console updates rethink - sign petition

[Ralco]

6 hours ago, Nef said:

But the game wasn't on Xbox until like last month. They made an Xbox port after the fact.

Yet they managed to do it after getting their rights back, you cannot exclude the example that pokes a hole in your statement, they're not console dev's either. But they managed. In fact this example is worse on tfp, they already have the game ported and are unable to support it. Stranded deep had to start from scratch and "spend millions" to port it to consoles after paying to get their own rights back. 

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Ralco said:

Yet they managed to do it after getting their rights back, you cannot exclude the example that pokes a hole in your statement, they're not console dev's either. But they managed. In fact this example is worse on tfp, they already have the game ported and are unable to support it. Stranded deep had to start from scratch and "spend millions" to port it to consoles after paying to get their own rights back. 

Yep, Stranded Deep was released in 2015 (according to wikipedia) and this FINISHED version was then ported by the developer himself (who had nothing else to do like, for example, finish a game 😉) to console, with money from telltale. This porting was interrupted by telltales implosion, but they could finish it after getting the rights back.

 

Things to note:

 

1) SD had not been sold on the console before, so they could expect lots of revenue from releasing it on console. If they didn't have the money, investors would fall over each other for the chance to lend them the money with such a good revenue promise and low risk.

 

2) The developer of SD did exactly what TFP wants to do now, i.e. finish the game on the PC, THEN port to console. Thank you for this excellent example 😉

 

3) SD is not a voxel game and runs in 4G RAM, an Intel HD 5500 (!!!) with 512MB VRAM. In other words they didn't need to optimize the game or downgrade or save any RAM or VRAM. Porting was essentially just adapting the user interface to controllers.

 

 

[Ralco]

3 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Yep, Stranded Deep was released in 2015 (according to wikipedia) and this FINISHED version was then ported by the developer himself (who had nothing else to do like, for example, finish a game 😉) to console, with money from telltale. This porting was interrupted by telltales implosion, but they could finish it after getting the rights back.

 

Things to note:

 

1) SD had not been sold on the console before, so they could expect lots of revenue from releasing it on console. If they didn't have the money, investors would fall over each other for the chance to lend them the money with such a good revenue promise and low risk.

 

2) The developer of SD did exactly what TFP wants to do now, i.e. finish the game on the PC, THEN port to console. Thank you for this excellent example 😉

 

3) SD is not a voxel game and runs in 4G RAM, an Intel HD 5500 (!!!) with 512MB VRAM. In other words they didn't need to optimize the game or downgrade or save any RAM or VRAM. Porting was essentially just adapting the user interface to controllers.

 

 

So a single guy did what the entirety of tfp cant? Also the fact that this game has been in early access for 7 years (all the while being called an alpha) means that the console version was sold as early access as it's also called an alpha by the exact same people. 

[Laz Man]

31 minutes ago, Ralco said:

So a single guy did what the entirety of tfp cant? Also the fact that this game has been in early access for 7 years (all the while being called an alpha) means that the console version was sold as early access as it's also called an alpha by the exact same people. 

Whaaa? One guy did what exactly?

 

Also, I did a quick look and the PC version of SD is not even fully released yet.  Theres actually some controversy over there that the PC version got the shaft and things were rushed to be finished on console instead.  What a horror story...

 

I'm glad TFPs have decided to finish the PC version 1st before trying again otherwise they could have ended up like SD as well...

 

 

 

 

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

Whaaa? One guy did what exactly?

 

Also, I did a quick look and the PC version of SD is not even fully released yet.  Theres actually some controversy over there that the PC version got the shaft and things were rushed to be finished on console instead.  What a horror story...

 

I'm glad TFPs have decided to finish the PC version 1st before trying again otherwise they could have ended up like SD as well...

 

 

 

 

What do you mean with "not fully released"?

 

1 hour ago, Ralco said:

So a single guy did what the entirety of tfp cant? Also the fact that this game has been in early access for 7 years (all the while being called an alpha) means that the console version was sold as early access as it's also called an alpha by the exact same people. 

Great idea. TFP should hire that guy to finish the update. 😆

 

Yes, the console version was based on an alpha-version. But TFP could have done the same, stopped any feature development, polished the game somewhat and sold it on PC. It would still have been an excellent bargain at $20 and comparable in features to some other indie-survival games in that price range.

 

The 7D2D we will get at gold would then either never exist or would be called 7D2D 2

 

 

[Nef]

3 hours ago, Ralco said:

Yet they managed to do it after getting their rights back, you cannot exclude the example that pokes a hole in your statement, they're not console dev's either. But they managed. In fact this example is worse on tfp, they already have the game ported and are unable to support it. Stranded deep had to start from scratch and "spend millions" to port it to consoles after paying to get their own rights back. 

I believe you're missing the point. This is not an example that pokes a hole in my statement, as the two are nothing alike. A PC developer allowing publishing rights to be held by another company who hired a third party team to create a console version of their PC game as they are not console developers, and then said publisher going bankrupt and forcing them to re-buy the rights is not the same thing as a game that was never on console, deciding that after their publisher folded who was promising to pay them, to make a console port of their game for a huge payday. The game wasn't released on console, and thus they hadn't made any money off of it yet from the masses. It seems according to Google it was still in the deal making phases when Telltale folded. So if anything he came out of that arrangement richer, as Telltale was probably negotiating price points and paying for work beforehand. Clearly the company was not strictly a PC only dev, either. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to port it to console themselves. There's just no way. It also appears that it's not just one man, but a team from around the world who comprise the company. Even from the start it was co-founded by two people working together, one of which has a very wide range of skills. He knows every major coding language and knows how to work with PS4, Xbox, Linux, Mac, and Windows. (It's obvious why he's the lead programmer, if you push aside the fact he co-founded the company with Ben Massey. ) Their team looks to be around the size of TFP atm.

To give you an idea. A windows 10 user, make me a Linux technician, it does not. (I can't even open files on that bloody thing, lol) Knowing how to create a C# Unity game for Windows 10, doesn't even mean I know how to make a game in Python or Java for Windows, let alone Mac. They're completely different systems with only loose links to being the same. Sometimes it's as simple as "close, window, and minimize are slightly different and and on the left and different colors and shapes than Windows." But the very filing system is drastically different. I mean take a look at Xbox. It uses some archaic 2001 derivative of FAT32 for storage... That's,... hard to work with. Even when you have someone who knows what they're doing, like IG. This is why 7 Days still has MD5 errors on Xbox.

As Laz Man said, seems it's steeped in controversy as they decided port first, then finish the game on PC. Looks like they rushed the game out as fast as they could onto console while Telltale could still pay them for their time. So now they're basically swimming in money as the game is being sold to the masses, they got paid to make it, and the company that would be taking a large portion of the cut to publish and advertise, are now gone. Basically a win-win all around for the company. Save for the horror story of backlash they received.

And, once again... 7 Days Console Edition is *not* an alpha. Microsoft and Sony have rigorous testing that must be done, and they deemed it was in a complete enough state to be sold as a complete product using one of alpha 14's builds. 14.5, if I recall correctly. This is why the game never entered early access on consoles. Telltale bought the publishing rights, decided they were going to try and sell it as a full product, and Sony and Microsoft agreed that it was stable enough, and had enough content in that build to be considered a complete stand alone package. As such, no update can break save games, as it is NOT an early access, in development, alpha-state game. Console was full release, 1.0, and as such, could not have such hindrances on players. Full release games do not wipe saves. This is one thing that made it hard to want to port over any features, as each new build tends to break the last one. Not only that, but PS4 and Xbox hardware were at their breaking point limits with alpha 14, anyways, even with the performance improvements they added. The game still ran on almost the lowest possible settings with 25-30 FPS, (just stable enough for Sony and Microsoft to give it the green light) and with no distant buildings, and an abysmal view range with blinding fog ever present to mask objects so that the game wouldn't die any time you moved faster than a walk.

Those consoles are physically incapable of running the new engine, on a very hardware-based limit. The most they could even do, is provide a little more of alpha 15 and 16 at the absolute max. But not the whole of 16, as some of that just could not function on current gen. Not even on the pro or the One X.

It is the same issues Space Engineers currently has on console. Took 6 years to port the game, and on the One X you can have 2 players in a MP game, (PC is 16-64) with an incredibly tiny PCU limit... (the limit each player can build. As in blocks, just like 7 Days) Those consoles just aren't built for voxel-based games like this. The sim speed, (simulation speed) often tanks in SE Xbox just from having one small grid ship. (An incredibly CPU and RAM heavy game. 32GBs of DDR4 3200MHz RAM running an XMP profile can run out of memory, lol. No memory leaks, either. It just requires that much memory sometimes.) Just one. My SE server has 70 small and large grid at any given time, and 32 players, lol.

Correction: With latest builds, you're now able to play 2 player split-screen with 2 more on Xbox live. So 4 in total with two split screen consoles on the One X. Oof, with a tether, no less. Just like Ark.

[Ralco]

19 minutes ago, Nef said:

I believe you're missing the point. This is not an example that pokes a hole in my statement, as the two are nothing alike. A PC developer allowing publishing rights to be held by another company who hired a third party team to create a console version of their PC game as they are not console developers, and then said publisher going bankrupt and forcing them to re-buy the rights is not the same thing as a game that was never on console, deciding that after their publisher folded who was promising to pay them, to make a console port of their game for a huge payday. The game wasn't released on console, and thus they hadn't made any money off of it yet from the masses. It seems according to Google it was still in the deal making phases when Telltale folded. So if anything he came out of that arrangement richer, as Telltale was probably negotiating price points and paying for work beforehand. Clearly the company was not strictly a PC only dev, either. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to port it to console themselves. There's just no way. It also appears that it's not just one man, but a team from around the world who comprise the company. Even from the start it was co-founded by two people working together, one of which has a very wide range of skills. He knows every major coding language and knows how to work with PS4, Xbox, Linux, Mac, and Windows. (It's obvious why he's the lead programmer, if you push aside the fact he co-founded the company with Ben Massey. ) Their team looks to be around the size of TFP atm.

To give you an idea. A windows 10 user, make me a Linux technician, it does not. (I can't even open files on that bloody thing, lol) Knowing how to create a C# Unity game for Windows 10, doesn't even mean I know how to make a game in Python or Java for Windows, let alone Mac. They're completely different systems with only loose links to being the same. Sometimes it's as simple as "close, window, and minimize are slightly different and and on the left and different colors and shapes than Windows." But the very filing system is drastically different. I mean take a look at Xbox. It uses some archaic 2001 derivative of FAT32 for storage... That's,... hard to work with. Even when you have someone who knows what they're doing, like IG. This is why 7 Days still has MD5 errors on Xbox.

As Laz Man said, seems it's steeped in controversy as they decided port first, then finish the game on PC. Looks like they rushed the game out as fast as they could onto console while Telltale could still pay them for their time. So now they're basically swimming in money as the game is being sold to the masses, they got paid to make it, and the company that would be taking a large portion of the cut to publish and advertise, are now gone. Basically a win-win all around for the company. Save for the horror story of backlash they received.

And, once again... 7 Days Console Edition is *not* an alpha. Microsoft and Sony have rigorous testing that must be done, and they deemed it was in a complete enough state to be sold as a complete product using one of alpha 14's builds. 14.5, if I recall correctly. This is why the game never entered early access on consoles. Telltale bought the publishing rights, decided they were going to try and sell it as a full product, and Sony and Microsoft agreed that it was stable enough, and had enough content in that build to be considered a complete stand alone package. As such, no update can break save games, as it is NOT an early access, in development, alpha-state game. Console was full release, 1.0, and as such, could not have such hindrances on players. Full release games do not wipe saves. This is one thing that made it hard to want to port over any features, as each new build tends to break the last one. Not only that, but PS4 and Xbox hardware were at their breaking point limits with alpha 14, anyways, even with the performance improvements they added. The game still ran on almost the lowest possible settings with 25-30 FPS, (just stable enough for Sony and Microsoft to give it the green light) and with no distant buildings, and an abysmal view range with blinding fog ever present to mask objects so that the game wouldn't die any time you moved faster than a walk.

Those consoles are physically incapable of running the new engine, on a very hardware-based limit. The most they could even do, is provide a little more of alpha 15 and 16 at the absolute max. But not the whole of 16, as some of that just could not function on current gen. Not even on the pro or the One X.

It is the same issues Space Engineers currently has on console. Took 6 years to port the game, and on the One X you can have 2 players in a MP game, (PC is 16-64) with an incredibly tiny PCU limit... (the limit each player can build. As in blocks, just like 7 Days) Those consoles just aren't built for voxel-based games like this. The sim speed, (simulation speed) often tanks in SE Xbox just from having one small grid ship. (An incredibly CPU and RAM heavy game. 32GBs of DDR4 3200MHz RAM running an XMP profile can run out of memory, lol. No memory leaks, either. It just requires that much memory sometimes.) Just one. My SE server has 70 small and large grid at any given time, and 32 players, lol.

Correction: With latest builds, you're now able to play 2 player split-screen with 2 more on Xbox live. So 4 in total with two split screen consoles on the One X. Oof, with a tether, no less. Just like Ark.

Actually you can disable that fog, allow distance object rendering, and see quite far and move at normal speeds on console many players just don't try to adjust their settings at all. I was having framerate issues until I disabled the fog, I actually haven't had near as many crashes mid game as before, which almost fully nullifies the md5 glitch. Also the it cant break save data argument was already contested as every previous update did so, we couldn't use the same saves at any update. 

 

29 minutes ago, meganoth said:

What do you mean with "not fully released"?

 

Great idea. TFP should hire that guy to finish the update. 😆

 

Yes, the console version was based on an alpha-version. But TFP could have done the same, stopped any feature development, polished the game somewhat and sold it on PC. It would still have been an excellent bargain at $20 and comparable in features to some other indie-survival games in that price range.

 

The 7D2D we will get at gold would then either never exist or would be called 7D2D 2

 

 

I'm so confused by the situation if tfp never wanted to port it why did they agree to it? There are theories as to why but if ports and updates are so expensive as some here claim why bother? 

 

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

Whaaa? One guy did what exactly?

 

Also, I did a quick look and the PC version of SD is not even fully released yet.  Theres actually some controversy over there that the PC version got the shaft and things were rushed to be finished on console instead.  What a horror story...

 

I'm glad TFPs have decided to finish the PC version 1st before trying again otherwise they could have ended up like SD as well...

 

 

 

 

Go check out the steam analytics for this game, over the course of the last few years they've barely managed to average 8k players, until they release an update, meanwhile the consoles average 15-20k daily, the pc version still only averages just short of 19k after an update. The console players are greater with 3 years of no update imagine if instead the pc version had gone 3 years without an update where would the game sit? Probably not anywhere near 10k. Since they cant manage that if they go 3 weeks without an update something does need to be done about this situation. And simply enough if they dont they have to update the store front legally that is a lie by omission. 

[Nef]

3 minutes ago, Ralco said:

Actually you can disable that fog, allow distance object rendering, and see quite far and move at normal speeds on console many players just don't try to adjust their settings at all. I was having framerate issues until I disabled the fog, I actually haven't had near as many crashes mid game as before, which almost fully nullifies the md5 glitch. Also the it cant break save data argument was already contested as every previous update did so, we couldn't use the same saves at any update. 

 

I'm so confused by the situation if tfp never wanted to port it why did they agree to it? There are theories as to why but if ports and updates are so expensive as some here claim why bother? 

 

Go check out the steam analytics for this game, over the course of the last few years they've barely managed to average 8k players, until they release an update, meanwhile the consoles average 15-20k daily, the pc version still only averages just short of 19k after an update. The console players are greater with 3 years of no update imagine if instead the pc version had gone 3 years without an update where would the game sit? Probably not anywhere near 10k. Since they cant manage that if they go 3 weeks without an update something does need to be done about this situation. And simply enough if they dont they have to update the store front legally that is a lie by omission. 

"I'm so confused by the situation if tfp never wanted to port it why did they agree to it? There are theories as to why but if ports and updates are so expensive as some here claim why bother?"

See, I think the end goal was exposure, (and thus money.)

Console market is *way* bigger than the PC market. People may not want to believe that, but even on a fully dead game vs one that gets updated weekly, console often has several volumes more players. 20,000 people are willing to play a dead, outdated version of a game. Simply because most can't afford a PC. The masses get consoles because they're 200 dollars, and not 1,200 dollars. So everyone goes to console. That's where the real money is. It's just that consoles are often really weak because of their price point, so you can't always do what you actually want to do, not only that, everything you do, has to go through overlords first, who often charge you out of the @%$*#!. Now Microsoft no longer charges 40,000$ per patch, (yes they used to do that, every patch, no matter the size, it was a flat fee, which is horrendous for games like 7 Days that get micro-releases and bugfixes constantly) they do still charge quite a bit to deal with them, and they love to go over every inch of your updates before allowing them to go live. I remember one time Microsoft denied a Minecraft updated for *8 months* on Xbox 360.

[meganoth]

33 minutes ago, Ralco said:

 

I'm so confused by the situation if tfp never wanted to port it why did they agree to it? There are theories as to why but if ports and updates are so expensive as some here claim why bother? 

 

Wait, TFP never wanted to port it themselves! Because the owners are PC players and their knowledge is strictly PC. MM actually did develop mods for some other games and was AFAIK games developer for a while before he founded his own company.

 

But licencing the game to some other company (Telltale) that does all the management work, hires a developer (IG), funds the port and then sends over some percentage of the revenue? That is simply free money for no work.

 

In reality they had to do some work because they needed to introduce Iron Galaxy to the sources of the game and answer hundreds of questions..., they also lent telltale a part of the forum (which is not a big deal)

 

That is naturally just specculation on my part. But I don't think TFP ever put one cent directly into the port of the game, that part was completely Telltales show. Licencing deals usually work that way. On the other hand it also meant that Telltale got by far the lions share of the revenue.

 

[Laz Man]

29 minutes ago, Ralco said:

Actually you can disable that fog, allow distance object rendering, and see quite far and move at normal speeds on console many players just don't try to adjust their settings at all. I was having framerate issues until I disabled the fog, I actually haven't had near as many crashes mid game as before, which almost fully nullifies the md5 glitch. Also the it cant break save data argument was already contested as every previous update did so, we couldn't use the same saves at any update. 

 

I'm so confused by the situation if tfp never wanted to port it why did they agree to it? There are theories as to why but if ports and updates are so expensive as some here claim why bother? 

 

Go check out the steam analytics for this game, over the course of the last few years they've barely managed to average 8k players, until they release an update, meanwhile the consoles average 15-20k daily, the pc version still only averages just short of 19k after an update. The console players are greater with 3 years of no update imagine if instead the pc version had gone 3 years without an update where would the game sit? Probably not anywhere near 10k. Since they cant manage that if they go 3 weeks without an update something does need to be done about this situation. And simply enough if they dont they have to update the store front legally that is a lie by omission. 

Lol now I'm confused at to what we are even talking about...

 

...I never questioned the games popularity nor does it matter in this discussion.

[Ralco]

14 hours ago, Nef said:

"I'm so confused by the situation if tfp never wanted to port it why did they agree to it? There are theories as to why but if ports and updates are so expensive as some here claim why bother?"

See, I think the end goal was exposure, (and thus money.)

Console market is *way* bigger than the PC market. People may not want to believe that, but even on a fully dead game vs one that gets updated weekly, console often has several volumes more players. 20,000 people are willing to play a dead, outdated version of a game. Simply because most can't afford a PC. The masses get consoles because they're 200 dollars, and not 1,200 dollars. So everyone goes to console. That's where the real money is. It's just that consoles are often really weak because of their price point, so you can't always do what you actually want to do, not only that, everything you do, has to go through overlords first, who often charge you out of the @%$*#!. Now Microsoft no longer charges 40,000$ per patch, (yes they used to do that, every patch, no matter the size, it was a flat fee, which is horrendous for games like 7 Days that get micro-releases and bugfixes constantly) they do still charge quite a bit to deal with them, and they love to go over every inch of your updates before allowing them to go live. I remember one time Microsoft denied a Minecraft updated for *8 months* on Xbox 360.

I disagree the console market is bigger, unless we count all console sales ever which isn't a real way to check, this game is just bigger on console likely due to the similarities to minecraft. The costs to update a game are a very odd choice, I wouldn't charge for updates as those tend to make players happier and in turn make everyone more money, look at dying light for example, they released updates most companies would have sold as dlc on top of selling dlc, I had such a good experience with the game I was happy to pay for dlc. Alot of people dont think it's a good idea but why not make the "update" into a sizable dlc and sell it for $10, with the right setup they could actually make it a new play mode and the save data issue is gone, I've seen alot of oc players asking about very nitpicky things (the bandits and ziplines specifically) and why they arent in the game, even if the console port never got to A19 in terms of updates I think a few quality of life fixes, fully implementing certain features and bug fixes (funny that one they claimed the md5 glitch was fixed a long time ago) would ultimately make their console base happier and in turn make them feel better about buying a game from this company again, you're correct when you say it's cheaper to go console than pc and they need to think about that if they truly mean to release a game next gen console players arent able to buy each and every game they dont want to be the game that gets passed on. 

 

14 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Lol now I'm confused at to what we are even talking about...

 

...I never questioned the games popularity nor does it matter in this discussion.

It does matter, if you made a product and found out it was more popular in japan by a large margin where are you going to market the most? 

 

14 hours ago, meganoth said:

Wait, TFP never wanted to port it themselves! Because the owners are PC players and their knowledge is strictly PC. MM actually did develop mods for some other games and was AFAIK games developer for a while before he founded his own company.

 

But licencing the game to some other company (Telltale) that does all the management work, hires a developer (IG), funds the port and then sends over some percentage of the revenue? That is simply free money for no work.

 

In reality they had to do some work because they needed to introduce Iron Galaxy to the sources of the game and answer hundreds of questions..., they also lent telltale a part of the forum (which is not a big deal)

 

That is naturally just specculation on my part. But I don't think TFP ever put one cent directly into the port of the game, that part was completely Telltales show. Licencing deals usually work that way. On the other hand it also meant that Telltale got by far the lions share of the revenue.

 

Even if tfp only got $1 from every sale they still made 4 million off the console port. I doubt it was that low if it was they are terrible negotiators all markets including steam take 30%, leaving 70% if you asked for less than 5% you're a fool but that's just what I know from royalty agreements, on console where the game normally sells for $30, 30% is $9 leaving $21 on every sale to be divided. And whether directly or not tfp did technically spend money on the port, it was their code and work time=money, it seems odd to decide not to make the best of a bad situation, like I said above even a small update would be the best thing for us about this game in 3 years and if they feel like they just financially cant do it make some dlc

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, Ralco said:

17 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Lol now I'm confused at to what we are even talking about...

 

...I never questioned the games popularity nor does it matter in this discussion.

It does matter, if you made a product and found out it was more popular in japan by a large margin where are you going to market the most? 

Once again TFPs are PC developers so they have chosen to stick to what their good at.  They have already stated their intentions with another port on next gen consoles...

 

The market could be better in the console side but without the right talent or partnerships it wont matter much.

 

This is not the point of this thread though...

 

Edit: As a gamer, I appreciate them choosing to stick to what they are good at and actually finishing what they sought out to do DESPITE the allure of a bigger pay off in the console marker...I think its selfish/greedy for anyone to want them to change gears and focus on consoles instead of what they are good at.  In most cases, you end up with a unfinished/not fully realized product...  Isn't that one reason we choose to back an indie developer instead of a big development studio backed by a publisher?

 

I understand not wanting to buy the new game on the next gen console...but as a true fan of the genre, wouldn't you want a more feature filled game to play instead of a version with less features/functionality on current gen?

 

 

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Ralco said:

I disagree the console market is bigger, unless we count all console sales ever which isn't a real way to check, this game is just bigger on console likely due to the similarities to minecraft. The costs to update a game are a very odd choice, I wouldn't charge for updates as those tend to make players happier and in turn make everyone more money, look at dying light for example, they released updates most companies would have sold as dlc on top of selling dlc, I had such a good experience with the game I was happy to pay for dlc. Alot of people dont think it's a good idea but why not make the "update" into a sizable dlc and sell it for $10, with the right setup they could actually make it a new play mode and the save data issue is gone, I've seen alot of oc players asking about very nitpicky things (the bandits and ziplines specifically) and why they arent in the game, even if the console port never got to A19 in terms of updates I think a few quality of life fixes, fully implementing certain features and bug fixes (funny that one they claimed the md5 glitch was fixed a long time ago) would ultimately make their console base happier and in turn make them feel better about buying a game from this company again, you're correct when you say it's cheaper to go console than pc and they need to think about that if they truly mean to release a game next gen console players arent able to buy each and every game they dont want to be the game that gets passed on. 

 

It does matter, if you made a product and found out it was more popular in japan by a large margin where are you going to market the most? 

 

Even if tfp only got $1 from every sale they still made 4 million off the console port. I doubt it was that low if it was they are terrible negotiators all markets including steam take 30%, leaving 70% if you asked for less than 5% you're a fool but that's just what I know from royalty agreements, on console where the game normally sells for $30, 30% is $9 leaving $21 on every sale to be divided. And whether directly or not tfp did technically spend money on the port, it was their code and work time=money, it seems odd to decide not to make the best of a bad situation, like I said above even a small update would be the best thing for us about this game in 3 years and if they feel like they just financially cant do it make some dlc

Yes, 5% was a value I had in mind too and that would have been about 6 million if there never was a reduced sale. Since I assume there were sales 4 million might be a number closer to the truth. Naturally now with auction payment and lawyer fees part of that sum is gone again. And that the game still sells is actually something the auctioneer would have priced into the minimum bid.

 

DLC would surely be an idea to get the update (partly?) financed.  Even though I'm sure a part of the players would protest at having to pay for an update that they feel was promised to them. But the biggest deterrents might be technical reasons and the neccessary time to manage this all. We simply don't know looking at it from outside.  

 

[Ralco]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

Yes, 5% was a value I had in mind too and that would have been about 6 million if there never was a reduced sale. Since I assume there were sales 4 million might be a number closer to the truth. Naturally now with auction payment and lawyer fees part of that sum is gone again. And that the game still sells is actually something the auctioneer would have priced into the minimum bid.

 

DLC would surely be an idea to get the update (partly?) financed.  Even though I'm sure a part of the players would protest at having to pay for an update that they feel was promised to them. But the biggest deterrents might be technical reasons and the neccessary time to manage this all. We simply don't know looking at it from outside.  

 

That's why I think if they just cherry pick some stuff they can implement and avoid the rest it would at least help with their image, and would make many players feel alot better about purchasing another game made by them how many of us have been burned by just one game and refused to buy a game made by the developer after that (arkane and the prey 2 cancellation for me) I dont want to see a company lose a massive part of their consumer base over something like this. 

 

2 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Once again TFPs are PC developers so they have chosen to stick to what their good at.  They have already stated their intentions with another port on next gen consoles...

 

The market could be better in the console side but without the right talent or partnerships it wont matter much.

 

This is not the point of this thread though...

 

Edit: As a gamer, I appreciate them choosing to stick to what they are good at and actually finishing what they sought out to do DESPITE the allure of a bigger pay off in the console marker...I think its selfish/greedy for anyone to want them to change gears and focus on consoles instead of what they are good at.  In most cases, you end up with a unfinished/not fully realized product...  Isn't that one reason we choose to back an indie developer instead of a big development studio backed by a publisher?

 

I understand not wanting to buy the new game on the next gen console...but as a true fan of the genre, wouldn't you want a more feature filled game to play instead of a version with less features/functionality on current gen?

 

 

I may be a fan but I'm not a fanboy I won't support a company that seems uninterested in making sure all their fan base is at least content. But I will admit yes I'd rather play a complete game, however if this current trend continues how many players are going to pass up on this (major emphasis here) POSSIBLE next gen release for no other reason than feeling that the company just doesn't care, look at the last year or so of gaming news borderlands 3 was lambasted over its lack of content poor balancing in later levels and all around bs ways of artificially making the game more difficult, I see alot of complaints from the pc side that mirror the last 2 complaints, my fear is that if TFP dont take a step back and look at what their audience is actually saying they won't have an audience as gamers we are very fickle some days we wanna play a hardcore survival game other days we want to play mellow simulators and yes constant updates are one way too keep an audience engaged but if that audience feels those updates are simply trying to make the game less enjoyable what happens then? Also it's not greed to say " look we have a very dedicated player base on this side and we do need to try and make sure they realise we haven't forgotten they exist" that's actually the opposite of greed, greed is what has happened already if the game is too costly to update on console then why did they waste the money getting the rights back? It's so they can try and sell us this game again next gen which is greedy when they up and gave up o. the console port this generation. Yes I know telltale closed but there are more than enough companies who can do updates heck why not let modders do it they've been taking modders ideas and implementing them for years anyway, some of it was very practical stuff (attaching flashlights to guns is a really good example) that's the best idea I can come up with is allow modding on consoles, the mods have to be approved by each platform anyway and the modding community is more than capable to patch certain issues out of the game as is. Plus give us some very much needed quality of life improvements.

[Laz Man]

14 minutes ago, Ralco said:

That's why I think if they just cherry pick some stuff they can implement and avoid the rest it would at least help with their image, and would make many players feel alot better about purchasing another game made by them how many of us have been burned by just one game and refused to buy a game made by the developer after that (arkane and the prey 2 cancellation for me) I dont want to see a company lose a massive part of their consumer base over something like this. 

 

I may be a fan but I'm not a fanboy I won't support a company that seems uninterested in making sure all their fan base is at least content. But I will admit yes I'd rather play a complete game, however if this current trend continues how many players are going to pass up on this (major emphasis here) POSSIBLE next gen release for no other reason than feeling that the company just doesn't care, look at the last year or so of gaming news borderlands 3 was lambasted over its lack of content poor balancing in later levels and all around bs ways of artificially making the game more difficult, I see alot of complaints from the pc side that mirror the last 2 complaints, my fear is that if TFP dont take a step back and look at what their audience is actually saying they won't have an audience as gamers we are very fickle some days we wanna play a hardcore survival game other days we want to play mellow simulators and yes constant updates are one way too keep an audience engaged but if that audience feels those updates are simply trying to make the game less enjoyable what happens then? Also it's not greed to say " look we have a very dedicated player base on this side and we do need to try and make sure they realise we haven't forgotten they exist" that's actually the opposite of greed, greed is what has happened already if the game is too costly to update on console then why did they waste the money getting the rights back? It's so they can try and sell us this game again next gen which is greedy when they up and gave up o. the console port this generation. Yes I know telltale closed but there are more than enough companies who can do updates heck why not let modders do it they've been taking modders ideas and implementing them for years anyway, some of it was very practical stuff (attaching flashlights to guns is a really good example) that's the best idea I can come up with is allow modding on consoles, the mods have to be approved by each platform anyway and the modding community is more than capable to patch certain issues out of the game as is. Plus give us some very much needed quality of life improvements.

I share some of the same worries/fears but don't dwell on it too long, but choose to live in the present and only focus on the things within my direct control.  What I can say for myself is I have enjoyed every moment of the 7d2d PC game development since jumping on board around Alpha 6 and haven't seen anything that would have me doubt the developer's intentions.

 

Could that change?  Sure it can but life is too short for me to worry about such things.  The game has given me so much entertainment over the years for what I paid I guess that is more then enough to make me a happy customer.  Especially when you compare to other horrible Early access attempts like "The Dead Linger"....shudders...

 

Edit: It is my hope that the developers follow through with their intentions do do another port to consoles in the future so that population of gamers can enjoy this unique title just like us PC players.  It will certainly play a factor into whether some customers will purchase future titles (PC or otherwise) from them in the future...

[Ralco]

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

I share some of the same worries/fears but don't dwell on it too long, but choose to live in the present and only focus on the things within my direct control.  What I can say for myself is I have enjoyed every moment of the 7d2d PC game development since jumping on board around Alpha 6 and haven't seen anything that would have me doubt the developer's intentions.

 

Could that change?  Sure it can but life is too short for me to worry about such things.  The game has given me so much entertainment over the years for what I paid I guess that is more then enough to make me a happy customer.  Especially when you compare to other horrible Early access attempts like "The Dead Linger"....shudders...

 

Edit: It is my hope that the developers follow through with their intentions do do another port to consoles in the future so that population of gamers can enjoy this unique title just like us PC players.  It will certainly play a factor into whether some customers will purchase future titles (PC or otherwise) from them in the future...

I don't disagree with that train of thought perse I just wonder how this will affect them in the long run, public image is very important, and if you alienate a massive portion of your fanbase albeit a smaller part of it (4m on consoles 6m on pc) it will hurt your image. Look at bethesda, 76 was a major blow to their image because they cant stop lying, no man's sky was another example of a dev talking too much for their own good, the issue we have with tfp is the opposite. If you add up all the time they've actually talked about the console version on any live stream it's less than 2 minutes, and one of those was "be patient or buy the pc version" which is not an actual answer. Let alone helpful at all. I mean heck remember clare? Our liaison on the console side, she knew how to communicate and now all we have are people attempting to shut down discussion. Yeah some of these threads are useless but the pc side of the forums are littered with repeat threads and less than productive conversations. What this has boiled down to is certain mods deeming console players unallowed to discuss the situation lest it make tfp look bad but what's hurting them worse are these people getting butthurt when we talk about it, for example look how they reacted to someone just wanting tfp to take another look at the console version. Maybe jades ideas are improbable but we won't know by speculation. They need to take a long hard look and really attempt to explain what they can and cant do. 

[SylenThunder]

8 hours ago, Ralco said:

Even if tfp only got $1 from every sale they still made 4 million off the console port.

Let's do some math.

 

TFP likely got about 5% from every sale. After Sony and Microsoft got theirs. 

So the game goes for $30.

Sony and Microsoft take their $3 from the sale. 

5% of $27 is $1.35

$1.35 times 4 million is 5.4 million dollars.

(Also note that after paying publishing fees to Sony/MS and costs to IG, TellTale was likely losing money on this title and not making a single dime.)

 

Now the rights for the console version assets ran up to 10 million dollars, and were purchased by another party. 

It cost TFP presumably at least 10 million dollars plus lawyer fees to get the console rights back.

So at this point TFP is in the hole for around 5 million on the console version. That's in the red.

To continue to work on anything for the current console version it will cost several million more.

 

TFP is not a large AAA company with a bottomless budget. They're an indie group that just lost several million dollars of development funding in order to hold onto the console version so they can continue work on it later after they finish their main title.

[Ralco]

15 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

Let's do some math.

 

TFP likely got about 5% from every sale. After Sony and Microsoft got theirs. 

So the game goes for $30.

Sony and Microsoft take their $3 from the sale. 

5% of $27 is $1.35

$1.35 times 4 million is 5.4 million dollars.

(Also note that after paying publishing fees to Sony/MS and costs to IG, TellTale was likely losing money on this title and not making a single dime.)

 

Now the rights for the console version assets ran up to 10 million dollars, and were purchased by another party. 

It cost TFP presumably at least 10 million dollars plus lawyer fees to get the console rights back.

So at this point TFP is in the hole for around 5 million on the console version. That's in the red.

To continue to work on anything for the current console version it will cost several million more.

 

TFP is not a large AAA company with a bottomless budget. They're an indie group that just lost several million dollars of development funding in order to hold onto the console version so they can continue work on it later after they finish their main title.

You dont take the percentage out of the remainder, 30% of $30 is 9 dollars, 5% of $30 is $1.50, $1.50x4 million is 6 million as stated before, next up is the claim that telltale was losing money on this game when in actuality it was their 2nd highest earning game, after the walking dead season one. Lastly you put forth the assumption that someone else purchased the rights when they actually say in the post on these forums that they got them back at auction. And the last little bit I have to wonder about is how much were they paid for the console rights to begin with, you put forth that the rights for SOME games ran up to 10 million however we cannot say for certain how much 7dtd sold for as it was never listed on the auction listings, before or after, the rights for some games (the walking dead, batman) likely ran up that high but without word from them directly we cannot say for certain, the only reason I know it was never on the auction listings was because we checked, many of us were talking about starting a GoFundMe to help them buy them back. This means the rights were never up for auction and could possibly have been sold directly to another or to tfp. 

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, Ralco said:

I don't disagree with that train of thought perse I just wonder how this will affect them in the long run, public image is very important, and if you alienate a massive portion of your fanbase albeit a smaller part of it (4m on consoles 6m on pc) it will hurt your image. Look at bethesda, 76 was a major blow to their image because they cant stop lying, no man's sky was another example of a dev talking too much for their own good, the issue we have with tfp is the opposite. If you add up all the time they've actually talked about the console version on any live stream it's less than 2 minutes, and one of those was "be patient or buy the pc version" which is not an actual answer. Let alone helpful at all. I mean heck remember clare? Our liaison on the console side, she knew how to communicate and now all we have are people attempting to shut down discussion. Yeah some of these threads are useless but the pc side of the forums are littered with repeat threads and less than productive conversations. What this has boiled down to is certain mods deeming console players unallowed to discuss the situation lest it make tfp look bad but what's hurting them worse are these people getting butthurt when we talk about it, for example look how they reacted to someone just wanting tfp to take another look at the console version. Maybe jades ideas are improbable but we won't know by speculation. They need to take a long hard look and really attempt to explain what they can and cant do. 

Honestly what more is there to be said that hasnt already?  I watched all of the A19 dev streams recently and every explanation from Rick has seened very forth coming and genuine to what happened, why and next steps...

 

...either folks havent seen his responses or simply are in denial and havent moved on yet...

 

Maybe someone needs to edit all of his responses into one easy to watch video for those who missed it for easy reference.

[Ralco]

3 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

Honestly what more is there to be said that hasnt already?  I watched all of the A19 dev streams recently and every explanation from Rick has seened very forth coming and genuine to what happened, why and next steps...

 

...either folks havent seen his responses or simply are in denial and havent moved on yet...

 

Maybe someone needs to edit all of his responses into one easy to watch video for those who missed it for easy reference.

The only video I've seen even close to it was the first response, however my point was they need to actually break it down piece by piece so they themselves can see what needs done, the beat comment I saw on one of their streams was that they should play it on console, just to get a feel for what we have to work with.

[SylenThunder]

23 minutes ago, Ralco said:

You dont take the percentage out of the remainder, 30% of $30 is 9 dollars, 5% of $30 is $1.50, $1.50x4 million is 6 million as stated before, next up is the claim that telltale was losing money on this game when in actuality it was their 2nd highest earning game, after the walking dead season one. Lastly you put forth the assumption that someone else purchased the rights when they actually say in the post on these forums that they got them back at auction. And the last little bit I have to wonder about is how much were they paid for the console rights to begin with, you put forth that the rights for SOME games ran up to 10 million however we cannot say for certain how much 7dtd sold for as it was never listed on the auction listings, before or after, the rights for some games (the walking dead, batman) likely ran up that high but without word from them directly we cannot say for certain, the only reason I know it was never on the auction listings was because we checked, many of us were talking about starting a GoFundMe to help them buy them back. This means the rights were never up for auction and could possibly have been sold directly to another or to tfp. 

I'm sorry but after this, you've lost all credibility. It's a known fact that the bid for the 7 Days assets ran to 10 million. It was listed in the auction, and we were checking on it's status regularly the whole time it was up for auction. It's a known fact that they were purchased by another party, and TFP had to get the assets from that third party after the auction. We don't know the specifics on who the third party was, but this was all discussed openly at the time with as much information as the lawyers would allow to be public.

 

You guys are just here to argue, and aren't really bringing anything useful to the discussion anymore. I'm tempted to just shut the whole console section down completely, but as you are aware, that would be a huge disservice to the community that still cares.

In the end, nothing is going to change. The facts are the facts, and either you learn how to accept them, or go find something else to do. 

[Ralco]

4 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

I'm sorry but after this, you've lost all credibility. It's a known fact that the bid for the 7 Days assets ran to 10 million. It was listed in the auction, and we were checking on it's status regularly the whole time it was up for auction. It's a known fact that they were purchased by another party, and TFP had to get the assets from that third party after the auction. We don't know the specifics on who the third party was, but this was all discussed openly at the time with as much information as the lawyers would allow to be public.

 

You guys are just here to argue, and aren't really bringing anything useful to the discussion anymore. I'm tempted to just shut the whole console section down completely, but as you are aware, that would be a huge disservice to the community that still cares.

In the end, nothing is going to change. The facts are the facts, and either you learn how to accept them, or go find something else to do. 

I lost credibility? You cant do math! And you expect anyone to take you seriously!? You have now changed your story from some games assets ran up to 10m to now 7dtds assets ran up to that, you really want to push console players away? You pc guys shouldn't even be on this side of the forums the console guys aren't allowed to ask about the console version on the pc side, you are easily the most worthless mod these forums have and now that I proved you cant do basic grade school math I'm the one who cant accept reality? We arent bringing anything useful what are you doing? You've done nothing for the last 2 years but cry whenever anyone dares talk bad about tfp, you are the most immature person in these forums even the guys saying they deserve refunds have more tact. You've thrown insane numbers around saying "it'd cost millions to update this game" when that's categorically false $40k isn't millions, I made several suggestions, so did the OP and you and roland both responded with nothing but dismissal you are mods unless were breaking rules please do us all a favor and go away. You're the reason there's so much animosity from the console side of this whole mess. 

[Ralco]

Also I just looked around there is absolutely no information on how much it cost them to regain their rights, not from them not anywhere on the internet. You either have information no one else has or you're making things up to suit yourself. 

[SylenThunder]

6 minutes ago, Ralco said:

You have now changed your story from some games assets ran up to 10m to now 7dtds assets ran up to that

No, You are the one that said some assets.

 

Here is what I said.

1 hour ago, SylenThunder said:

Now the rights for the console version assets ran up to 10 million dollars, and were purchased by another party. 

And the only part of my math that I got wrong was taking the 5% out after Sony/MS pulled their share instead of before.

That amounted to a whopping difference of 500k.

 

So if I stand corrected on that, then TFP is only in the hole by 4+ million instead of 4.5+ million.

 

And where the hell do you get 40k for a console update from? That's close to what it would cost for one single dev from Iron Galaxy. Nowhere near what a full contract with a dedicated team would cost. It also doesn't count the lawyer fees or costs for finding another publisher. We're not talking about something like Sixty Second Shoter here. This is a very complex game with heavy hardware requirements.

[Ralco]

1 minute ago, SylenThunder said:

No, You are the one that said some assets.

 

Here is what I said.

And the only part of my math that I got wrong was taking the 5% out after Sony/MS pulled their share instead of before.

That amounted to a whopping difference of 500k.

 

So if I stand corrected on that, then TFP is only in the hole by 4+ million instead of 4.5+ million.

 

And where the hell do you get 40k for a console update from? That's close to what it would cost for one single dev from Iron Galaxy. Nowhere near what a full contract with a dedicated team would cost. It also doesn't count the lawyer fees or costs for finding another publisher. We're not talking about something like Sixty Second Shoter here. This is a very complex game with heavy hardware requirements.

You're a day and a half behind 40k is what it costs to update a game on console, not including dev cost, no one said they had to rehire iron galaxy in fact had you bothered to read this thread you'd see I suggested hiring a smaller company to do a small one time update to fix a few minor issues, in fact had you bothered to read this you'd have seen more than a little that most of my concern is the company losing alot of money if they dont fix this pr nightmare, and no your other mistake was saying 30% of $30 is $3 when it's actually $9, now percentages arent grade school math so I'll let you pass on that. The long and short of it is they arent in a contract with iron galaxy they can hire a small dev team to fix a few bugs and cherry picked quality of life stuff, this would be the most ideal outcome to improve their image in console players eyes most conaole players arent lurking forums so who do you think the players are blaming? Again this 100% ignores what I said about however much they were paid for the rights. There's no way it was less than 10m they wouldn't have paid that much to get them back otherwise. You were also VERY wrong when you said telltale was likely losing money on this game, if the game cant make a profit on console nobody would want the rights to it on console.