As the game has been delayed twice i understand more money was needed to pay the team and that the deal with Epic will secure the future of the studio and of the game
Even with EPIC exclusivity SG could have negotiate Steam and Gog key at launch for the ppl who gave them money and trust. The reason “we were not on sale on steam (and what about gog ?)” does not stand since it is SG who approach Epic and knows perfectly what was commited during crowdfunding campaign.
I dont blame SG for exclusivity with Epic, i blame SG for exclusivity at all cost no matter what they promised on Fig.
They think 3 free DLCs they offered save the day, i think it is not a matter of a number of DLC but of staying true to your core fans, to people who share your vision and had beliefs in your work - that is the reason of the rage on Reddit
I really wondered about asking for a refund but i still have high expectations for this game and sincerly hope it will be great for the players and that it will sell well for SG so i chose to stay and i promised i will shut by mouth on that matter.
Snapshot is saying, hey wuss, take your stupid money back, we don’t need it anymore cos we now landed a big deal even though its your money that got us started! You are calling that being “responsible”… SERIOUSLY?!
My thoughts exactly taken from a guy on Reddit who he is clever than me
Us pledging a small amount of money doesn’t make the mob of backers into well informed investors. What good is our help if we tank the company with our lack on inside knowledge of Snapshot’s situation? It seems to me that this deal wouldn’t have been made if their situation wasn’t beyond an acceptable risk of collapse. By taking the deal they have a backer with deep pockets and other resources at their disposal. Consider this decision may have been made for our benefit. If the company crumbles we get nothing but the latest backer build.
After reading his post he seems to have a remarkable ability to put rational thoughts above emotional outrage. I wish him the best of luck trying to engage in reasonable discussion on the subreddit.
Except that Julian already stated that they had enough money to finish the game. So either Julian lied about their financial situation or that guy hasn’t really been following along.
Maybe honestly i dont know, i guess that if you need to negotiate with someone you dont want to look weak or in a bad position. As it was written we lack inside knowledge of SG situation
My guess (it is only a guess but it is mine so i like it ) is :
The game was supposed to be released at Q4 of 2018, they are late by 9 months and they say they need to pay 50 ppl at 2000$ a month see average salary for software engineer in bulgaria
It is sthing around 100 000$ / month for the team so you need 900 000$ just to get to the release date since you need to release DLCs, patches and updates and support your game you may expect to pay 1 200 000$ for this year and the same for the next one…
In september backers are happy they get their game !! The money they gave you 2 years ago is long gone
you have 50 ppl to pay and you depend on PX sales…
Imagine Epic (with his pockets full of fortnite money) gives you 3 millions for an exclusivity deal, what will you do as SG CEO knowing that with this money you are certain to pay your team for this year and the next ?
Also remember paying the team is not the whole part of the cost of the game (marketing cost, computers, offices, electricity....) and this money is not a profit, you have to find 2.5 millions just to reach 0 on your bank account…
Even if i didnt liked how it was done by SG if i am honest i must admit i too would have taken Epic money, it took me several days to realize this that is why i switch from anger to understand JG decision
I don’t get why so many of you think that this deal will “secure” jobs.
They won’t. In fact this deal is a big problem for the game in the long run. Do you know why?
The guy who pays the money will give you orders and you will follow them. And to be honest if I have learned one thing from the past in gaming then that big spenders almost always have NO IDEA about games and ruining one franchise after another.
Epic Games are not our publisher. They have no say over the game or the studio outside of the scope of the agreement (which is 1 year exclusivity on their store). Just in the same way that a game released on Steam doesn’t take orders from Valve.
While I agree about this in general, the current trend of Epic exclusives (PP and other games) is not meant to buy games, but to buy a user list.
They may become douche-y about distribution specifics, renege on DRM free or “you don’t even need the epic launcher installed” (and even this sounds unlikely), but there’s little chance of them trying to influence the game development itself. They simply don’t care about it.
I do not agree and I think that this deal might already have affected the way the game will be presented.
They might have a word in terms of DLC. What if they forced them to split up the game and split up the content into DLC packages?
I have the feeling this happens a lot today and it never really works out good for the story, for the stability and at last for the game itself.
All those changes have to be implemented so this may even extend the development time.
We already know most of the planned release content. Development is shown via Trello board.
We already have “stretch goals turned DLCs” and those are already quite ambitious.
They are already behind delivery date and have postponed twice. I’d say that at this stage they struggle to get all promised content ready for release, cutting ready things out isn’t a priority (I’ve worked on rushed releases, and the amount of “unimportant” stuff that gets cut out can be shocking when you see daily reports going “no time to debug this, remove it ufn”, even if said bug is just a mis-localised string)
As said before, Epic, despite all this bullshit, does not have the same involvement as a publisher, and is most likely willing to take financial losses by pumping money into small studios in order to grow their own user base. Their rep’ is already sketchy, so if it turned out that these exclusives had cut-content agreements tied to it, it could backfire.
Considering that most pre-orders are backers that benefit from “1 year of free DLCs” package, the actual value of day one (or close enough) DLCs is already slashed. May not be worth the bad press.
Epic is not your publisher yes, but Epic went interested in your game because it was in an enough interesting state at the time of the deal because of backers money. I don’t mind Snapshot games making that deal to make sure employees keep their work and improve the game beyond.
On the other side what is important to me is :
1/ you did not tell about it to backers before making the deal
2/ You don’t give a non epic key / free drm game to backers because exclusivity which is cancer of gaming industry and that’s what upsets communities
3/ Not being able to finish the game within the time frame with the money given tells me a lot about of the scope of the project being too large for the money raised.
4/Offering a refund as honorable it is is just a way to protect Snapshot games from law suits
5/ I will still wait (1 year) for Phoenix Point because i want to play it, but i’ve been betrayed and i will remember it when the time comes where a new game will arise from Snapshot Games.
About schedule release, is it mandatory that it will be the same for PC and Xbox ?
I guess the code is quite the same so if the game is not ready for PC is not ready for Xbox but i had to ask anyway
