So, I follow Mike Bithell (Volume, Thomas was alone) on Twitter and be tweeted about something that made me raise my eyebrows. A kickstarter for "EarlyNinja". I sounds like some fast paced Jump'n'Run but it is actually a "revolutionary" platform for EarlyAccess games. What it attempts to do is fix the EarlyAccess problem of games taking forever or not being released at all.
In theory developers have to set milestones, and only after they meet them EN pays gives them access to some more of the pre-order money.
Maybe take a look yourself here, they are probably better at explaining their ideas than I am.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/earlyninja/earlyninja-the-platform-revolutionizing-early-acce

So anyway, what I found interesting is Bithell's blog about this and the response from the EarlyNinja team which refers to this blog as a "witch hunt" for some reason.

I think those guys might have some good ideas, but none of this looks like something that would actually succeed in any way. No idea why developers would ever use that platform. I do think the exchange between Bithell and EN is pretty interesting though and worth making a thread about.
Thoughts?

Video Game Attorney also warns people about issues

EarlyNinja released a response. It says nothing. This is clear trademark infringement. EN, can you name a single developer that has agreed?

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https://twitter.com/MrRyanMorrison/status/824267242523295746

This strikes me as attempting to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. Valve and developers stress not to purchase an Early Access game unless its current state appeals to you, and now that you can refund a game on Steam no-questions-asked provided you've played less than two hours/purchased said title less than two weeks ago, there's very little risk.

Edit: Also, I can't see many developers agreeing to a milestone-based fundraising platform. That's the very sort of predatory arrangement that developers go out of their way to avoid, and the idea seems to assume that Early Access titles hit a roadblock not due to legitimate issues but rather a lack of accountability.

From EarlyNinja's reply:



If this is a genuine question, they must have done zero research and have absolutely no clue about Steam even from a consumer perspective much less a developer perspective.

If it's not a genuine question and they're being sarcastic, it's a real dick move to be so passive aggressive towards someone trying to provide genuine feedback.

(Also hard to not notice the use of gendered pronoun, but that's a different issue altogether).

EDIT: Never mind, their Kickstarter page clarifies that users are only ever eligible for PARTIAL refunds, based on what milestones haven't been paid out yet.

From what i've seen they really haven't thought about this at all. There are so many problems with it. I get why they'd want it, i don't like games just being abandoned either, but this is not a way to solve it.

- Why would anyone choose this as well as using Steam and other places, when this is going to limit their games across all platforms?
- Games already set development roadmaps and milestones, problems still occur
- It becomes just ticking boxes to get your money
- When games get their money has nothing to do with if they complete development or not most of the time.
- Not having that money at the start only increases the chances of development going wrong and makes it harder to keep development going when problems are encountered
- Games that are already successful (e.g. Rust) gain pretty much nothing from this
- They just assume their platform is going to be successful and that people will want to be advertised by it and that will make any difference at all
- Having the community vote on games when they have no idea if they can even get those games involved
- Those milestones may not even be specific things (based on what they've shown, it's just alpha, beta etc) so some developers will just do the very minimum just to say it's done
- They apparently think QA is just 'Quality of graphics', 'Presence of Malwares' 'Playability' and 'technical tests'.
- Deadlines do very little to help. Development issues aren't a case of "Oh, i just didn't want to do it in time".
- They saw the majority of early access games are not released yet, so they assume that's because they don't have roadmaps and it's because they have all their money already? Really?
- Doesn't seem to take into account that when a game is successful it could be greatly expanded using that money (e.g. Star Citizen) or if the money they get just isn't enough for development to continue in the first place

The biggest problem with this; How is withholding money, and allowing customers to withdraw their money from a game, going to do anything to a game that has been delayed (not cancelled) because of development issues other than make those problems worse and potentially cause it all to fail? All that does is cause even more issues, why would anyone think that is a good idea? That only makes the situation far, far worse.

I also think it's a non-issue. You're told many times when backing early access games that it's not a definite thing and it could fail. If you aren't willing to take that risk, don't agree that you are by buying the game

This does absolutely nothing to help with the issues encountered during development. Whether development goes well has nothing at all to do with whether there's the incentive of money to keep working on their games.

I love stories like this, hope it keeps unfolding throughout the day with a steady stream of drama as EN collapses and starts lashing out.

Something else worth pointing out that I think renders their business model actually impossible to implement: if they're planning to deliver games via Steam keys, Valve currently offers no easy way to deactivate keys that have already been redeemed. So, if someone decides they want a refund, you can't actually revoke their access to the game. People could (and would) exploit this to get free games. This is the reason why all sales are final for Steam keys sold through places like GreenManGaming.

At least one person asked them about this at EGX Rezzed, and they had no response. Here's a twitter thread about it.

Fantastapotamus said:

In theory developers have to set milestones, and only after they meet them EN pays gives them access to some more of the pre-order money.

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Question. Why incentives would game developers have for using this over Steam's Early Access service? Customers don't seem to particularly care if a game is stuck in EA limbo, judging by the fact that Arc: Survival Evolved and it's expansion are consistently towards the top of Steam's best selling games list. Same goes for stuff like The Forest and Rust.

Why wouldn't devs just go "Thanks, but no thanks" and ignore it?

Chaser324 said:

Something else worth pointing out that I think renders their business model actually impossible to implement: if they're planning to deliver games via Steam keys, Valve currently offers no way to deactivate keys that have already been redeemed. So, if someone decides they want a refund, you can't actually revoke their access to the game.

At least one person asked them about this at EGX Rezzed, and they had no response. Here's a twitter thread about it.

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Actually, publishers have always been able to ask Valve to revoke keys, and these days it's something they can do themselves via the Steamworks Partner site (any Steam account can view the documentation) -- thus the recent issue with Castle of Illusion.

I parsed the OP as saying the Thomas Was Alone guy as being the one behind this EarlyNinja thing and was supremely confused that an estabilished dev would do something so nonsensical. I see now he was the one criticising it, which makes a considerable lot more sense.

How beautifully poetic will it be if this gets funded and (as seems virtually certain) ends up amounting to nothing? I would love to see its backers' faces then.

DrArchon said:

Question. Why incentives would game developers have for using this over Steam's Early Access service? Customers don't seem to particularly care if a game is stuck in EA limbo, judging by the fact that Arc: Survival Evolved and it's expansion are consistently towards the top of Steam's best selling games list. Same goes for stuff like The Forest and Rust.

Why wouldn't devs just go "Thanks, but no thanks" and ignore it?

Click to expand...

I guess in theory people would demand developers use this service once they see that there is a safer way to get early access games? But....I dunno.

I posted my thoughts about this on reddit a few days ago, they ended up replying to me as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comm...ht_all_the_wrongs_of_steam/dcuose7/?context=3

I don't think they really answered most of my concerns about it.

JaseC said:

Actually, publishers have always been able to ask Valve to revoke keys, and these days it's something they can do themselves via the Steamworks Partner site (any Steam account can view the documentation) -- thus the recent issue with Castle of Illusion.

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I actually have access to the tool itself. I guess I generally assumed it was more for use by developers/publishers in dealing with fraud, but I suppose you could use it to do this. It would however still be an inconvenience for developers to have to deal with this themselves rather than the storefront itself being able to directly resolve all refunds (assuming most devs wouldn't be crazy enough to grant direct Steamworks access to EarlyNinja).

Ironically,
reading this kickstarter, this is exactly the kind of kickstarter I wouldn't trust.

You want to do this, make the site first. As of now there is zero promises.

What they're trying to do here sounds interesting but it seems like a short sighted solution that doesn't realistically asses foreseeable issues and has management that would rather wear blinders in the face of constructive criticism.

Any project that can't take constructive critism well is a big red flag. If they can't be bothered to address a potentially serious problem before they have your money in hand, don't expect it to get any better after. Plus all the other stuff like appropriating copyrighted materials and such just put the final nail in the coffin. I want to keep an eye on this just to watch it crumble apart.

It's just a shittier and developer hostile version of itch.io Refinery at it's best. Ignoring the misleading (at best) stuff. And never call people criticizing you a "witch hunt", you're so dead if you do that.

Honestly it's barely even worth mocking though, they gained 1 backer in the last 24 hours and with ~$14k from 28 people yesterday someone's clearly backing their own project/buddies. It's a terrible idea but it has no chance to succeed so I can't get too worked up.

Most of the big early access games on Steam had milestones, but it would always get delayed.

For example, the devs behind the Long Dark, who have always been transparent about the games development, put out a trailer for the story mode in December 2015 and said it would arrive in 2016. It ended up getting delayed to 2017 for numerous reasons.

Even AAA devs have trouble meeting deadlines, so why do people expect indie devs to?