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Publisher rejects game, dev sends salty reply and publishes it on Facebook

K

kulapik

Member
Let me talk you about Neosaga Game Studios. Neosaga is an Spanish videogame developer created on 2012 and made by only 2 people. After his creation, they announced their first game, The Chainbreakers: Fight For Freedom, a "classic style lateral beat'em up with 1080p native graphics, an adventure mode with RPG elements, non-linear storytelling and complex story with multiple characters". This is one of the small concept art that are available for now. The game is set to be released on 2014 on PS4.

Apparently they polled their idea on some publishers, being one of them Koch Media. The other day, this developer received this mail letting them know that they wouldn't approve their project (translated by MrLion):

Hello Antonio,

The higher ups have given me their conclusion after checking out the material that you sent to us.

We have rejected the project because we have no clear motive as to what will happen when the PS4 is released, specifically with small publishers such as ourselves. Additionally, based on our experience with downloadable games, we figured that the title will be trapped in a fire between free to play games and full-published games, making things more complicated and the probability of the project being profitable to be even more difficult. Not to mention the fact that Sony, like Microsoft, is giving away games via their Playstation Plus services like on Xbox Live repectively which makes things even more difficult.

With that said, thank you for the information you provided us and sharing our passion.

Regards,

Oscar Del Moral | Marketing Director | Kock media SLU.
Click to expand...

What the people at Koch Media didn't expect, as the "CEO" of NeoSaga marked on his Facebook (downloaded as they cleaned it after all this), was that they would reply in a way like this:

Hello Oscar, more than anything thank you for your email. I would like to make a comment that nothing based on predictions and politics for third-party subscriptions are neither objectively valid nor it will stop us for moving forward with our projects, as going by those fears video games can be considered dead, new brands would pass as anything short of a utopia and none of this is true. Video games are plainly growing above all thanks to us, Indie developers, and external publishers, such as ours, that have our days counted. However, allow me to explain, if you will, as I would love to give you three simple things to finish this:

First of all, as I said previously, rejecting projects in that same manner will only make enterpreneurs such as ourselves renounce you, the publishers, forever.

Secondly, thanks to rejection emails such as yours, we have opened our eyes with respect to what I have commented on my first point and to give a chance, as the moment of truth has arrived to renounce you, the publishers, as we no longer have a need for you. We are now able to publish the games ourselves for free and we no longer need the middle men of any kind. Let this be an example of insecurity on your part and even if you want to pay us we wouldn't want to work for you.

Lastly, as I've said earlier I thanked for your email not because it was completely useless to us but because as I said we no longer need you and I knew this beforehand, way before I started writing these words but you have no idea the satisfaction that left me in writing them. Thank you.

I hope that your higher ups read this as it is dedicated to Antonio Segarra Vela; founder, CEO, and game designer for NEOSAGA Game Studios in Barcelona, an entrepreneur for his fearless, small but great companyand one of many Indie dev teams with a pair of balls so big that it'll make his and his gamers' dreams come true and finally without publishers. Now you have a truthful reason to have fear and to shake in fear together.

Thank you very much for your time!

Sincerely,

Antonio Segarra Vela
CEO & Game Designer
NEOSAGA Game Studios (Barcelona)
Click to expand...

After sending... this thing, our friend decided to post the Koch Media mail as well as his on Facebook. This completely dumb attitude made that people criticized his way of doing this. And how did he answer? Well... (for here on it's translated by me, sorry for all the errors)

Someone smart said:
What I read on Koch's answer is "We don't see viability right now, but thanks for trusting us". And what I would have read if I was you would be: "Try it again when you have more material ,because right now we don't see it".

This industry is very small and we all believe too much.

What you have done is, in business speak, a suicide. What you can do now is redefine the industry as Steve Jobs in order to not need anyone or make such good product people forget your attitude, as Phil Fish.

I wish all the luck in the world, but you have started very badly. In fact, is possible that with this answer you have finished your route on the industry and you don't know it.
Click to expand...

Neosaga's response said:
I don't regret nothing and that I don't give a fuck that you all are ass and crap, I'm my team, my players and myself and that's the only thing that is important. I'll be all the dumb that they want to call me, but they will never call me asslickr or conformist. And I will business suicide a thousand times before being a fucking donkey.

This people without asking can't deduce if something is viable or not, when digital marketplaces are full of weekly launchs and thousands scheduled for new consoles, and they have published or they will publish without problem as good games as shitty games, which were trusted in order to appear. So that doesn't have any fucking logic and the negative things you now where I put them.
Click to expand...

Ubi Sant Cugat is a hell of a editor that has only produced car games and casual material in the most part and you can see it on Wikipedia. A game like ours would have give them category without a doubt, but that's something they won't be able to know.
Click to expand...

they can talk, but sadly there is no game to show, I would like, we are small and we work from our pocket how we can and when we can. There's a lot of work to do, the game is practically done written and we only have to make it and we had to juice all the chances
Click to expand...

I could go on and on, if you know Spanish you can translate some of the pearls that he has spitten over there. Here's a directory with some saved copies of the facebook page.

What do you think? Is this the kind of thinking the one that has ruined the whole industry? Do we really need so cocky developers? Discuss, fellow gaffers.

TL;DR: seriously. read it.

Oh, one last thing. This was posted on Neosaga youtube's page. The video is called Testing Game Maker.
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
aDNAzu2.jpg
 
S

SwiftDeath

Member
Having a little trouble understanding all the minute details based on the translation but it looks like the indie dev had a bit of a meltdown

Also this is a pretty great quote

And I will business suicide a thousand times before that being a fucking donkey.
Click to expand...
 
O

Osiris

I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
I feel sorry for his "team", I guess they all work remotely and didn't realise until now that their project lead was 9 years old.
 
P

PhoenixFyre

Member
Someone so passionate should take that rejection and use it to fuel the project. Take that anger and turn it into determination to prove the doubters wrong and make them regret.
 
K

kulapik

Member
SwiftDeath said:
Having a little trouble understanding all the minute details based on the translation but it looks like the indie dev had a bit of a meltdown

Also this is a pretty great quote
Click to expand...

That's a kind of bad translation, but it kind of goes in the way of what he wanted to say.
 
PAULINK

PAULINK

I microwave steaks.
This is not going to help them in the long term if they're still looking for a pub, it's just going to make potential publishers think these guys are not professional and turn them down.
 
N

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
Hell, he was lucky he at least got a reason he was actually rejected.

His response to it shows he didn't even deserve that.

This giant indie explosion isn't going to end well for many a developers I bet.. you have already crowded markets getting more crowded.

I'd be interested to see how well a bunch of indies are doing on Steam these days since it's been inundated with so many titles lately.

There was a time being on the New Release list meant you'd have exposure for quite some time.. now things seem to fall down the chart quicker and quicker as so many titles are dropped.

Hell How to Survive dropped 4 days ago, you have to go 2 pages down to find it... just checked there is 96 titles that released in October.
 
P

piratepwnsninja

Member
So he actually gets a response from a publisher that isn't rude or anything but isn't what he wanted to hear, so he reverts to acting like a child. Alright.
 
N

No Love

Banned
Thread retitle:

How overly confident indie devs shove their own fist up their ass until they vomit diarrhea all over their potential chances of selling their game.

Alternative: Edgy, controversal indie dev is done being a fucking donkey
 
E

ezekielpacman

Member
Is this the first noteworthy time a publisher has openly cited PS+ as a negative influence? I always assumed the deals they struck meant the publisher was rewarded adequately.
 
H

Hypereides

Member
Beyond half of that translation is unreadable. Sorry dude.

But I can however deduct from it that his/their behaviour is unprofessional.

No wonder if Koch media never decides to work with them again.
 
S

sneaky77

Member
ezekielpacman said:
Is this the first noteworthy time a publisher has openly cited PS+ as a negative influence? I always assumed the deals they struck meant the publisher was rewarded adequately.
Click to expand...

I think is more, PS+ has free games so maybe less people would buy an unknown developers generic fighting IP
 
D

dosh

Member
kulapik said:
I did what I could, my english is not perfect :p
Click to expand...

Well, I read some of the stuff that got saved from facebook and you summed up everything pretty well. Plus the guy's grammar is already a mess in the original posts.

Most of his comments are so disdainful and angry.

ezekielpacman said:
Is this the first noteworthy time a publisher has openly cited PS+ as a negative influence? I always assumed the deals they struck meant the publisher was rewarded adequately.
Click to expand...
That struck me as well.
 
M

Mentok

Banned
I don't regret nothing and that I don't give a fuck that you all are ass and crap....
And I will business suicide a thousand times before being a fucking donkey.
Click to expand...

I wonder what his staff meetings are like?

work-meetings.gif
 
T

Tripon

Member
ezekielpacman said:
Is this the first noteworthy time a publisher has openly cited PS+ as a negative influence? I always assumed the deals they struck meant the publisher was rewarded adequately.
Click to expand...

If I remember right, I think you get about 20% of what you originally sold it at if you go through a 'free' system like PS+, and Amazon's free app of the day.

I don't have a source from you, so I might be pulling that from my ass.

PS+ and other free games system certainly harm any pricing incentive for consumers if they think they can get a title for free if they wait long enough.
 
K

Krammy

Member
"Look at me! Look at how cool I am as a small developer telling big business to jog on when they don't want to publish my unrealistically ambitious game."

That's basically what I took from this. I can understand wanting to get your game off the ground, but please be realistic here. It's an unknown two man team planning to make a game with ridiculously lofty goals, of course publishers are going to be worried. It even sounds like this publisher in particular has had bad luck with downloadable titles.

Unless I'm missing something, it seems like he's shooting himself in the foot with this Facebook post because he doesn't seem to be winning over any friends.

EDIT: I want to add, that like others, I was also really interested in the publisher pointing out PlayStation Plus. I thought Sony paid them a premium to allow them to go on Plus?
 
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