KickStarter Phoenix Point - the new game from X-COM creator Julian Gollop

[LESS T_T]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-games-store-exclusive-deal-for-phoenix-point

In a follow-up with Eurogamer, Gollop apologised to upset backers.

"For those backers who are upset by our switch of delivery platform, we are truly sorry," he said.

"It was not our intention to scam anyone. The best we can do is offer compensation in the form of free extra content, which we will deliver throughout the launch year. This will include at least three major DLC packs. They will also receive a Steam key or GOG key, in addition to their Epic key, at the end of the exclusivity period. If they are not happy with this, we will give a full refund."

Gollop told Eurogamer he expects the Epic Games store to have improved by the time Phoenix Point comes out, and doesn't expect the current trouble will negatively impact release.

"I don't think the Epic deal will affect Phoenix Point on launch," Gollop said.

"By that time the Epic store will be more established, with more features. I know Epic are genuinely committed to building a store which is both developer friendly and consumer friendly, and they have some good ideas to make it more distinctive than alternatives."

And while Phoenix Point's community is shouting loudly on the likes of reddit, Gollop said he hasn't seen significant numbers of backers request refunds.

"We sent an email to all our 47,000 backers on Tuesday informing them about the Epic deal," he said. "The following day we had 1300 requests for refunds. The day after it increased to 1600. We don't anticipate that more than five to six per cent of our backers will actually request refunds in the long run."

 

[mastroego]

"It was not our intention to scam anyone. Sorry that we DID scam you, in the end. If only it hadn't been so convenient."

 

[Achilles]

Btw, you that requested refunds. Did you get some kind of confirmation e-mail or something? I got nothing after requesting. Just wanna make sure nothing was screwed up.

I got an e-mail a few minutes ago:

Hello,

This e-mail is a confirmation that your refund request have been successfully recorded and will be processed within the timeframe set in the FAQ section.

In case you have questions, contact refer to e-mail set in FAQ section.

Best regards,
SnapShot Games Team

I got the same email.

 

[PanteraNera]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-games-store-exclusive-deal-for-phoenix-point

"I don't think the Epic deal will affect Phoenix Point on launch," Gollop said.
"By that time the Epic store will be more established, with more features.

So we are talking about a 2020/2021 release?

 

[Konjad]

damn it then, gonna play something else instead

 

[Frusciante]

Really couldn't care less about what distribution platform they use, as long as it's not the Ubisoft thing.

 

[Luka-boy]

Eh, I'll just keep playing Open X-Com mods for the next 25 years.

 

[Berekän]

Hi there,

We wanted to let you know that we have started to process the refund you requested for Phoenix Point.

You should receive a message from Transferwise no later than Monday 18th March to collect your account information.

According to our records, here is the information we have on file for you:

Name:
Amount:
Your Currency:
Email:

If you think you have received this email in error or you no longer wish to proceed with your refund, you can ignore the email from Transferwise and the refund process will be canceled.

Thank you for supporting Phoenix Point, and we apologize for any inconvenience we have caused you.

Best regards,

The team at Snapshot Games

 

[True Ukrainian]

Epic and Gollop have set themselves up in a no lose position while the Steam fanbois rage and spew salt. Gollop has already said that he does not expect all the butt hurt to affect sales, so clearly he has no shits to give about all the butt hurt.

 

[Blaine]

This dude can't even spell butthurt correctly. What a faggot.

Even if you were trying for a gramatically correct spelling, it would be "butt-hurt" until such time as a run-on word is made official.

 

[Mustawd]

I used to work with royalty agreements.

They are very explicit. The structure is typically one of two:

1. $X per copy sold. This can be tiered depending on sales. So money per item can change if it sells more.

2. $Y fixed payment up front. Then $X per copy sold.


Fun fact: One of Interplay’s major financial issues was royalty payments that went unpaid (which of course was on purpise because their cashflow was likely shit).

If it’s in the agreement it’s not something Epuc could easily get out of.

 

[True Ukrainian]

This dude can't even spell butthurt correctly. What a faggot.

Even if you were trying for a gramatically correct spelling, it would be "butt-hurt" until such time as a run-on word is made official.

I may be a faggot but at least I am not butthurt about your game god betraying your faith. Oh sorry, "butt-hurt".

 

[Shog-goth]

Is there such a thing as "too much" pads?

 

[lightbane]

Bad news for those who thought that perhaps Epic wasn't that bad:
https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2019/...c-says-data-isnt-being-sent-to-tencent/79812/

 

[Alienman]

Hehe

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...e-war-comes-to-pc.125953/page-21#post-5989459

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It looks and plays like NuXCOM, whose popularity only increased with XCOM2. People have been waiting for XCOM3 for quite a while and haven't gotten it. At the time of release, Phoenix Point will be the only new game of its type.

I hope you ain't one of the people, a group composed mostly of PP devs, who thinks this game can do nuXCOM numbers. XCOM2 apparently sold couple hundred percent less units than the first game, that with riding the popular franchise, made by the go-to company for "hurr durr imma stragteygy gaymer" crowd, huge marketing budget etc. And supposedly being a better game than one, although I'm just going by popular opinion here.

These guys just made everything possible to piss off the people who were their actual core audience and who would talk about the game, create and maintain the community etc. And I don't think they did nearly enough to replace them with nuXCOM fans and various dudebros. Of course they don't seem to care with guaranteed money in their pockets, but from the outside it looks like a huge clusterfuck.

I guess some more thrilling developments are still possible, like them postponing the game even more and using the money to go full retard with it, but eh, whatever.

no matter what launcher it is on

Yeah, right.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Lemme tell you, the "old guard" of game devs doesn't look too pretty. How many of them have proven that they're either extremely incompetent or sell-outs or both?

A lot. Which only confirms what I started suspecting long time ago, that many of these people were just PR mugs who got the glory in the eyes of the public and we will never know the true driving force behind the classic games.

Also, technically many of these projects were pretty scammy in a way that they just wanted to get the money from nostalgic fans and creating a proper game was never in the picture, so we don't actually know whether a guy like Gollop would be able to create a genuine spiritual successor if he tried. Although I wouldn't bet on it, that's for sure.

 

[Shog-goth]

TBH, despite all the scam and lies BB3 shows a lot of potential. Undeniably there is a bit of the 'old magic', unfortunately they are doing everything in their power to be hated.

 

[thesheeep]

Eh, I'll just keep playing Open X-Com mods for the next 25 years.

There are worse fates, indeed.

Bad news for those who thought that perhaps Epic wasn't that bad:
https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2019/...c-says-data-isnt-being-sent-to-tencent/79812/

What about that is bad news? They scan Steam files to get your Steam friends, if you want to import them. And they scan the <user> folder to find these files. 100% normal behavior for tasks like that.
That is in no way different than any mobile app like WhatsApp, etc. scanning your phone numbers to suggest some friends/contacts to add.
I'm fairly sure other applications allowing you to import Steam friends do it in a similar fashion.

Btw. you can easily check what data exactly an application sends to what server - there are tools for that which are pretty easy to use, for example Wireshark. It is pretty interesting, too, if you are into that kind of stuff. You wouldn't believe what some applications send around
If they would send more data than they claim they would, someone would've noticed already and rang the alarm bell.

 

[PanteraNera]

TBH, despite all the scam and lies BB3 shows a lot of potential. Undeniably there is a bit of the 'old magic', unfortunately they are doing everything in their power to be hated.

That is the really sad part about all of this.

BB3 shows a lot of potential, the mechanics (not visuals) are way closer to X-Com than XCOM, everything uses TU's, multiple shots per turn with TU's possible (for example you can shoot a handgun four times a row, if you don't move). I really do like the use of differently armored parts, that you have to flank enemies if their front is to heavily armored.
The 4x elements on the Geoscape are fun and something new (to the franchise).

Not to talk about what is to come:
- 5 tech trees (the major three human factions, the aliens, player factions) with hybrid tech
- base building like in X-Com with multiple bases
- mutating / evolving alien threat

This alone sets it so much apart from anything released between now and X-Com.
If they deliver.

Honestly there are so many things that have gone wrong and generated bad publicity / backlash from Backers, but besides visuals, supported platforms, launchers, graphics, we seem to still get the game (mechanic, setting and complexity) they had talked about around Fig.

Most of this is speculation and I do not like to speculate to much, instead I want to see what BB4 has to offer.
The best thing they could do is to release BB4 as soon as possible with new features, content and more polish.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

Just had a thought. I know I'm dealing with a bunch of youngsters on this forum but are you all so young you don't actually remember a time before Steam?

Going off of what others have said to catch people out. Yes, Half Life 2 was "exclusive" to Steam. In the same way a big mac is exclusive to McDonald's. Because those heart attack merchants made it themselves. They never promised the game would be anywhere else. Here's the thing though, the real kicker. Steam despite several issues at launch was way more convenient than the place PC gaming was at before. Automatic downloading of patches instead of going to dodgy sites like Fileplanet, Gamershell and others, User Reviews, An account with all your games in one place so you could install from multiple systems without the hassle of lugging loads of discs around and dealing with fucking secureRom and all those shitty DRM things. People were won over to Steam not through exclusives but through quality of life improvements and convenience. The only "Steam exclusive" games were Half Life 2 and it's spin offs. Valve owned games. Devs decided themselves to then put games on Steam above all else because that was where the Market was. No deals, no backroom talks, just market relevance. We could argue all day about Steam's dominance of the PC platform and we should talk about it. But this false narrative of competition when Epic is actively trying to inconvenience people on purpose to get them to use Epic's launcher is not only unethical but retarded.

 

[GrainWetski]

There are worse fates, indeed.


What about that is bad news? They scan Steam files to get your Steam friends, if you want to import them. And they scan the <user> folder to find these files. 100% normal behavior for tasks like that.
That is in no way different than any mobile app like WhatsApp, etc. scanning your phone numbers to suggest some friends/contacts to add.
I'm fairly sure other applications allowing you to import Steam friends do it in a similar fashion.

Btw. you can easily check what data exactly an application sends to what server - there are tools for that which are pretty easy to use, for example Wireshark. It is pretty interesting, too, if you are into that kind of stuff. You wouldn't believe what some applications send around
If they would send more data than they claim they would, someone would've noticed already and rang the alarm bell.

There is no reason it needs to scan those files before you use the friendlist sharing. Steam API also exists and is used by GOG etc. precisely so they don't need to do this shit..

 

[luinthoron]

XCOM2 apparently sold couple hundred percent less units than the first game[...]

Wait, are you saying it sold in the negative numbers and all of us who own it were paid by Firaxis to get it?

 

[BlackAdderBG]

XCOM2 apparently sold couple hundred percent less units than the first game[...]

Wait, are you saying it sold in the negative numbers and all of us who own it were paid by Firaxis to get it?

Percentages and how do they work, this is today's homework for the codex.

 

[PanteraNera]

Percentages and how do they work, this is today's homework for the codex.

XCOM is to blame.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

XCOM2 apparently sold couple hundred percent less units than the first game[...]

Wait, are you saying it sold in the negative numbers and all of us who own it were paid by Firaxis to get it?

That's exactly what I'm saying;[

I fucked up, but you know what I mean.