Thank you for your questions (if not the tone with which they were posed, Kosmonaut).
First of all, please be aware tha bitComposer has not given us any funding. That was not part of the deal, and in fact that was probably the reason why we were able to maintain full control (though not ever having made a deal with a publisher involving funding before, we can't really speak to how bitComposer usually does that, if at all). Bottom line: we're getting no money from bitComposer, they're just helping us with distribution and marketing.
Q: What was that "distribution issue" that you had and that delayed the game?
A: We're talking to certain major distributors that shall have to go unnamed, and the process of getting approved by them is remarkably long-winded. This was something we did not predict.
Q: Why did you --surreptitiously and without telling us-- removed the game from Steam Greenlight?
A: Because we'd been on there for months and we were going nowhere. There is no grand conspiracy, Greenlight doesn't work very well, at least not for a game like ours, and we saw no reason to stick around.
Q: Why did you say in the RpgCodex interview that the game was finished, yet in your forums you claimed (after the delay) that the game wasn't ready to be released?
A: It was buggier than we thought. Once we sent out the beta, this became apparent. The delay, though it happened for other reasons, has given us time to remedy that.
Q: Why did the backers copies were delayed by the bitComposer deal?
A: Some important distributors will refuse to distribute the game if it has already been released to members of the public elsewhere. We have to delay everything or a lot of doors will close to us.
Q: Why do you lie? R00fles!!!
A: Why do you troll?
Q: When the heck are you releasing this game? Or there is going to be another "distribution issue"?
A: Helpful quote from the update: "the delay was because we were waiting to work things out with some major distributors, and though we’re still waiting on that, we expect to be able to release the game this month."
Q: Please try to be more transparent insofar as allowed by your agreements with distributors.
A: We're all about transparency, but in order to get our game out to as many people as possible, we have to deal with existing distribution platforms and other large entities, and they prefer to keep things quiet until deals have been worked out. We've been asked not to spill the details on agreements that are still being negotiated, and we have to respect that. We are sorry about it though, and we find it highly frustrating as well, but this seems to simply be the way things work.
Q: If I were you, I wouldn't talk about nuked databases and related delays. Just shows that you had no backup, which is amateur.
A: We had backups (or rather our web host maintains backups) but we were going to replace the website anyway. And we still are. We didn't expect to leave it down for quite this long, though.
We agree that we haven't handled this very well, and we apologise. We underestimated the magnitude of the machinery that drives the distribution of games, and we are unused to working with larger companies that naturally move a bit slower than a 7-person game development studio. You live and learn, but we're sorry to have let you guys down.
I'm not seeing what is so dishonest or outrageous about it...
