4561

Everything I’ve read about Stardock suggests they don’t operate like this. They don’t have a lot of fat. If the Shacknews story is true, this could be serious.

4562

Brad says that it is true:

http://forums.elementalgame.com/395168/page/1/#2755755

edit: 1st layoffs they have had since the migration from OS/2.

4563

I certainly don’t recollect any announced layoffs after Stardock’s previous games. In fact, they hired up.

4564

The typical reasons for post-ship layoffs boil down to:

The Evil: Having ground the life out of your staff to get something that can ship, you don’t need them anymore, and clean house.

The Painful: Cash flow precludes full staffing. This is generally the case in single-project small studios that cannot afford to have everyone on staff without a contract with milestone payments.

This looks sadly like the latter; the projections mean that the company cannot fund it’s full complement of staff.

[It is worth noting that this is another example of why the ‘‘never change jobs before the game ships’’ mantra is a self-inflicted wound that line developers impose on themselves]

4565

Nope. In fact, he threatened me with banning just for making the same query.

I’ve NEVER come down as hard on them as Brad did in his own self-crucifixion post. As usual, only input from within the echo-chamber is permitted. This game might be great, one day. If it is, it will be in spite of the CEO’s attitude towards constructive criticism, not because of it. Both threads where Brad singled me out are now super-chilly.

Really, attacking those who have supported your company for as long as I have seems crazy to me. Once that paranoia that paying customers (who haven’t demanded a refund) are now ALSO in on the massive “hater” conspiracy starts, it’s pretty hard to overcome, I reckon.

4566

Brad claimed at one time that Window blinds was Stardocks bread and butter. Since the launch of windows 7 it seems that part of the community has dried up and I’m guessing sales have too. Impulse doesn’t seem to be catching on. They may of had a lot riding on this release. Just speculating but if the company has nothing in development for the next year they could be in a really bad ituation if Elemental didn’t sell at all.

4567

My rough, unscientific survey of posts on the elemental forums shows that about a third of them are critical of the game. There is a ton of information there pointing out the many shortfalls and disappointments. There are certainly plenty of unabashed fanbois, but they are hardly alone in there.

You (and a few others) have been posting here, claiming that you were banned there because criticism is not permitted. Clearly, it is permitted. Of course, most of the critiques there are not written with evident rage. Perhaps yours were. I don’t know. But it’s disingenuous to say that you were banned because Stardock won’t allow criticism of its games.

Also, pop down off the cross. You bought a computer game that did not meet expectations. So? Nobody did you or your loved ones bodily harm. If this is the worst thing that happened to you last week, you should be doing the dance of joy at how great your life is. Get your refund and find something nontrivial to obsess about.

4568

I have been tempted a few times to post a giant picture of Jesus on the cross in this thread, but I have resisted thus far.

4569

U mad?

4570

Okay, I’ve had enough. How do I ignore specific users?

EDIT - Ah, found it. Much better.

4571

A little, yes. We have a host of especially whiney gits, like yourself, who appear to have registered here specifically to bitch about one game. You’re not adding anything useful to the forum – we’re already good at complaining.

4572

Maybe you oughta pop down off that cross there, buddy.

4573

Surly Bob can stay.

4574

Almost makes me want to go buy a few copies of WindowsBlinds and Fences. . .

. . . these guys are riding on a lot of good faith from me over GalCiv 2 and their incredible work to fix what was broken in Demigod (one of my favorite games in recent years). Elemental is pretty Goddamn broken and in virtually every way, this was avoidable. . .

. . . but I also hope and pray that they get this sucker fixed up ASAP. I’vebeen one of the more critical owners of the game in this and the other thread, but by God, I want this thing to work, and I want this company–this flawed, misguided, brilliant, creative company–to stick around. Let the haters have their conspiracy theories and assorted bullshit. . . I just want to have games like GalCiv 2 developed and games like Demigod published and platforms like Impulse created.

–

Also, I really appreciate Brad releasing his book. If fantasy that shitty can make it in the market today, my own books have a fighting chance ;)

4575

There isn’t any evidence I’ve seen that is contrary to what you linked earlier, where the explanation was that Elemental probably isn’t going to do well enough to allow them to support two different development teams within the gaming division. So they are letting people go and reducing to a single development team, one that is presumably going to be focused on Elemental for the forseeable future. And given they are apparently going to be giving away the first expansion, that means no new revenue from that and that Stardock is probably planning that they won’t get much more revenue from Elemental sales.

None of that supports the idea that the profitable non-game part of Stardock is having any issues. If Brad is even half smart, he seperates the two divisions and doesn’t expect the non-game revenue to support the games division. This isn’t a not for profit hobby for him, after all.

4576

Guess they’re still not giving refunds, there is a bit more self-flagellation in the dev notes here.

I wonder how much longer it’ll be before people stop preordering stuff, or if having your core fan base be 15-25 year olds is just gonna let development houses be this lazy forever.

4577

I’m not sure where you are getting the “no refunds” thing from. Plenty of people have managed to get them, though some (not all) report being offered only a 75% refund if they aren’t willing to at least allow tech support to try and help them resolve issues. I’d prefer Brad just tell his CS reps to not argue and just give people what they want, but it’s not like they are blanket refusing to give money back.

4578

anything less than 100% is theft

also efb by kerzain on my link there, I’m a little rusty

4579

also fantasy novel astroturfing spotted

Voice O Reason’s comment

Voice O Reason’s profile (look at the link text here)

4580

I preordered the collectors edition. After I requested a refund, i got the ‘go through tech support or only get 75% back’ email. I emailed them back and said a partial refund wasn’t acceptable for an unopened product. I was refunded 100% minus shipping.

The people who aren’t getting all their money back just suck at email.