that way: _________” is immensely helpful to us. For example “I feel that the tutorial changes are good, because it taught me that I could craft runes at a Rune Forge. The best place to give us feedback is on our official forums in the PTR Discussion Section or on our official Discord.

We ask that you make an effort as you’re playing to distinguish between needed fixes and tweaks vs core concepts that just aren’t working correctly.

At this time, the only Age that has been updated is Chapter 1: Age of Awakening. We are hard at work on the remaining chapters and we expect them to be available on the PTR in the future.

Order Up!
As we’re expecting our latest update to hit the PTR later this week, I thought it would be cool to give y’all some patch note previews. In no particular order…
  • Added Chapter 1: Age of Awakening of the overhauled story to RUNE II.
  • Each Age will have a different boss to fight within the VP (for now they are all still Loki).
  • Removed Agefall quest in Chapter 1: Age of Awakening.
  • All buildings have been overhauled and can now be destroyed!
  • Added new Heimdall village with additional villagers.
  • All “toast” and “feedback” events now use the same UI widget popup system as item pickups
  • Dying in the Loki encounter will now send you back to the previous age.
  • Fast travelling to another Bifrost Gate now costs 1 Teleport Rune.
  • Added Bifrost Gate Attunement.
Tune your Bifrost Gate To Drop C
Let’s talk about that last one a bit more in depth. What the heck is “Bifrost Gate Attunement”?

We have removed the ability for players to choose which Bifrost Gate they spawned at upon dying from the death map in favor of an attunement system.
  • If you are not attuned to a Bifrost Gate, you will spawn at the Chapter specific player start.
  • Interacting with a gate that you’re not attuned to will “attune” you.
  • “Attuned” gates show up highlighted in yellow on the map and become your active respawn point.
  • When dying or relogging, you automatically respawn at attuned gate
  • Fast travelling to a gate will not automatically attune you, you can choose to do so upon arrival.
  • When losing a fight in the VP, you are specifically attuned and respawned at Heimdall’s Tower Bifrost Gate.
  • When winning a fight in VP and causing the Age of change successfully, your attuned gate is reset and you spawn at the next Chapter-Specific player starts
We think this new system is a lot more fun while rewarding good play and exploration. Give it a try and tell us what you think!

The Keys To The Universe
You might have seen some articles floating around or heard some rumblings on the internet. Our development team has a new name, Studio 369. We’re the same development team that you’ve come to know and appreciate that has been handling Rune II since January. We formed Studio 369 to put a face to the team, support the game, and keep delivering.

You can read more about Studio 369 here:
20/20 Vision
Although we’re looking to the future, it’s important for us to reflect back on the past. To tell you about the original vision for RUNE II (known as RUNE: Ragnarok in 2017), I’d like to introduce you to a man of many titles and important words. He is the President of Studio 369 as well as one of the Managing Partners for ESDF and Ragnarok Game LLC, Matt Candler. This is his original and unedited statement about how RUNE II came to be:

here’s how Rune: Ragnarok got started. HH’s agent, Rob Edgar was aware that ESDF was looking to produce and finance games. Rob and HH approached me and said they wanted to work with me again, we’d worked on another project and we felt the partnership would be strong. We discussed what kind of game to make, it was jointly decided to make an open world RPG and be the ‘spiritual successor’ to Rune 1 – but at this time there wasn’t consideration into a ‘Rune 1 Remaster’. HH had the agency to determine the game design, scope and feature set – ESDF’s job (my job) was to evaluate that design and perform a market evaluation and financial model – basically to justify the business. An Open World Action RPG built in Unreal by an experienced and proven Developer should be a pretty good business with minimized risk – that was our thought process at the time. IIRC we didn’t even have a discord channel yet, and the comms with the Rune 1 fans were pretty minimal. We understand the importance of the OG Rune has and we’re working within our means and rights to find a solution. We appreciate all the comments and feedback, we are committed to delivering a good gameplay that is fun and satisfying. thank you for your help and support.

We’re very close to the first public release of Chapter 1 and I’m very excited about it. We finally get to show you what we’ve been working on. It’s been incredible to watch this new update come together from initial conception to final public implementation. On behalf of all of us, we hope you enjoy Chapter 1: Age of Awakening. We’ll be listening louder than ever before. Talk to you soon.



Mitch, out!
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Oh I missed this: https://www.pcgamer.com/we-got-stab...ived-one-of-the-worst-game-launches-in-years/

'We got stabbed in the back': How Rune 2 survived one of the worst game launches in years
The day after Rune 2 launched, developer Human Head Studios closed its doors. But that was just the beginning.

Some game launches go smoothly, and some don't. Very few go as spectacularly wrong as last year's rollout of Rune 2. More than two years after it was announced, the game launched on the Epic Games Store on November 12, 2019—and on November 13, developer Human Head Studios closed its doors, leaving the game orphaned on day one. As if that weren't bizarre enough, Human Head resurfaced the very same day as Bethesda Softworks-owned Roundhouse Studios.

"Rune 2 will be the final game for Human Head Studios," community manager Katherine Stull wrote on the Human Head blog at the time. "After 22 great years of making games as an independent studio, economic realities have forced us to make the decision to wind down the company and close its doors. But while we are closing the book on Human Head, we are not closing the book on the amazing team we have assembled."

Stull explained that Human Head contacted Bethesda and negotiated the opening of Roundhouse Studios, which picked up its entire former staff. Human Head and Bethesda had an existing relationship, though not an entirely positive one. Human Head was the studio that fought with Bethesda over the original version of Prey 2, which the publisher ultimately cancelled before rebooting the series with Arkane Studios instead.

Before Rune 2 released, things weren't exactly looking peachy for Human Head. In 2019, its game Survived By was cancelled while in Early Access, and in 2018 it released The Quiet Man with Square Enix, a game we called "spectacularly bad."

I reached out to the new Roundhouse Studios and its co-founders Ben Gokey and Chris Rhinehart for more information on the sudden dissolution of Human Head and its dispute with Ragnarok Game LLC, the company that published Rune 2, but received no response. Efforts to contact Human Head's legal representatives, as recommended by Bethesda, also went nowhere. Whatever the reasons for the surprise shutdown, though, the bottom line for publisher Ragnarok is that it was, in every possible way, a disaster.

"If you want to tank a game ... this is probably the playbook on how to do it," Ragnarok general counsel Sam Goldberg told me in a recent interview. "Show up for no marketing, don't support streamers, make an announcement the day after the game launched that you're no longer going to work on it and you've joined some competitive company—I mean, what more could they do?"

Human Head told Ragnarok that it was shutting down on November 7, less than a week before Rune 2 was set to go live. It refused to say why it was closing so suddenly, Rune 2 executive producer Matt Candler said, and did not allow the publisher to attempt to hire any of its employees as contractors. The developer agreed to support the game post-launch while Ragnarok worked out a longer-term plan, but Candler said Human Head ghosted them on that, too.

"We did a ton of great work, set up a lot of interviews and a lot of streams, spent a lot of money, and they never showed up," Candler said. "We launched the game ourselves, we had a great day on November 12. We got initially, really strong reviews about the game, saying that this is kind of a cool indie game. And then Wednesday morning, the 13th, the first thing I see is people saying, look, Bethesda makes an announcement that they've founded a new studio in Madison, and all the employees of Human Head are now employees of Roundhouse Studios, a Bethesda studio."

Making the timing even more surprising, Human Head left behind money by bailing out early: Candler claimed the studio would have earned $67,000 on the final milestone, due after release, and another $110,000 for supporting the game post-launch.

"They could've kept their mouth shut and collected the money, and we would've been like, yup, here you go. And we would've gotten through a successful launch together," Candler said. "We could've transitioned the game if they weren't able to participate anymore, we could've transitioned naturally—here's the source code, we'll help you find somebody. But they didn't do that. They actually did everything they could to prevent us from supporting the product."

Candler immediately began reaching out to all the top Unreal developers he knew, attempting to put together a team to keep the game going. Several expressed interest, but the recovery effort was hampered by yet another bizarre twist: Most of the developers Candler spoke to wanted to look at the source code and assets to evaluate the scope of the job, but according to Goldberg, Human Head wouldn't hand it over at first.

“They refused to give us the source code that was our property, to be able to update and fix the game for the community,” Goldberg said. “So not only do they abandon us—full stop, full abandonment, total stab in the back—I mean, again, who does that? But then we don't even have our property, the source code, to be able to update the game.”
Candler’s first hires were Symmetric Games co-founders Dan Nikolaides and Vic Lopez—"They're fucking Unreal wizards, some of the best in the business," Candler said—who started the process of reworking the game with older builds and assets. Once the wheels were turning, they brought in more people—an animator, a programmer, an art director, a sound guy—and committed to an extensive overhaul of Rune 2.

"It took me all of December. I called all my friends and all my favors in, and said, I need your help, guys. We're in bad shape. We still have a great opportunity, because we own everything," Candler said. He also credited Epic for being “a fantastic partner” throughout the process. “And Epic said thank you to us—thank you for not abandoning this game, not walking away."

It was a major undertaking—Goldberg claimed that Human Head's "comprehensive failure" to meet objectives left the game in far worse shape than the publisher had realized. But once work on fixing the underlying systems of Rune 2 began in earnest—and after Human Head turned over the source code at the end of 2019—the new team decided to expand the scope of the game beyond what was originally envisioned.

New features in the works include a quest system, NPCs, deeper character stats, a horde mode, and multiplayer support for up to 20 people. The work went well enough that the four principals involved—Candler, Goldberg, Nikolaides, and Lopez—decided to lock down their partnership as Studio 369.

"We are already in discussions about future projects, planning to start. Right now our main focus is the Rune 2 Steam launch and supporting the game on the Epic Game Store," Candler said. "But we do have some game pitches out, we are talking with other publishers, we are talking with other finance options—that's what we're experienced at doing, raising capital—we really like working together and our plan is to grow the team and do some other high-end Unreal projects."

It sounds like a net positive, and Candler acknowledged that some good things have come out of it. But he also pointed out that the good is relative to the calamitous days in November and December, when Rune 2 was on the verge of collapse. And apart from that, he and Goldberg clearly still feel betrayed by Human Head.

"When you're emailing people and you're talking to them every day, you're fighting every day to make the game as good as it can be for launch, and they're telling you that they're gonna be there, and you're putting your own personal money into it, which is what Sam and I did to extend the game past its deadline, and it just comes out of nowhere... You guys couldn't just be honest with us?" said Candler. "I'm sure you were having difficulties too, but you couldn't just be honest?"

"We got stabbed in the back," he continued. "You're not going to easily get over that. It's not just—yes, we're builders, we want to keep building games, we want to do right by the community for Rune 2, we're going to build a great game. We're going to continue to improve it. But I'm sorry, of course there's bitterness, and of course we're going to be upset, and there's going to be—that's going to last. You don't do this to people."

For now, Studio 369 is looking ahead to Rune 2's launch on Steam later this year. It will feature "all the Steamworks stuff," like achievements, badges, and maybe custom gear, but the big hook will be the addition of a hefty new PvP-focused mode—but not a battle royale—currently in development that the team hopes to be able to show off soon. It also recently rolled out a major “narrative update” on the Rune 2 PTR that features a complete rebuild of the game’s first chapter, Age of Awakening.

"We're making lemonade here. We're happy with 369, the team and the progress, and the response from the community. But we're not happy with what happened, and it is not okay, and I think that is clear with respect to the legal action that we've been compelled to take," Candler said, referring to Ragnarok's ongoing lawsuit against Human Head. The company is seeking restitution of financing for the game's development and at least $100 million in compensation.

"What's really been cool is how many people want to talk to us and work with us, because it shows we stood up. They've said, 'This is the caliber of people we want to work with.' I'm getting more business opportunities than I ever did this time last year, because people are saying, God, you guys stuck around."

Human Head Studios and its former management have thus far opted not to defend themselves outside of court. That leaves the story one-sided for now, although some aspects, including that Human Head closed its doors when Rune 2 launched and reformed the next day as Bethesda-owned Roundhouse Studios, are not in dispute. We'll update this story if we receive comment from Human Head or Bethesda.
 

Sinatar

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Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
569
Making the timing even more surprising, Human Head left behind money by bailing out early: Candler claimed the studio would have earned $67,000 on the final milestone, due after release, and another $110,000 for supporting the game post-launch.

Those are pitifully low payments, enough to pay maybe 2 of their employees. No fucking wonder Human Head bailed.
 

just

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 6, 2019
Messages
1,296
too bad nobody said anything to me
with that money i could offer 5-10 years post launch support
 

ADL

Prophet
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I know some of these guys on a personal level and I'm deeply disappointed in how they handled this. Not handing over the source and abandoning the game immediately after it was put up for sale is a top tier dick move. I don't care what grievances they had with the publisher, they got scooped up by Zenimax, the fuck were they gonna do with the source?

Those payments are pitiful but withholding source like that only hurt customers. Especially knowing how broken it was at release.
 
Last edited:

ADL

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It will probably be 2-3 years before we know what they're doing under Zenimax now but my guess would be something involving a bounty hunter in space.
 

RepHope

Savant
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Apr 27, 2017
Messages
400
It will probably be 2-3 years before we know what they're doing under Zenimax now but my guess would be something involving a bounty hunter in space.
Yeah they’ll probably be returning to that Prey 2 game they wanted to make. What a bizarre fucking twist of events.
 

ADL

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Faint praise but this looks a million times better than what it was back when I played this which should tell you how dire the situation was previously.
 
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Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Coming to Steam on November 13th:



Drama must continue: https://www.pcgamer.com/bethesda-in...tect-the-elder-scrolls-lawsuit-update-claims/

Bethesda intentionally sabotaged Rune 2 to protect The Elder Scrolls, lawsuit update claims
Ragnarok Game has amended its lawsuit against the former Human Head Studios to include Bethesda and ZeniMax.

In December 2019, Rune 2 publisher Ragnarok Game sued original developer Human Head Studios, alleging that Human Head had attempted to destroy the game by very publicly abandoning it on launch day, and then refusing to turn over the source code and assets so another developer could take over the job. "We could've transitioned the game if they weren't able to participate anymore, we could've transitioned naturally—here's the source code, we'll help you find somebody," executive producer Matt Candler told me in a June 2020 interview. "But they didn't do that. They actually did everything they could to prevent us from supporting the product."

The lawsuit has now been amended to include ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks, which announced in November 2019—the day that Human Head went out of business—that it had hired the entire team and reassembled it as Roundhouse Studios. Human Head's initial Roundhouse announcement (available via the Internet Archive) implied that the studio had reached out to Bethesda after the decision to close had been made, but the updated complaint says Bethesda was an active participant in the effort to torpedo Rune 2, and another game called Oblivion Song, and had begun "conspiring" with Human Head in late summer 2019.

"In an act of utter bad faith and contractual breach of confidentiality requirements, Human Head secretly provided Bethesda and Zenimax with 'keys' that permitted it to play a confidential, pre-release version of Rune 2. This enabled Bethesda and Zenimax to see for themselves the threat that Rune 2 posed to their hit franchise, Skyrim/Elder Scrolls. Plaintiffs were never informed of this betrayal," the lawsuit states.

"Two weeks prior to launch of Rune 2, Zenimax secretly formed a new subsidiary, Roundhouse Studios LLC ('Roundhouse'), and used that company to purchase all of Human Head’s equipment and take over its leases. That equipment contained Plaintiffs’ trade secrets, the source code and materials for Rune 2 and Oblivion Song. In that same time frame, in order to complete a de facto merger, Zenimax arranged to have all employees dismissed from Human Head and hired by ZeniMax."

ZeniMax took control of Human Head's employees and assets on November 4, after which it ordered them to halt development of Rune 2 and Oblivion Song, according to the complaint. It further alleges that ZeniMax took project lead Christopher Rhinehart, "Rune 2's creative heart and soul," out of action on launch day by sending him on a two-day business trip to Texas, and that Bethesda and ZeniMax were the actual authors of the press release announcing the closure of Human Head the day after Rune 2 came out.

The lawsuit against Bethesda and ZeniMax argues that the companies were eager to sink Rune 2 because of the threat it posed to The Elder Scrolls series. "One early review of Rune 2 described it as 'Skyrim on steroids'," the suit says. "The hit videogame Skyrim is part of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls franchise and was developed and published by Bethesda and its affiliates. This review signalled to Bethesda and ZeniMax that one of their biggest cash cows was under threat."

Interestingly, the lawsuit also indicates that Human Head was in buyout talks with other companies prior to its acquisition by ZeniMax, who wanted Ragnarok Game involved in the process and would have allowed it to continue working on Rune 2: "Zenimax was the only prospective acquisition partner that required secrecy and would not permit further development work on Rune II or Oblivion Song."

The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages of "no less than $100 million," plus restitution for development costs, punitive damages, attorneys fees, and other penalties. A representative for Bethesda declined to comment on the matter.

Despite all the trouble, work on Rune 2 has continued under the control of a new developer, Studio 369, which Ragnarok Game put together earlier this year. The coyly-named Rune 2: Decapitation Edition, with an updated combat system, new abilities, dungeons, progression, and NPCs, is set to launch on Steam on November 13.
 

samuraigaiden

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2018
Messages
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RPG Wokedex
Human Head Studios first accused Bethesda of cancelling PREY 2 as a retaliation for a failed attempt at a hostile take over. Now this. Honestly, I think these guys are full of shit.

How many well received games have they made? One?
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
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Bulgaria
Human Head Studios first accused Bethesda of cancelling PREY 2 as a retaliation for a failed attempt at a hostile take over. Now this. Honestly, I think these guys are full of shit.

How many well received games have they made? One?
The joke is that Bethesda ended up hostile taken over by microsoft.
 

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