These are from the D:U Discord.
That is all for now.
Wingman
There is a lot going on behind the scenes. This is 100 % not our doing. Essentially our contract got breached, and now we are tryin to unwind it and get the game to market. It is literally done, just needs a good open beta period to iron out confit issues and gameplay imbalance, but we can’t self publish without getting the rights to do it, and so far LO is not letting us seek another pub or publish ourselves, so we are in talks with nothing agreed to yet. Our team worked for months on little to no pay, and had changes demanded late which kept delaying the game. Our hands are tied, I even had to take a job outside games to survive. We are all committed to the project but we are not able to do things on our own without the authority to do so. Folks that say we scammed are WAY off base, we worked for nothing, this is a publisher holding it hostage trying to get the rights from us, which we have even offered but not for free. I can’t promise lots of updates this is now with the lawyers I wish it weren’t, but we honored the contract.
BTW - I have never lied, that is insulting, and I will run you out for saying it, I have worked more than 4 years with intermittent pay and more than 2 of them with 0. Two years ago our top paid employee made 24k, if this falls completely apart, it will suck, but no one scammed or stole anything. Hopefully, we can negotiate our way through this, but I can’t afford the $1500 per month for servers anymore. And I want to publish what we have.
dunkelza
It's also worth noting that companies who hold the money pulling stunts like this on the developers is unfortunately not uncommon in the industry. While this is the first one I've personally been through, I talk with a LOT of other devs. Almost everyone I've chatted with who has been in game dev for more than a few years has either lived through something like this or knows people who have. That's not to say all publishers are evil- many are good folks. It's just that anywhere there's money to be made, you will get some bad actors- and because of fear of legal reprisals those bad actors almost never get called out by name, so they can do it again and again.
Why won't LO publish a finished game?
Wingman
Christopher, it is our belief that they can’t afford the marketing or console publishing and have parked it. Also we are somewhat at odds as they would like a full arcade game “DOUBLE POINTS” and we desire a more traditional Game
To be clear they would like to chuck our entire campaign and redo it, we want to balance it and hone it in. It is hard, and we need some beta testers to get it in the channel. strike team was on it, and we had good progress then they breached and are trying to steal the IP we own
BTW the move to full arcade was asked in January ... lol
They didn't market the game, they didn't properly test it, they constantly asked for changes - they didn't understand the project or market - they were trying to get it into Walmart instead of focusing on digital - so many ways they breached.....and finally they were unable to pay. We had to hold their hands so often on small things - they commissioned a video - for marketing, it was so unassociated with the game we had to rewrite the storyline, and manage new shots just to make it tie in...took several weeks that should have been dedicated to Dev......I am getting angry just typing this....gonna stop
Honestly this is it for me in games - we will get this out, and I am done with game dev - just tired of all the bull★■◆● from publishers, the lying and lack of integrity from many in the space, and also from the criticism from folks who really don't understand how things work - just so much wrong with the industry I love - I mean people calling devs crooks - when it might simply be a failure of publishers - most devs are broke, I personally have spent my life savings on this project - and will not get that back if it doesn't come out - but of course folks say I took money and ran, even though we actually released in early access 7 months after KStarter and a portion of the game was up for 3+ years - so obviously we were not in the Bahamas drinking Mai - Tais...oh, one more thing, Little Orbit wanting to go full Arcade in January, was typical, they were getting builds for months and then decided to PIVOT based upon the lack of sales for Overload - and that the name Descent did not mean anything in the industry anymore and that they would still need to spend on Marketing. The change in direction was typical of them, and they have a history of pulling stunts late to try to stiff devs
And their lack of payment was not just relegated to us, but also console teams
There was one Sr. Producer who makes BARBIE games that was particularly bad for us, he couldn't make up his mind, and continually gave feedback direction that was counter productive - and then the CEO would come in giving directions without a fundamental understanding of the game. Maddening stuff, but we tried to do a lot of the changes knowing they would take more time assuming they were aware that things like UI changes, and API changes would take months.....and they had the runway to support those decisions - they did not.......only a couple of people there had any real dev experience, IMHO, lots of guys that say they have shipped XYZ, but have never gotten their hands dirty and understand the process.....I don't need someone with a history of Exec producing 50 metacritic games explaining what makes a game good.....and the worst part is we were 2 weeks from getting out the Beta - arguably we could do that now.....
One more thing - Interplay is currently trying to stitch together a deal - we want that to happen. Currently, WE OWN THE IP - 100% of it, we own - Little Orbit claims rights to some of the assets they have paid for to be put into the game, there is an agreement where both parties get to use those assets if the other fails - however, Little Orbit breached that agreement - so we are not sure if that allows us to publish - that is the crux of the matter - We would love to publish in Early Access finish polishing the game and then have Interplay take over as publisher - and we do the live team updates. However we don't want LO to come lawsuiting in - even though they breached the agreement - Hell we even offered to let them publish their own version, we would rename ours "Descent - Hardcore" and they could do their own Arcade version using the same assets - they declined. Essentially they are trying to run us out of biz and take over the IP - that is their strat - we are not letting that happen - we have just as much $$$ and way more time into the project - we have offered to let them buy us out - they don't have the $$$, so consider that..if they can't even buy us out, how are they going to market, publish or finish the game? EXACTLY, they aren't.....so, here we are at an impasse - and those saying they fired us on Steam are way off base, you can't FIRE the IP holder - they just stopped paying, and breached their obligations hoping we would fold and give them everything and then trust them to share....yeah....uh....I don't trust people who sign contracts or extensions they signed 2 months prior....
