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Microsoft's indie developer's still haven't got their September payments.

I nearly lost my ass when I got a paycheck 2 days late. That's really hard to deal with. I love that it isn't even considered 'late' unless they miss the pay date by a month and a half.

This will seriously KILL their future indie intentions if they don't do something. Who would want to develop a game if there is even a possibility of missing payments like this?
 

Iorv3th

Member
Lmao, no.

It's probably some accounting mishap, let's not jump the gun like we ALWAYS do until we hear the full story here.

It sucks, not saying it doesn't, but let's tone it down a notch and find out what happened here before saying shit like this.

Do you think they might have put the decimal in the wrong place?

M9WWwJY.gif
 

Amir0x

Banned
This will seriously KILL their future indie intentions if they don't do something. Who would want to develop a game if there is even a possibility of missing payments like this?

don't worry like their super rad ID@Xbox parity clause, I'm sure Phil Spencer will make extremely generous 'exceptions' for payment release based on how big or significant your game is!
 

HardRojo

Member
3 months? Wow. I'd have been flipping had my previous job not paid in a timely manner (they used to pay 1 or 2 days in advance).
 

BadWolf

Member
Well they had to fund those X1 bundles somehow I guess...

Jokes aside though this is pretty bad, really hope people get paid.
 
This needs to be fixed as soon as possible with a public apology.

Some of these devs are little more than 1 and 2 man bands with no money even when their games are popular.

still, there should be two sides to the story before people get outraged.

what is the other side of this story that can justify the scenario?

"oh, well we hit the button but it didnt pay them so we worked 20 hours a day to fix it" still doesn't excuse that the situation is terrible
 

JP

Member
You see (and I sincerely hope otherjournalists will have the guts to report on this too) Microsoft has once again screwed up payment to indie developers on the XNA system who have their games published on the Xbox Live indie Games Marketplace.
Wait, this isn't the first time so something like this has happened?
2369727-62202_10151337857506834_488826307_n.jpg
 
Outrage over MS doing something that might be considered disgusting? It's like people haven't been paying attention over the past few weeks...

The poster debacle, the slap in the face to day one owners, the 360 Games with Gold bait and switch.

So much for Phil 'Hollow Man' Spencer turning things around.

Ain't nothing but #air from that hollow chasm...
 

sangreal

Member
I think they're actually late considering 2 different devs have come in here saying they're actually late.

they are late, my comment was in response to what I quoted -- complaining about the 45 day payment window; not being late beyond that which is indefensible
 

DSix

Banned
This is true, I have yet to get paid.

I mailed their services, and they assured me "it would be solved in the coming weeks", but I need that money now, not in months when they finally figured how to input my fucking account numbers in their system.

It's been a complete train-wreck ruled by crass incompetence. The contrast with Valve's handling of such matters is stark. The money should've been wired in fucking October, what a bloody joke.
 
I can't understand this level of disdain. This has to be negligence, as in, someone just not doing their job properly. I find it hard to believe that MS is just deliberately peeling the wings off of smaller devs for the lulz.

It's amazing how the XBLIG and XBLA turnaround has been from 360 to now. Are we ever going to see something like Summer of Arcade ever again? Who actually wants to work with MS with the forced parity clause and no guarantee of timely payment? Here's hoping that someone brings this up during the next interview with one of their PR stooges.

And we really need to find out who is in charge of this department, and take the complaints directly to their doorstep. If it's Spencer, so be it.

Edit: For real, you could physically write checks to every dev on the planet, lick and stamp every envelope, and take them to the post, manually update all of the funds in an excel spreadsheet, and still have all of this done in a week.
 

OnPoint

Member
I don't think anyone should plan on money from XBLIG. Have their been any success stories out of there except for I Made a Game With Zombies?

Yes. There certainly have been. Plenty of Miner games and Avatar games have done really, really well, and there are others that have been successful as well. You're speaking as though it's still 2008-2010. A lot has changed in the indie landscape.
 

Delstius

Member
Accountants would be freaking the fuck out if a payment were a DAY late. Must be some internal software system that is broke as fuck. Never met an accountant who wouldn't go completely berserk in this situation

Not really, payment between company usually can take up to 30 days, there's also some cases when it's more. Which seems to be the case here as they have up to 45 days in the contract it seems.

Not sure what went wrong but this kind of thing shouldn't happen. Either a few people are doing a real piss poor job at checking and following the payment (unlikely cause it doesn't involve only one person and it will appear sooner or later) or a higher-up decided to put it on hold for whatever reason.
 

hawk2025

Member
This is true, I have yet to get paid.

I mailed their services, and they assured me "it would be solved in the coming weeks", but I need that money now, not in months when they finally figured how to input my fucking account numbers in their system.

It's been a complete train-wreck ruled by crass incompetence. The contrast with Valve's handling of such matters is stark.



Oh wow.


I don't think anyone should plan on money from XBLIG. Have their been any success stories out of there except for I Made a Game With Zombies?


Are you serious?

It's money. It's money that belongs to these people. They should plan around it however they see fit within the confines of the contract they agreed to.
 
Not cool MS. Indie developers deserve more respect than this. These aren't big companies with major funding, these are normal people looking for their paycheck to live their lives and support their families.

Completely unacceptable, I hope this catches fire with the media and they get called out.
 

SEGAvangelist

Gold Member
This is true, I have yet to get paid.

I mailed their services, and they assured me "it would be solved in the coming weeks", but I need that money now, not in months when they finally figured how to input my fucking account numbers in their system.

It's been a complete train-wreck ruled by crass incompetence. The contrast with Valve's handling of such matters is stark.

Did they explain what happened?
 

pastrami

Member
I don't think anyone should plan on money from XBLIG. Have their been any success stories out of there except for I Made a Game With Zombies?

I find this statement to be incredibly dumb.

Poor form from Microsoft. They did some great things to push indies to the forefront, but sometimes it seems like they just don't care.
 

BibiMaghoo

Member
Most of my bills if not payed within a month of due date, add a late fee onto the payment. Perhaps some devs should pursue this themselves. 30 days late is bad, 45 is pathetic for a company this size, and beyond that could only be viewed as deliberate.
 
Lmao, no.

It's probably some accounting mishap, let's not jump the gun like we ALWAYS do until we hear the full story here.

It sucks, not saying it doesn't, but let's tone it down a notch and find out what happened here before saying shit like this.

I can't possibly see how it's just some accounting mishap when it has apparently always happened. It's just more late now than its ever been.

My question is what is the reason for only paying indies every quarter as opposed to biweekly or something?

Is Sonys policy similar? (Payment policy)
 
Yes. There certainly have been. Plenty of Miner games and Avatar games have done really, really well, and there are others that have been successful as well. You're speaking as though it's still 2008-2010. A lot has changed in the indie landscape.

A lot has changed but then stuff like this appears.

rTbTre8.jpg


Classic XBLIG.
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/P...e-Slayer/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550ea8

Then again, that's what XBLIG was, a service for people to get started and launch a game in.
 

Diagol

Member
This is true, I have yet to get paid.

I mailed their services, and they assured me "it would be solved in the coming weeks", but I need that money now, not in months when they finally figured how to input my fucking account numbers in their system.

It's been a complete train-wreck ruled by crass incompetence. The contrast with Valve's handling of such matters is stark. The money should've been wired in fucking October, what a bloody joke.

OMG I'm so sorry for what you're all going through.

Looks like Jason from Kotaku is on it based off Twitter.
 

Teletraan1

Banned
Sounds like me in the '90s when I read about "Sony stabbing Nintendo in the back".

(which wasn't really true)

Thank goodness I grew up.

Yeah, you really grew up, so mature. Grown ups often draw silly parallels to unrelated things. The fact you think this is some system wars bullshit only speaks to your maturity. I am free to not support a company whose actions I do not support. This is not the first or last shady thing MS has done as a company. I dont need to give a history lesson. If you are fine with that, good for you. I am not. Calling maturity into the mix is asinine and fairly insulting.
 

xxracerxx

Don't worry, I'll vouch for them.
This is true, I have yet to get paid.

I mailed their services, and they assured me "it would be solved in the coming weeks", but I need that money now, not in months when they finally figured how to input my fucking account numbers in their system.

It's been a complete train-wreck ruled by crass incompetence. The contrast with Valve's handling of such matters is stark. The money should've been wired in fucking October, what a bloody joke.

"Coming weeks?" So even account managers are working on the Halo:MCC debacle.
 

panda-zebra

Member
This is true, I have yet to get paid.

I mailed their services, and they assured me "it would be solved in the coming weeks", but I need that money now, not in months when they finally figured how to input my fucking account numbers in their system.

It's been a complete train-wreck ruled by crass incompetence. The contrast with Valve's handling of such matters is stark.

Nice, it doesn't get much more non-committal than that.

Great way to fuck over the future of the games industry, big Phil got it all figured out.
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
There are probably 4-5 groups involved in making this happen. One of them is probably waiting on numbers from one of the other groups so that they can *know* how much to pay in the first place. I'm sure the people cutting the checks aren't also the people in charge of keeping track of sales figures in the Live marketplace.

It'll get fixed once it gets painful enough for somebody higher up the chain of command to start yelling at people. Be a meeting with pres. or vp. and department leaders and he/she will yell, "fix this shit! I don't want to hear about it again." And it will get fixed within the week.

That's been my experience in any company with oh, say, more than 50 employees.
 
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