A game company actually planning their game's development time and budget properly might as well be a unicorn, but it doesn't exist.
Except for all the times when it DOES happen, so that statement is just nowhere near true.
You aren't all wrong, of course, plans are bound to go wrong, but that is what you add buffers for. Financial as well as time buffers.
This isn't 1-2 man indie development, either. Afaik, they have a full team including producers.
I've worked with enough teams of that size to know that this can work out and if it doesn't, it is the result of bad planning in 90% of cases.
I don't know where you come from, but owning up to your own mistakes can sometimes make you legally liable.
Don't know what you are implying with that.
Could they do it better, sure. Is it frustrating, sure. But you have to understand that you are not pre-ordering a game with kickstarter. It may seem like you are, but you aren't. And and everything promised by a kickstarter is tentative and not legally binding.
Oh I'm fully aware of that, I have probably backed over 40 projects on various platforms. Mostly, but not only games.
But only because almost nothing from Kickstarter is legally binding, doesn't mean they do not have any obligations of the ethical/moral kind.
Nobody's going to sue them for this move, or cancelling Linux, etc. But it sure as hell has cost them a ton of credibility in my and many others' eyes.
I do think that in this specific case they had a moral obligation to behave a lot different than they did and that they also made a LOT of mistakes that lead to their situation, making this quite different from other projects I backed. Some of which ended up in total failure, and devs acted in an integer way and cancelled the thing or put it on ice.
Obviously subjective, but that's morals for you.
If they decided to prioritize integrity and canceled the game, you'd be even more unhappy and we'd all be robbed of a potentially good game.
That might be your take on it, but do not assume what I'd think.
With so many great games out there, I'd happily take a developer with credibility and integrity over one more game, even if I put money down for it (which I have been refunded by now, but it would be the same even if I hadn't).
But that may be just me valuing personal attributes over having even more games to play.
The problem is that the only people out there willing to fund these things are doing so contingent on exclusivity plans. The big publishers won't fund external companies making small games any more, and venture capitalists have dried up, so the only money out there for them is from Epic. And that's the real shame.
That's a far too broad statement for me to take for granted, but if it were all true, I'd agree.
And you and I both know that if they ran a second kickstarter, you'd be in here complaining about that too, just as loudly and angrily.
You are again assuming things about a person you know nothing about. And of course you assume wrong.
In this specific case I would not back them again as they already broke their promises prior to this event. If you already know you cannot trust someone, why would you give them more money? But I wouldn't go out of my way and complain about it, why would I? It would have been the right thing to do, instead of backstabbing their backers.
However, if this was another developer and they did another campaign and explained well the hows and whys, I wouldn't object to giving them more money. Have done that for other campaigns as well.
Are you arguing that they should've fired everybody rather than take what is basically free money, just because you like Steam better? And the employees should be fine with getting fired because that's what they signed up for? WTF?
If the situation really was running out of money, I would have first asked those that enabled me to develop to begin with, publicly (which would have been Fig investors and likely some others), explained the situation, acknowledged my own parts in the mistakes, declared the possibilities going forward (Epic - thus breaking campaign promises, another campaign, release unfinished, cancellation), declared my own favorite (obv. Epic for them) and then let those decide who, again, allowed you the whole endeavor to begin with.
If they decided that cancellation is best, that's what I would have done, because I feel that is the moral obligation of someone who only does what they do thanks to those people. My own morals are more important to me than laws, I'm more likely to break a law than break a promise. And obviously, I would have explained every employee beforehand that this is a possible outcome scenario if they sign up (not that that isn't self-explanatory in the games biz, but anyway).
What Snapshot did was - with or without urgent need, we do not know - just decide over the heads of everyone who enabled them to begin with, breaking loads of promises (get the key on release on GOG/Steam) in the process and becoming exclusive. Just compare that to what a sensible approach, like the one above, would have been.
And then added insult to injury by going "We did what was best for the community!". They didn't even ASK what the community would have wanted.
If you go the crowdfunding path, you'll have to live with people expecting a much different behavior from you than if you just made the game the "normal" way. And even then, just look at Metro to see that such a deal is never perceived positively. Still, at least they are fulfilling their promises and preorders on Steam, etc.
Second, most of what you have replied to me at least has been garbage personal attacks thinking that you could bully me into accepting your opinions which are not facts.
Then point me at a single thing I declared as fact and you think is an opinion and I will prove to you why they are indeed facts or why you actually have a point.
Btw... I'm not trying to bully you into anything, I know I'll never get you acknowledge some things. Merely had my fun with you and you made it incredibly easy, too. But mama's mad at me now so I'll be super nice!
