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Former Gearbox dev: "We only did MP-portion of Aliens!". SEGA: "NOPE"

P

Pociask

Member
Effect said:
If true Gearbox better hope they have good lawyers. I don't see how Sega doesn't take them to court over this, especially if they were close to doing it before hand.
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What would SEGA sue them for? Do you have a copy of the contract handy?
 
D

DeuceGamer

Member
Wow, what a ridiculous mess this is. I was cautiously optimistic about the game, but no way do I feel comfortable picking it up until the price drops dramatically.

Gearbox should be ashamed of themselves if what we are hearing is legit.
 
S

scytheavatar

Member
Patryn said:
It really does, with the sole exception that the project that funds were funneled to were a hit in this case.
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Also that Activison were smart enough to cut their losses and expose Silicon Knights as a fraud rather than be taken for a ride. People look at Activison as being run by a Mafia Boss but they must admit that the company knows how to deal with bad studios much better than Sega did.
 
U

UnluckyKate

Member
I don't understand the praise Gearbox get. Did people forgot about them before Borderlands ?

Randy Pitchfork just go all out gunblazing that he didn't took a CoD development because it was boring but 6 years ago they were still making Samba Del Amigo ports.

Think about it, beside Borderlands, gearbox didn't made anything fantastic. Sure, DNF wasn't their fault. Alien looked like chaotic development but still. They won internet over BL2 and their marketing and post release but that's about everything I can remember them doing right on their own besides ports
 
X

Xater

Member
UnluckyKate said:
I don't understand the praise Gearbox get. Did people forgot about them before Borderlands ?

Randy Pitchfork just go all out gunblazing that he didn't took a CoD development because it was boring but 6 years ago they were still making Samba Del Amigo ports.

Think about it, beside Borderlands, gearbox didn't made anything fantastic. Sure, DNF wasn't their fault. Alien looked like chaotic development but still. They won internet over BL2 and their marketing and post release but that's about everything I can remember them doing right on their own besides ports
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Opposing Force and the first Brothers in Arms were very good.
 
B

BosSin

Member
Hmm, this does not paint a pretty picture of Gearbox so far.
Hell, it would have been better for their image if they were to just develop this piece of shit themselves. At least that way there wouldn't be the possibility of being blacklisted by other publishers and SEGA starting a lawsuit
 
F

forgeforsaken

Member
UnluckyKate said:
Think about it, beside Borderlands, gearbox didn't made anything fantastic. Sure, DNF wasn't their fault. Alien looked like chaotic development but still. They won internet over BL2 and their marketing and post release but that's about everything I can remember them doing right on their own besides ports
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Opposing Force was pretty good.
 
Evolved1

Evolved1

make sure the pudding isn't too soggy but that just ruins everything
sflufan said:
How quickly people forget Brothers-in-Arms.
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Gearbox's own fault for releasing the awful Hell's Highway...


edit: Which by the way also had a completely fabricated smoke and mirrors pre-release walkthrough. Imo Gearbox are liars.
 
U

UnluckyKate

Member
sflufan said:
How quickly people forget Brothers-in-Arms.
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I never liked Brothers in Arms. I even bought Hell Highway and after an hour of the always winning strategy (put machine gun here, take agro, sneak on the side, take out the dudes who focus your MG) I quit and called it a day. Game was pretty, but the tactical aspect wasn't compelling enough to me.

Xater said:
Opposing Force and the first Brothers in Arms were very good.
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Opposing Force was 14 years ago. i doubt much of this team is still working.
 
S

Shiggy

Member
I post it again for the new page:

First off, due to me breaking NDA, I can't provide any proof that I'm not just talking out of my ass. But I figure you'd be interested in hearing what I have to say regardless. I've been on the project for around a year and a half, so some of the following are things I've heard from more senior guys.

Pecan (the internal codename for ACM) has a pretty long history. SEGA, GBX and 20th Century FOX came to an agreement to produce an Aliens game around 6 years ago, after which SEGA almost immediately announced it, long before Pecan had even started production. The game has been in active development in the past, only to be shelved in favor of another project (Borderlands, Duke, etc), and each time it was resumed it would undergo a major content overhaul.

SEGA, naturally, wasn't super pleased about the delays, but GBX got away with it for a long time and the contract between SEGA and GBX kept getting augmented to push the projected release further and further back. The last time it was resumed, GBX outsourced a good portion of the game to outside companies. Initially, the plan was for TimeGate to take the majority of campaign, GBX would take MP, Demiurge and Nerve would handle DLC and various other focused tasks. This decision was made mostly so that most of the developers at GBX could continue working on Borderlands 2, while a small group of LDs, coders and designers dealt with Pecan.

Somehow the schedules for Pecan and Borderlands 2 managed to line up and GBX realized that there was no fucking way they could cert and ship two titles at the same time. Additionally, campaign (which was being developed by TimeGate) was extremely far behind, even as Pecan's Beta deadline got closer and closer. In April or May (can't remember which), Pecan was supposed to hit beta, but GBX instead came to an agreement with SEGA that they would push the release date back one more time, buying GBX around 9 mos extension.

About 5 of those 9 months went to shipping BL2. In that time, TimeGate managed to scrap together 85% of the campaign, but once Borderlands 2 shipped and GBX turned its attention to Pecan, it became pretty apparent that what had been made was in a pretty horrid state. Campaign didn't make much sense, the boss fights weren't implemented, PS3 was way over memory, etcetcetc. GBX was pretty unhappy with TG's work, and some of Campaign maps were just completely redesigned from scratch. There were some last minute feature requests, most notably female marines, and the general consensus among GBX devs was that there was no way this game was going to be good by ship. There just wasn't enough time.

Considering that SEGA was pretty close to taking legal action against GBX, asking for an extension wasn't an option, and so Pecan crash-landed through certification and shipping. Features that were planned were oversimplified, or shoved in (a good example of this are challenges, which are in an incredibly illogical order). Issues that didn't cause 100% blockers were generally ignored, with the exception of absolutely horrible problems. This isn't because GBX didn't care, mind you. At a certain point, they couldn't risk changing ANYTHING that might cause them to fail certification or break some other system. And so, the product you see is what you get.

Beyond gameplay, the story has been raised as an issue several times. I can't really comment without feeling bad beyond saying that the script was approved by 20th Century FOX, and that the rush to throw a playable product together came at the cost of the story. Campaign does a pretty bad job of explaining a lot of the questions raised at the start of the game, and so hopefully there will be DLC to flesh that out a bit better.

I'll answer some questions, but I have to run soon, so it may take a while for responses.
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http://www.reddit.com/r/LV426/comments/18ewf4/a_lot_of_you_are_rightfully_upset_at_the_final/

Could be true ...
 
F

Fine Ham Abounds

Member
Hasardeur said:
what's with all the Borderlands hate here all of a sudden, not cool guys :'(
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2 was better than 1 imo, but I still literally fell asleep playing for more than 15 minutes solo, and the UI was unforgivably borked every time I attempted split screen co-op. It just wasn't worth the effort.
 
G

Gummb

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about Rayman Legends Wii U.
Poor Sega got burned, it seems. It's odd to see a publisher outright contradict previous knowledge unless it wanted to do some damage control.
 
T

The Nature Roy

Member
"This isn't because GBX didn't care, mind you."

As another poster already said, no, the whole reason this game sucks (no matter how convoluted the explanation), is exactly because GBX didn't care.

Sounds like they screwed SEGA over hard and basically used their cash to develop their own title and then pinched off a turd for SEGA that fulfilled their agreement only to the point that it allowed GBX to avoid being sued.
 
C

Cosmonaut X

Member
Shiggy said:
I post it again for the new page:

http://www.reddit.com/r/LV426/comments/18ewf4/a_lot_of_you_are_rightfully_upset_at_the_final/

Could be true ...
Click to expand...

Is that an educated "could be true", Shiggy? There's a few bits in there that stand out - the internal codename "Pecan" sounds right, given that it was showing up on Steam wishlists as "Pecan" last year etc. - and it has the ring of truth about it...

EDIT:

"Pecan" also seems to be the name for some kind of custom API used in the game. Corroborating the "insider" account, or was the name picked by someone making it up to give it plausibility?
 
P

Prophet Steve

Member
Evolved1 said:
Gearbox's own fault for releasing the awful Hell's Highway...


edit: Which by the way also had a completely fabricated smoke and mirrors pre-release walkthrough. Imo Gearbox are liars.
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Oh man, I was so extremely impressed with that walkthrough, and the graphics were so amazing but then they delayed it and the game turned out to be not ver good.
 
D

dmr87

Member
the script was approved by 20th Century FOX
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WAl.gif
 
S

Shiggy

Member
Cosmonaut X said:
Is that an educated "could be true", Shiggy? There's a few bits in there that stand out - the internal codename "Pecan" sounds right, given that it was showing up on Steam wishlists as "Pecan" last year etc. - and it has the ring of truth about it...
Click to expand...

Just a guess based on that it sounds reasonable. Codename Pecan? True. Restarted several time with content overhaul afterwards? True. Outsourcing decisions? True. Aliens CM delay last year while Borderlands 2 shipped on time? True. Final game feels rushed? True.
 
S

scytheavatar

Member
BosSin said:
Hmm, this does not paint a pretty picture of Gearbox so far.
Hell, it would have been better for their image if they were to just develop this piece of shit themselves. At least that way there wouldn't be the possibility of being blacklisted by other publishers and SEGA starting a lawsuit
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It paints a picture of people in Gearbox trying to throw all the blame at TimeGate and Gearbox being the victim of TimeGate's incompetence. Which is bloody stupid, isn't Gearbox signed by Sega to make sure the end product is good? Chances are this Gearbox employee is lying and TimeGate is the one that's saving Gearbox's asses. The impression I get is that the TimeGate guys are shocked by the amount of their work that ended up in the final product.
 
megamerican

megamerican

Member
Pretty rare that the publisher looks like the victim here.

Coming after DNF this looks pretty bad for Gearbox. It really does seem like they are comfortable using their reputation to bait and switch unwary customers.
 
C

Cosmonaut X

Member
Shiggy said:
Just a guess based on that it sounds reasonable. Codename Pecan? True. Restarted several time with content overhaul afterwards? True. Outsourcing decisions? True. Aliens CM delay last year while Borderlands 2 shipped on time? True. Final game feels rushed? True.
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...plus it all sounds believable without being too sensational. I'd expect an invented account of the dev history to be a bit more attention-grabbing; this all sounds very straightforward and believable.
 
J

Jarmel

Banned
subversus said:
lol, this game just keeps on giving. It was released in Australia without executable.

They forgot which studio should be responsible for this.
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AdrianWerner said:
Yeah, I don't know why they didn't do it. Or just made it on their own..I mean they've selfpublished the second Section8, so they do seem to be in decent position fiscally.

Also..Sega just confirmed it's merely Gearbox trying to shift the blame:
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/sega-...es-sp-was-not-outsourced-to-timegate-studios/
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Wow. This is beyond epic fuckup levels. Jesus.

dmr87 said:
WAl.gif
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Prometheus.
 
E

Effect

Member
Pociask said:
What would SEGA sue them for? Do you have a copy of the contract handy?
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The developer says that Sega was close to taking legal action against Gearbox. Likely from the constant delays and thus not fulfilling their side of the contract by keeping to agreed upon terms. It's mentioned in the same section where it's said they couldn't ask for another delay. It's clear that Sega believes they contracted Gearbox to make the game by their current statements and likely to a certain quality. If Gearbox didn't do that but instead farmed it out, used the money supplied them and time given to further develop Borderlands 2 instead that's also a breach of contract with possibly some fraud and other stuff thrown in I think. You don't need to see the contract to consider this.
 
A

angular graphics

Banned
Cosmonaut X said:
Is that an educated "could be true", Shiggy? There's a few bits in there that stand out - the internal codename "Pecan" sounds right, given that it was showing up on Steam wishlists as "Pecan" last year etc. - and it has the ring of truth about it...

EDIT:

"Pecan" also seems to be the name for some kind of custom API used in the game. Corroborating the "insider" account, or was the name picked by someone making it up to give it plausibility?
Click to expand...

Pecan-something had been the name of the executable of the game for years. nvidia drivers had a profile for the game for like 2 years or something (or longer than that? I can't remember). It's the game's codename.
 
P

Pociask

Member
Effect said:
The developer says that Sega was close to taking legal action against Gearbox. Likely from the constant delays and thus not fulfilling their side of the contract by keeping to agreed upon terms. It's mentioned in the same section where it's said they couldn't ask for another delay. It's clear that Sega believes they contracted Gearbox to make the game by their current statements and likely to a certain quality. If Gearbox didn't do that but instead farmed it out, used the money supplied them and time given to further develop Borderlands 2 instead that's also a breach of contract with possibly some fraud and other stuff thrown in I think. You don't need to see the contract to consider this I think.
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Yes - the story says Sega was close to taking legal action, and as you stated, likely from delays. However, in the end, Gearbox apparently delivered a product on time.

Gearbox made the game, and assembled the final product. It is baseless speculation that Sega had a "No outsourcing anything" clause or some kind of quality clause.

I've read that story three times now, and I haven't seen the person say anywhere that they took Sega money for Borderlands 2. The story clearly says that Gearbox simply didn't have the resources to do two games at once, and they put ACM on the backburner. That may have been bad management, but a breach of contract?

Honestly, people in here are tossing around fraud, embezzlement, etc. It's possible they just did a bad job.
 
S

Sephiroth503

Member
Sounds very similar to what Lucasarts said Free Radical were up to regarding Haze and Battlefront 3. Except FR didn't make a hit like Borderlands.
 
A

antitrop

Member
cuyahoga said:
So if the game doesn't perform well, isn't Gearbox opening themselves up to a seeming legal liability of misrepresenting their services to Sega?
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The more I hear about this, the more I feel like Sega actually should seek legal compensation.

Even if this entire Reddit story is a fabrication, Geargox fucked up somewhere and they should be held accountable.
 
S

SatelliteOfLove

Member
All I know is the folks at Ninja Theory and Crystal Dynamics are thanking their lucky stars that this bigger kerfluffle hit at the most opportune instance.
 
Q

Queen of Hunting

Unconfirmed Member
Sega can sue on the fact that they spent a lot of the money and time on their on game.
 
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