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Death threats on the Internet are a thoroughly condemned thing. Simply: Don’t do them, they lead to no good and they’re generally seen as a terrible way to act.
So when Mike Maulbeck of Code Avarice saw that his company’s game of Paranautical Activity was mislabelled on Steam as Early Access you’d think he would be angry. So angry that he actually tweeted out a stream of ranting that ended with a death threat being made against Gabe Newell himself. Steam’s response? They’ve basically ‘unreleased’ Paranautical Activity from Steam.
There had previously been some tension between Steam and the developers over a publishing deal with Adult Swim that Steam was afraid might cause a loophole in the Greenlight system some time last year. While they got past it, it seems that the bad blood hadn’t quite been forgotten and now it’s cost Code Avarice dearly.
As a response Maulbeck has since stepped down from the company, leaving a final blog post message to announce this and reassure the world that he “won’t receive any money from the sale of Paranautical Activity or any future games CA develops, I won’t be consulted on business decisions, and I won’t have any hand in development” in an attempt to make sure that the entire company won’t suffer from his actions.
” I feel is it my responsibility to step down from Code Avarice completely so that Steam has no reason to harbor any more ill will towards the company, and maybe even if we can’t see Paranautical Activity restored, at least future Code Avarice games may be allowed onto the platform.”
Seems like a wise move on his part, and it’s a shame that this happened. While not a great game, Paranautical did have some promise as a decent game. In the end this probably stands as a wonderful example of why being aware of what you say on the Internet is a very good habit to get yourself into.
Code Avarice Blog – “Mike is leaving Code Avarice”: [x]
Planetary Annihilation, the successor of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, was a massive draw on Kickstarter, as you can see above…
But THEN, they released it on STEAM, for… wait for it… £40 ($60) on Early Access, After making $2,229,344 on Kickstarter. Hell, it was £20 for Kickstarter backers, so they actually paid for the game TWICE!
All this and two years down the line, PA is STILL not complete, its only just gotten its offline mode and the game is atrocious
“Today, we busted out a new Kickstarter for a new strategy game called Human Resources. Built on the same engine that you helped us create for Planetary Annihilation, Human Resources expands on the scale and destruction you’ve come to love in exciting and different ways. We realize that some of you might take this news as concerning, so we wanted to come out and say this: work on Planetary Annihilation will not stop if Human Resources funds; both games will have a team dedicated to these separate projects”
So, Human Resources was a second team?
Ok, lets quickly look at the now cancelled Kickstarter for it
Now, I admit, the game looks cool (actually, its looks like the Planetary Annihilation we wanted and mainly thats because it uses the game engine made for it)
But there are two reasons Human Resources failed. GREED and GREED
The loyal fans that would have backed this in a heartbeat didn’t, because of the unfinished game Planetary Annihilation.
The fans with more money than sense though, even most of them saw through the kickstarter rewards this time:
They start off fairly reasonably (ok, I backed it too)
Then it ramps up
Then it starts to get a little crazy…
$125 pledge to get a tshirt and soundtrack? Oh and team colours…
The mini figures and USB stick look fun, but that’s a LOT of money
Ok, this is getting silly now…
Umm… No!
Ok, this is getting stupid
I’ve heard a lot of Indie devs talking about the demise of Kickstarter, even on our own Indie Game Show on a Sunday. And Uber Entertainment prove why this is happening. They aren’t being realistic!
They made $2.2mil just from the KICKSTARTER for Planetary Annihilation. Thats MORE than enough to release a game of the quality PA should have been. But this is hurting the smaller developers more than anything, as backers are starting to lose faith in Kickstarter and what its actually for. Helping small companies bring us good new games and getting going. Its not just Uber Entertainment, 22Cans did the same with Godus last year and there are many others.
So while I am a little disappointed that another potentially good RTS has died, I am laying the blame squarely on the developers this time.
With the new Civilization game, Civilization: Beyond Earth due out this Friday the hype for the series is up. Pre-loading has already started on Steam so those who have already ordered the game can get into space play Civ-style from the moment it launches.
Until then, the previous game, Civilization V has been made free-to-play on Steam until Thursday, just in case you don’t already own it. Unfortunately it doesn’t include the expansions to the game, which add significant content to a good game and makes it great if you’ve a lot of time to kill playing it.
If that doesn’t put you off then it is worth a go while it’s free, trust me. I’m just looking forward to getting Beyond Earth and doing it all over again in space.
In the spate of recent Kickstarter cancellations we’ve a new one to join the name. Seems Uber Entertainment have decided to pull their RTS game Human Resource from the crowd-funding site due to there being the possibility of it not meeting its target in time.
Human Resources would have seen you playing huge gods and robots using humanity as resources in your battles to try and dominate the planet. Two silly factions, destructible cities made up of buildings that could be used as a weapon if you chose and hundreds of units involved in battles managed to net it $400k in pledges which sounds a lot but when you take into consideration that the goal was $1.4 million you can see why Uber considered the takedown at all.
In an update Uber’s John Comes wrote, “Every Kickstarter prediction model is showing that we will come up woefully short of our goal. Running a Kickstarter is a full time job for several people. As a small indie, we can’t continue spending time and money focusing on a project that won’t get funded. We simply don’t have the human resources.”
The game as pitched is over it seems, but Comes hopes to have the world it portrayed live on in some other way.
It’s a shame. Good RTS games are sorely lacking nowadays…
343 Industries boss Frank O’Connor has apologised for a 20GB day-one download for Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but said it was the only way.
Speaking via Neogaf to those critical of the day one patch, O’Conner said, “The game is designed to run as a single, unified product, digital is seamless obviously, but we also wanted disc users to have the same experience, without swapping discs.
“Since the bulk of it is MP or MP related, the logic is sound. There will ALSO be a TU in there, but that in itself is a tiny fraction of the content.”
The 20GB is mainly related to multiplayer portion which is obviously important to most, so the developer hopes people will understand.
“For some folks it will be straight up annoying and I both apologize unreservedly for the irritance, and hope that the package and the way it works more than makes up for it
Do I understand the inconvenience and annoyance for some users? Of course. I’m not going to blow smoke or ignore it.
I’ve been playing the whole enchilada for a week now and the ability to sample, jump from aspect to aspect, customize with skulls and playlists has been absolutely addictive and mesmerizing.
I think I would have enjoyed a box set with the same fidelity, but the way it all connects has for me at least, made it more than the sum of its parts.”
Are you looking forward to the Halo: Master Chief Collection?
