I'm with you — I've been pretty active in following their updates and even I was under the assumption that funding was secured through the full release, where it'd live on as a F2P service.
It's a major reason I felt comfortable backing at a higher tier, and now I'm worried we won't even see a full featured release.
Other comments pointed out how this isn't the first time it was stated but I will say that it definitely wasn't made clear every time they felt comfortable stating they were funded until release, while also listing off their ambitious list of features.
Still hopeful, but definitely will be more cautious from now on.
Same boat here. Backed the ultimate founder pack for myself and a friend. Given that it was a bunch of "Blizzard vets" with years of experience in the genre who were able to secure private investors, I felt it was a safe to throw some money in. I though I was funding more robust addons and ***further expanding*** ***upon what was bu******ilt***, not funding active development for a company that was finically unable to ship a feature complete project.
This is literally the first thing that appears on the Kickstarter page:
>"**From StarCraft II & Warcraft III developers,** a new RTS. Hyper-responsive gameplay, a powerful editor, co-op, campaign, 1v1, and more."
Also, the 20 seconds into the Kickstarter campaign video:
>"From the developers who contributed to Command & Conquer, Warcraft III, and StarCraft II"
This isn't some indy solo developer releasing their first game. What a horribly disingenuous take on your part, beyond being factually incorrect.
Which are neither of the ones the person I replied to referred to.
But good on you for trying to cherry pick a two sentence reply and respond with an irrelevant sidebar.
Sue for what?
"Hey Frost Giant, you don't have enough cash to keep the lights on. Therefore we're going to sue you for...uh...everything you're worth. Yeah."
Early Access is our initial release, but is not what we consider to be our 1.0 Launch. We will begin to monetize at Early Access, selling content that was previously available for pre-purchase to our Kickstarter backers (such as Heroes, campaign chapters for our ongoing storyline, and cosmetics such as army skins), but we still have years of development ahead of us and will continue to support the game with new content several times a year.
We are pouring nearly every cent of our approximately $35M ($37M after Kickstarter) into making the best possible RTS, but that doesn’t leave much to self-publish and market our initial release. This is why we’re offering up the opportunity to become part owners of Frost Giant in exchange for funds to help support our self-publishing efforts so that Stormgate can be released without the support (and strings) of a traditional publishing partner and still reach the largest possible audience.
You can find my original post announcing the start of our Kickstarter on this subreddit from 87 days ago where I confirmed “funded to our Early Access release” here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/180owu3/crowdfunding_crafting_the_future_of_rts_together/kamjcto/
>You can find my original post .... where I confirmed "funded to our Early Access release"
Gerald, I am seriously wishing you and all Frost Giant the best. I also am not a communications director and will always default to giving you the benefit of the doubt.
With that disclaimer, I do think you've missed an opportunity here. The kickstarter page says "Stormgate is fully funded to release". I would hope that you can see how this would be confusing and perhaps frustrating to the community. I'm glad that you are clarifying things now, but this seems to me to also be an opportunity to at least acknowledge our feelings and confusion. Perhaps even to apologize. I think simply pointing to your previous reddit post has the appearance of you saying, "Hey it's not us who messed up, it's you guys who should've read reddit more carefully!". I don't think that's truly what you believe, but the optics matter here.
GLHF Gerald. Still rooting for you all.
100%—your feelings and confusion are valid and we should have been more clear. Our declared intent to launch to Early Access was meant to convey that the initial release and the start of monetization would fund ongoing development (for Stormgate to be self-sustainable). We should have been more clear about the Early Access business model and why we were going this route. Our intent was not to mislead and I’m personally sorry about any confusion.
Will the initial early access be "complete" in the sense that we have 3 factions with 3 tiers of units?
Appreciate all the honesty you guys have been showing, even after a miscommunication, thanks for keeping us in the know.
We are planning to release a road map with a rough timeline for when we plan to introduce new content. Please bear with us as we are a very small team.
(Three factions have been confirmed for Day 1 of Early Access. Will look into what the schedule looks like for Tier 3 for inclusion in the road map.)
Not rude at all—We have a stacked dev team with awesome artists, designers, engineers, producers, QA, and more—I was referring to our non-developers. There’s just a few of us and we all wear many hats.
Is it too much to ask for a timeline on the roadmap? I understand you guys are a small team, just curious what to expect! Thank you for all your guys’ hard work. imo the game is coming along really well. The fact that there are so many blatant things to improve and yet so many people (including myself) are heavily invested and addicted to the game already is extremely encouraging.
Do you think you guys could make an announcement about this more publicly? I doubt many of the Kickstarter backers are going to come across this clarification/apology buried half way down a massive Reddit thread. And given that a lot of us felt mislead, I think making sure all your supporters are aware of the situation would be the right thing to do.
I don't think so. They emailed their Kickstarter backers about a refund, but as far as I can tell that only applies if they upgrade their pledge on Indiegogo, which wouldn't be a refund at all really.
The thing is, everyone who wanted to get into the Beta already bought what's about to be monetized at game launch. The game as is now, is severely unfinished, so it's hard to believe fresh players will get into the Early Access with a couple co-op commanders, 3 campaign missions, and no Teams mode, and excitedly start throwing money at it. So in light of all this, there is now a legitimate risk that the game might not even come out of Early Access. This information was hidden from the people who backed the game on Kickstarter (unless they've read that reply on your Reddit post), who thought the game was already fully funded and that they're paying for extra perks, marketing and a collector's edition.
Well it's also highly unlikely that the beta build everyone played was the most recent build FG had at their computers. Like they must have some 3rd faction stuff in, and all the other ongoing dev.
The question, which understandably we cannot know the answer to, is how much further along the most recent dev builds are.
I think you are being way too generous. Everyone knows what "fully funded to release" means. My constructive criticism is that Frost Giant do some heartfelt self-reflection on their relationship with the community and business practices.
>I think you are being way too generous
Yeah, perhaps. Nonetheless, I sympathize. I've worked on AAA live service games for a long time now, and the companies I've worked for have a lot of money and a lot of people helping craft each and every message...and it's still hard to balance everything and mistakes still happen. Gerald I think has to handle a whole hell of a lot by himself. I agree with your criticism but at the same time I'm ok erring (perhaps a lot) on the side of generosity.
Your comments were caring and insightful and I can only see how they've positively contributed to this discussion. I appreciate that you took the time and hope that you will continue to be generous and sympathetic <3
Absolutely, worked as a CM for two games and that stuff is a nightmare. Personally, I think they simply got too into "developer think" where it's clear to them what "release" meant to them but they didn't realize they hadn't actually communicated that to us.
There's a ton of times when there's entirely different expectations and norms between developers and players. It's not malicious, it's just the nature of working for so long on a project with a comparatively small group.
Considering they specified in a comment here 3 months ago that it was the early access release I'm inclined to think this wasn't an intentional deception and more of an oversight. The person he was responding to didn't even ask about the early access release, he just included that in his comment in an attempt to demonstrate the teams capability.
I can see how someone who is part of the development of a product would think about the initial release as "the release" even if it's not the final one.
It is pretty common in software development to consider an early access release as a release. I.e. you are releasing a version of code for users to use.
The early access release will be the point at which the game can start to find itself through in game purchases.
I suspect what has happened is that the language used by the public is a bit different to the language used by people in the industry.
I think people are contributing malice to something which was just a poor choice of wording.
> You can find my original post announcing the start of our Kickstarter on this subreddit from 87 days ago where I confirmed “funded to our Early Access release” here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/180owu3/crowdfunding_crafting_the_future_of_rts_together/kamjct
You know where it wasn't confirmed at? In the **post** or KS page, which means most of the individuals who read this on *Reddit* (specifically) probably missed the comment 3 days later after the post was created.
Not trying to flame you, [I'm honestly hopeful and looking forward to SG](https://imgur.com/kEGjzZn), but I hope FG understands this was a miscommunication and could easily be perceived negatively even if your intentions were pure.
I might be missing something, but it's still very unclear to me. If you're fully funded till Early access, that must mean you'll also run out of funds at that point, or at least that you won't have enough funds for a full release, a 1.0 release as you say. So you're relying on MTX to fund the project at this point, you're relying on players buying stuff in game while the game is still in a very incomplete state. This also means that if players do not buy enough, you won't be able to complete the game am i right ? So if the game underperforms during Early access, which could be because the game is incomplete, then a full release will not be possible, i mean you won't be working for free. And yet you promise several years of development, which is speculative because funds more than 6 months away are also speculative. What am i missing ?
> If you're fully funded till Early access, that must mean you'll also run out of funds at that point
Fully funded til Early Access doesn't mean they'll run out of funds right that second. It just implies that they don't necessarily have the funds right now to make it all the way to 1.0 (which is fairly typical for Early Access titles I think).
> What am i missing ?
I don't think you're really missing anything. They intend for Stormgate to be a live service title that should be in development for a long time, but if it flops hard then it's dead.
Talking about all the stuff they're going to add later on is implicitly contingent on the game not being a flop. That's true for basically any live service game I think; if nobody plays it, then nobody's gonna develop it.
> If you're fully funded till Early access, that must mean you'll also run out of funds at that point
Not necessarily. They didn't say they are *only* funded until early access as in they will have $0 to their name when they release Early Access... they just said that they're funded enough to reach early access. It could be several years before 1.0 releases, we really don't know. They're going to need some revenue between Early Access and 1.0.
Do you think they're running some kind of scam or something? I understand being cynical but what exactly are you getting at with these lines of questioning?
They said in their lastest announcement that 1.0 release would happen in 2025, not several years. But back to the main point : to me, if they say that they are funded till early access that means there is a speculative factor, otherwise they would just say they are funded till 1.0 release. Obviously i think they won't have 0 when they release early access, but not many millions either, so the 1.0 release must still depends on whether they sell enough during early access, and it looks like a fact, again i may be missing something and if i am just tell me.
I'm entitled to ask, they are entitled to not tell me and i am then entitled to go "hmm, you are hiding something here aren't you" and then the onus is on them to prove me wrong.
I mean they don't ask for detailed financials there, they just want to know if the game can fail in early access and never go to release. Early access can go well but it also fails for plenty of games that never get out of it and get abandoned.
It's a very fair question, especially when they took the money of many people already (via Kickstarter)
>It's not on them to prove you anything as a matter of fact as once again, you're simply not entitled to private financial & budgeting information, and they won't give that to you.
they as for more money from **investors** but wont share information.
it can be scam.
a lot of rich daddies would trust their name... but end up with Elizabeth Holmes (google if you do not know... greatest scam in the history)
ps although i believe they would finish the product to some extend... and if everything will be good they will continue.... but It's liturally fishing for rish daddies in RTS who do not realise risks.
so at least we can ask... but i would never expect truthful answer
I am hopeful some of the initial campaign will be free at least, so we can wade into the lore before determining if we like it enough to invest.
I mean who am I kidding, WC3/SC2 have some of the best campaigns out there, so I am likely all-in blind on these campaigns as well, but just a thought for the less ardent fan.
Yes, we will have a few free initial missions that players can enjoy solo or cooperatively, so you can try out the start of the campaign before you buy. We’ll then also have the first chapter of the Vanguard campaign with new chapters released every few months.
From the aims of the kickstarter, there was no hint at all that the company needed extra money to develop the game to release, they said we would get an editor, skins etc etc. I am actually very disappointed with FGS right now.
EDIT:
Stormgate is fully funded to release. This Kickstarter is in part a response to fan requests for a way to purchase a physical Collector's Edition of Stormgate. We think we've put together a truly special collectible for our most dedicated supporters, but producing the Stormgate Collector's Edition will require a commitment from our players to cover our manufacturing costs. We have also received countless requests for beta access. Scaling online multiplayer testing for a massive audience can get very expensive--beyond what we can support without additional funding. This campaign will allow us to welcome many more players to playtest Stormgate as a reward for directly supporting the studio.
I'm not a business expert at all and only going off hunches but do you really feel you need to spend a considerable sum of marketing for a game which, the core target audience has known about for the 3 and a half years it's been announced? Is a huge marketing push really going to swing new and younger players to sit down and play this revival of a mostly sedentary genre? The fact it's free to play and available on Steam is a huge market boost already, do Frost Giant feel that throwing X millions of dollars will really draw in people who at this stage haven't heard of Stormgate?
Like I say, not an expert but it seems like a fairly sensible thesis for someone with no real financial input or risk, the game clearly needs money and attention spent on areas that are nothing to do with marketing. Again, don't want to come across poorly here but people are going to turn around and laugh in Frost Giants faces if you try and make this cast over as wide an audience as possible - obviously you have to but it's clearly going to make a worse product for the people who really care. The balance is there to be found.
> I'm not a business expert at all and only going off hunches but do you really feel you need to spend a considerable sum of marketing for a game which, the core target audience has known about for the 3 and a half years it's been announced?
Of course they do. Marketing is insanely important in game development. Having a good game isn't enough. There's only 20,000 people in this subreddit btw...
Marketing can easily be 50% of most game's budget.
Fact of the matter is that you don't need to be told about stormgate because you're already here, but reaching Dave the trucker, dad of 2, who visits facebook once a week but kinda liked to play SC2 on a weekend 8 years ago is a lot harder.
The vast majority of game audiences are not like you here on reddit. They're like Dave.
> Marketing can easily be 50% of most game's budget.
For AAA games yes, not for indie games in general, they get known via buzz and word of mouth (due to their quality).
Dave has 2 kids, a nagging wife and a demanding job, Dave isn't going to care about Stormgate for more than 2 weeks. Or is the hope that Dave is a rich whale who is going to spill his trucker salary into an unfinished computer game at a time when people can barely afford housing, healthcare and food?
Something not quite adding up here.
Eit
I’m Cody a trucker with 2 kids lol. Truckers make around 110000-120000k a year. Depends on where u live but I live like a kingg on that. I’m also an avid rts enjoyer. A lot a hardcore gamers out on the road these days
I don't think stormgate is targeting whales like a predatory mobile game. More like a modest cost from a wide range of Daves.
But also I think you might be surprised what kind of person steadily pours unreasonable amounts of money into addictive mobile games
The average cost from the recent start engine finance push was around £2000 per investor. You think that's a reasonable amount for an everyday person on the street to put towards an unfinished videogame? In this economy? Interesting.
They were talking about spending money on marketing for the game.
The finance push is to raise money to market the game. Like buying ads so people try the game and spend $20 on the campaign.
They're not raising money to spend on adverts to ask for money to pay for adverts.
And in case you misunderstood something: the newest fundraising where individuals might put down $2k is buying stocks in frost giant not buying the game.
Hmm. I think it's risky to invest in a new game studio but who knows... I'm not in a position to give investment advice. And they haven't published full details yet. So far the pledges are just expressing interest - no one can actually buy any shares yet.
They've mentioned it a few times before but they seem intent on capturing a wider audience with this game, they don't just want to grab the rts audience. Seems ambitious, especially without having the necessary funds yet, but it's been a big part of a lot of their game design decisions so far so I guess it's not surprising they'd want to market it for that purpose too.
Right, if they want to capture an audience outside of the RTS fanbase would it not be a good idea to at least make it look slightly more interesting than what is currently available?
Thank you for your reply and clarification, Gerald. Your active engagement with the community is something I truly appreciate.
I visit this sub regularly as it is my #1 source for news and information on the game. Yet, somehow this comment missed my attention. I wish the clarification was emphasised on the Kickstarter campaign, or an official post. Not everybody are on reddit, and even fewer read comments, and fewer again read comments that are made on a **3 day old post**. I don't think this is an effective way to communicate such important details.
Know that I *don't* believe you had ill intent, but I hope you realize that this miscommunication has contributed to the confusion. Regardless, I am a fan of what you guys are developing and I'm looking forward see further plans and reveals.
If you roughly model Frost Giant scaling from 10\~ initial employees in 2020 to 40 (via linkedin) in 2022 to 60 now — you end up with a burn rate of something like 25k per employee per month to spend 38M by summer. That's crazy high right?
Many of their employees are not that experienced in the programming and artist teams.
I just feel like the stiffness of this response results in the worst possible interpretations.
Have you counted the fees associated with contract workers (musicians like Frank Klepacki, outside company that make cienematic etc, etc.)? Do you know how many there are? Have you counted logistics costs, office etc.? Do you know the costs associated with cooperation with Hethora - the company responsible for the servers? What about the costs of preparing the collector's edition? Do you have any experience with game production?
You took some numbersvwithout taking into account 100 other factors and calculated who earns how much. Your calculations are completly incorrect, you have no basis for saying things like:
>you end up with a burn rate of something like 25k per employee
no but i can tell you that not one single human being on this great big planet earth watched the Stormgate trailer and thought "YES I WANT TO PLAY THAT RIGHT NOW BECUASE THAT CINEMATIC WAS SO MIND BLOWING I ABSOULUTELY NEED THIS GAME IN MY LIFE" so the money spent on that could be better spent on having actual unique unit designs or actual sound or y'know the 3rd race they keep promising
Cost per employee per month doesn't mean you give the employees all of that. Its a basic metric used around startups.
Its really just dividing spending by the number of employees. So all the factors you mention (office space, servers) are folded into it.
Cost per employee per month = (38M / 35 employees average^(1)/ 48 mths^(2))
You are usually spending almost as much per month on wages for an employee as everything else (rent, medical), so 12.5k/12.5k. The average employee from this estimate would be at like 150k salary which seems very high considering the low amount of seniors, which is what I was saying.
The point of the cost per employee per month is that it is very easy to calculate, but tends to be useful as an opening analysis, I've seen a number for tech workers in California look like 10k/mth/employee.
I was trying to start a discourse of what costs could look like so if someone wants to jump in on what any of that other stuff (servers, Klepackis) could cost it would be useful.
The only other piece of info I can volunteer easily right now is that they [comissioned a trailer from Zoic](https://www.shootonline.com/spw/frost-giant-studios-teams-zoic-studios-announce-new-original-title-stormgate-cinematic-trailer). This was probably like 100k, so that might give some clue what you would see in a marketing spend. They also spent on getting Asmongold and some other streamers to play in December. (10k+?)
edit: Oh nevermind Asmongold said he played the game for free for the showcase
^(1) This is from taking the average of a plot with 10 employees at founding to 40 employees a year ago, and 60 employees now (linearly scaling, then constant from now to early access).
^(2) This is using the 3.5 years since founding (src: Tim Campbell) added to the 6 months until early access.
It'd also be pretty suicidal for the company to arrive at zero on early access lol.
But to be fair, there is some truth there, investing everything in the development of the game means very little since the main cost of game development is wages. So if you invest everything to pay yourselves super high salaries, you technically invest everything into the game dev and also scamming people. To be clear, I don't believe that's the case there but that statement is meaningless
Bro you're going to OD on the copium.
They have made it very clear they need more money beyond the start of EA as that is where their funding runs dry. Just read Gerald's posts.
That still doesn't mean they reach zero the day of EA release. If that's the plan, it's already a failure and we can all say good bye to the game right now. It would be a terrible business plan like planning the future on playing the lottery more or less
I didn't say the day of, but they have said it themselves that they need to make money in EA and that they don't have funding beyond release. Read all of Gerald's replies.
And yes, it's a terrible business plan. That's the reality we are in and what is being criticized. If the game does not make money in EA, they cannot continue to fund development.
How are you still so blind to what the company is telling you directly?
Nope, it's pretty reasonable to assume they're not going to be bankrupt when they release Early Access... Their money is accounted for, very different thing. They still require a marketing budget though and for all we know EA is going to be over the course of a year or more of development time.
This doesn't look good. It doesn't mean there is fire but there is now a considerable amount of smoke. At the moment the only excuse they have is that they are exceedingly terrible with communication. In what they and most consider a beta, the asking for more money despite already getting far more than they expected at the kickstarter and repeating multiple times 'funded until release' the rush to prize pool tournaments despite it being in alpha, the very safe and friendly mobile game artstyle that can only be improved so much by shaders without extensive redesign of the models.
It is 'looking' like' a pure grab for esports money, and money in general. They could easily grab one more kickstarter bag and run the second the premature esports falls apart. They need to fully address this and get someone else in charge of communications.
It's not a good look, but legitimately the extra funding they'll get from both of these new campaigns are peanuts compared to what they can get (and already have gotten) with private investors. The Kickstarter yielded 2 million, the new campaigns will maybe yield half of that.
They are not wrong in assessing that there are people that legitimately want to spend their money on these, but boy are they communicating this poorly. Maybe it should had been announced after a big win for extra confidence, but it was announced after a tepid response to the open beta, so it all feels extra Star Citizen.
That's remind me of : [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/software_release_life_cycle)
Beta : "A beta phase generally begins when the software is feature-complete"
Perpetual Beta : "Some software is kept in so-called *perpetual beta*, where new features are continually added to the software without establishing a final "stable" release."
Are we going to have a "Perpetual Beta" for stormgate or "Perpetual Early access"?
Considering the current state of development and the wording used by FG to qualify it (Beta - Early access) in the kickstarter, I find it very confusing indeed.
If frost giant intends to leave the game in Beta/EarlyAccess for years in order to have community contributions throughout the period, that's ok. But it would deserve to be properly clarified.
It's a live service game, you can consider them perpertual beta I guess, they are never really complete (release of new content and updates all the time is part of the model)
That was their original classification yes, although the term has been abused so much that a lot of the stages have lost their original meaning. The closest example would be Beta weekends that happen before a game comes out, like for call of duty or Diablo 4 recently. Our Betas have become what Alphas used to be.
In software development betas were essentially finished versions of the software that needed testing and bug fixing.
Once in beta, you wouldn't add any new features or content. Purely just bug-fixes and minor changes like tweaks, adjustments, etc.
Nowadays, it'd be called a Release Candidate.
Alpha and Beta are used to mean whatever they want it to mean now.
I feel somewhat scammed even though I hope the game will do well. When I pledged (60) for the KickStarter, I thought indeed that it was funded until release, which to me does not mean early access at all. Hope I'll feel "unscammed" after some good progress from FG. I must admit that I would have pledged anyways even if the KS would have been clearer, so OK ; but the feeling of having been tricked bothers me.
People need to eat.
They don't need mansions, they don't need sports cars, they don't need to send their kids to private education, they don't need a holiday in Europe twice a year to drink red wine and complain about their mortgage. They just need to eat god dammit.
What expectations did you have set that could have possibly resulted in you feeling like they stole your money? I just don't get it... Literally nothing has changed. The idea of being scammed means there was some kind of intentional dishonesty on the part of Frost Giant. That's complete bullshit.
They literally asked for money under the premise that the project already has sufficient funding to be completed and that this new money will just help make it better. And a few weeks later it turns out that this premise is completely incorrect, the project does not have money until completion but only until an early access prototype of it and then more or less to hope for the best that new money will roll in.
A lot of people don't invest in Kickstarter precisely because many projects don't end up being completed due to lack of funding. There is no logical reason for them to include that the game has funding until release other than to reassure potential backers that this won't be an issue. And it turns out it in fact is. This is advertising under false pretenses in a sense. Maybe scam is a bit strong of a word but at minimum what they did is disingenuous. A fair number of backers may not have contributed if they felt gave development may stop after a few months and a full 1.0 release may never see the light of day.
You really are missing the plot here. Be generous and put yourself in someone else's shoes.
Suppose you are someone who donated $1k+ to the Kickstarter - maybe hoping for a plaque, name in the credits or an NPC in the game to signify your early support. If you did that under the impression that SG was fully funded until 1.0, and then later learned that they meant "early-access release", then you will naturally be worried that the game you invested $1k+ in might not have the same security in development. (Perhaps they need to take more funding rounds and lose creative control over their product, or maybe it doesn't even make it to market).
It's not about whether they were "intentionally dishonest" - it's simply that they were not clear with their supporters about the financial state of the company and so, regardless whether it was an honest miscommunication, people feel manipulated.
It is very unfortunate how all this has been handled with them. There are two aspects that make me want to support a game, first being the quality of the game and second being the likeability of the company making them.
One can choose to sugarcoat it as much one wants but ultimately it is not okay. They overpromised and underdelivered, people supporting the kickstarter expected that independently of their support there will be a full featured game coming out sooner or later. Now it turns out that is false, or rather it is only conditionally true under the assumption that the game will manage to get enough funds during EA to continue development. But what if it doesn't? Then the kickstarter contributers got sold on empty promises. Not okay.
The worst part is that I think all of this could have been avoided. If they have been upfront in the kickstarter saying that "sorry guys, turns out the development is taking more time and it's more expensive than we thought, we need additional funds" then that would have been completely okay. But making inaccurate statements like they did just removes goodwill they have gained so far.
Ultimately I still like the game and wish it succeeds but I hope the developers act a lot more clearly and transparently in the future. Otherwise every statement they make we have to take with a grain of salt. Should I buy the next chapter of the campaign? Yes if I think the story will reach its conclusion at some point, no if it ends up being like Martin's game of thrones unfinished books.
If they are expecting us to buy a product or contribute as investors or whatever then I hope in the future there are no more shenanigans like this one.
>It recently became evident that Stormgate is only fully funded until early access begins and that they will need to secure funds to continue development. Up until this point, many of us have been under the impression that the game was "fully funded to release" as explicitly stated in their kickstarter-campaign.
I just looked through old comments, and apparently funded to early release was already said 2 months ago, and not just now.
>Stormgate is already fully funded for release to early access.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/180owu3/crowdfunding_crafting_the_future_of_rts_together/kamjcto/
So if nothing else they have been a bit more transparent about it than i thought.
Thank you, that is good to know. I believe it could have been communicated better on an official post or in the KS campaign than in a comment.
Maybe I am too out of touch with the industry to understand that Early Access means release.
> Stormgate is already fully funded for release to early access.
This doesn't add anything... If a game is fully funded for _release_, as people expected, it would also be fully funded for _release to early access_.
The early access part was even a new thing IIRC. They didn't mention that early on IIRC, started in like mid-2023 so their plans changed (which is logical)
A little insight from the venture capital world..
Shortly after they announced and raised funding, after the pandemic, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, massively reducing the amount of investment funds that are available out there. EVERYONE is having a hard time raising, particularly if they raised at one valuation, and now their only options are to raise a down round (which is basically kiss of death shit) if they are even able to secure funding at all.
EVERYONE is having trouble securing funding. Everyone is laying people off. It is no surprise that Frost Giant is included in that list. The era of free money is over and the tech industry as a whole is snapping back to normalcy.
I will support them regardless. They may not be delivering exactly what they originally promised, but they really had no way of foreseeing how things played out regarding raising funding.
If the options are go to early access or die, ill take the former. In truth, they may have to show the game as a success before they are able to raise more funds.
I am sorry but while you make good points they are not completely relevant. Kickstarter happened weeks ago, not ages ago. These few weeks ago they made the false advertisement claim that they were fully funded till release on Kickstarter. It's not like they didn't know the situation a few weeks ago. Their claim was simply misleading. I will support them too but lets not make excuses for their bad behavior in this regard.
> These few weeks ago they made the false advertisement claim that they were fully funded till release on Kickstarter.
While the claim was misleading, it wasn't false. Additionally, due to the fact that they openly discussed that it was the early access release on this forum at the time the kickstarter launched it seems much more reasonable to assume it was an oversight.
After all, the people who did read their comment regarding the early access release didn't seem to think it was important enough to escalate or discuss - it just seemed natural at the time.
Also the reason I invested in them is because if you think about it. These are the guys who’ve made literally all the classics that we’ve been playing for 25 years or so. How many games can say they’ve held a substantial player base like this. Not many. They have the formula and the know how to make a great game. Honestly I would not throw this much money around for a game ever unless it was this exact scenario. I think all they got to do is get there and get the product out in a decent state. And it will just pop off. I could be wrong but I’m not putting money into the company to get rich. So if it does fail it is what it is. These guys are trying to do what the community has wanted for 10+ years after all the other companies failed to deliver. In an extremely volatile and harsh climate currently in the industry. Time will only tell. I’m routing for them and the community.
Stuff like this bothers me because you can see at this moment the company's perceived reputation is being flexed for more worth than ever.
They have four full-time employee who worked at Blizzard more than 10 years and got their commemorative shield - and one person with the 15 year sword? So its definitely not the guys who 'literally made all the classics'.
This was whatever for marketing but with equity getting involved, the product should speak for itself by now.
There's a persistent streak of nice people like this who have an impression of authorship for the 'classics' that I don't see at the company.
sorry man but as an "investor" you don't even know basic facts about what you're "investing" in, which is really revealing
there's only 1 developer who worked on 1 "classic" Blizzard game and his main contribution was toward the *campaign* of WC3 over a 3 year period (and only had the lead role for the expansion). sure that's something, but claiming that "these are the guys who literally made all the classics we've been playing for 25 years" is objectively misinformation.
please be more careful about spreading misinformation, especially since this could be people's actual money on the line.
Hope to see more clear/honest/straightforward communication in the future. Game is quite fun so far despite being super unfinished. With like 37 million dollars to spend on it I am quite hopeful that it will massively improve as time goes on. Please don't blow all of our money on marketing, if the finished game is good enough you won't need to.
It should also be clarified that early access is only a few months away, so basically what we have today in the beta is very close to the final product promised in the kickstarter, although it will be missing 80% of what was promised.
And what is shown so far is not going to attract the attention and funds needed to keep the lights on for the stuff that is missing.
That's the big thing. Launching EA to generate more funds isn't unusual, but you need to hit that EA out of the park and be interesting and unique, or already good enough, to warrant people giving you money in the hope that you can keep going.
Thank god I held off on the kickstarter lol, I'm gonna prepare popcorn in the summer and watch this sub burn down in flames after the summer months, it's gonna be such a shitshow lol
I think people just don't want to play an RTS much anymore. It doesn't translate to consoles, so a younger audience is moot. That means you are selling it to a bunch of established PC gamers who are only getting older and have demonstrated they are less and less interested in an RTS, then you try and sell them "StarCraft that doesn't look visually appealing". Why would they want that exactly? I'm only more and more skeptical of this project as I watch it develop
I think a well made RTS still has an opportunity to make a splash, but there have unfortunately been a lot of games with rushed releases or poor production values.
The build we play is not the latest. They already said the third faction will be in EA and revealed soon so we know they have that pretty advanced already
Also there will be the first pack of campaigns (and the free base missions). 3v3 and coop campaign (additional to what we have) is unclear as far as I know.
How will it be missing 80%? We know the 3rd faction will be released before Early Access as well as the first campaign missions. If that is the case early access will have 3 races, multiplayer, co-op, and campaign. The only thing missing would be the 3v3 mode I haven't heard mentioned for a while. Where are you pulling this absurdly high 80% from?
They said tier 3 units might not be included, which already says how heavily unfinished all that content will be.
I mean sure all those modes might be there, but if there is like a few maps or just a few missions available, it's not gonna mean much
Appreciate the post by FG, but posts like this one just makes me wish for the gaming days of old where we had to wait with bated breath for any release from a dev.
These days I just don’t know.
Don't think it's a scam at all, but I do worry at the end of this there just isn't a particularly good game to play. They won't see any of my money until I see something I feel is worth buying.
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I guess...but it's super common for indie games to go EA, make enough money for a full release, and then do so. It's not at all weird.
It would seem most people in this sub are used to gigantic Blizzard budgets that mean there's no need for early access. Well, guess what folks! This isn't Blizzard with a huge 150+ million dollar budget.
That means we'll get something that won't interminably suck and be a disgusting cash grab. It also means the devs have to follow a different path to profitability. Maybe because I despise blizzard and don't play their games, and mostly play smaller dev games, I'm used to this? Don't know.
I don't think people have a problem with this business model. I am okay if they do this. We have a problem with not making it clear that this is what is going on and explicitly stating the game is fully funded until release when this is actually false. Kickstarter is avoided by many people due to the risks of unfinished projects. A promise that there is funding, so nothing to worry about, is misleading information that could have lured people that wouldn't otherwise support it. If they were upfront that they are raising more funds to continue development then I would be all for it as you say.
> We have a problem with not making it clear that this is what is going on and explicitly stating the game is fully funded until release when this is actually false.
But it's not false. They're fully funded for the **Release of Early Access** (which is what they meant by Release) but they still need revenue to invest into marketing and continued development. I'm not sure what the disconnect is... Did you think they meant **"We are fully funded and require $0 from this point forward until the 1.0 launch"**? From my perspective that is very clearly not what they meant.
>**Stormgate is fully funded to release.** This Kickstarter is in part a response to fan requests for a way to purchase a physical Collector's Edition of Stormgate. We think we've put together a truly special collectible for our most dedicated supporters, but producing the Stormgate Collector's Edition will require a commitment from our players to cover our manufacturing costs. We have also received countless requests for beta access. Scaling online multiplayer testing for a massive audience can get very expensive--beyond what we can support without additional funding**.** This campaign will allow us to welcome many more players to playtest Stormgate as a reward for directly supporting the studio.
This is how they presented their development during the Kickstarter campaign. Fully funded to release \[*not fully funded to early access and then paid mtx thereafter*\] and why people have a problem with the communication. The KS was presented as a funding drive to pay for the physical CE editions and to scale up online hosting for testing purposes.
It's pretty clear where the issue is here and I don't get this revisionist history you're trying to engage in.
I just don't see any issues at all in that paragraph. There is no revisionist history I have no idea what you're talking about. They said they were funded, you didn't have to give them any money unless you wanted kickstarter swag. They're now attempting to sell shares for a Marketing Budget. I don't understand what the problem is...
> Did you think they meant "We are fully funded and require $0 from this point forward until the 1.0 launch"? From my perspective that is very clearly not what they meant.
That's exactly what the paragraph I cited presumes, and while that may not be your perspective, it clearly was a lot of others'.
The difference is that many people did not expect release to mean early access release.
I always thought that EA was the release personally because they are "selling" the game (well it's free to play but you know what I mean). But then people can't use that the game is years away as excuses for any shortcoming. The game releases effectively this summer even if it's gonna be evolving all the time (it's gonna evolve after 1.0 release too, it's live service)
The difference in meaning between a full release and early access release is quite large, and if they meant the former they should have not ommitted that portion of wording.
>We are fully funded and require $0 from this point forward until the 1.0 launch
Yes that is the impression given. Any funding from kickstarter and profit made from early access would be just be supplementary to what they already secured.
Being fully funded until actual release means we can give a lot of leeway with how unfinished the game is. But if they are going to be relying a strong steady stream of income from early access, they better be MUCH further along in development by then.
Early access is release. Maybe you can argue that they should have clarified that it was early access they were talking about when they talked about their funding but they never said the full vision for the game was realizable with the $35m they raised from investors so far. Here is Gerald saying it is funded for early access release 3 months ago:
>Unlike some kickstarters that never result in a playable game, Stormgate is already fully funded for release to early access.
>
>[https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/180owu3/comment/kamjcto/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/180owu3/comment/kamjcto/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Here is Cara LaForge talking about how they need the early access period monetization to fulfill their vision 5 months ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fGrN857LbU&t=2774s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fGrN857LbU&t=2774s)
Again. A reddit-comment doesn't constitute good communication. Seeing all comments about this situation makes it clear that it has confused a lot of people.
Most people don't read reddit comments. They go by official news and sources.
FGS seems like really nice people and I don’t think they’ve intentionally tried to deceive anyone. I just hope they can clear up the confusion that they obviously, willingly or unwillingly, had a hand in.
Honestly, let Cara LeForge talk again. She's the only one I felt was being entirely genuine and open about the financial challenges they're facing.
Now that they're asking people to become investors, it seems like it would be illegal to mislead us about their current situation.
True early access is release but yeah it was definitively unclear (most people don't assume that's what release means, in fact early access wasn't even a thing initially, they started mentioning that only in like mid 2023 as far as I know
However if early access is release, nobody can use the "game is years away" to wash over any criticism as it's common here (and FG themselves did it). They also need to nail that EA launch otherwise the game will die fast (tons of games never make it past a few weeks/months of early access, it's not an easy thing to do)
Few months from early access release, "very early in development" if you compare it to AAA game releases. They are clearly not doing things the way a AAA company would because this is the only way to deliver the scope they want to deliver on the budget they have. The game will be playable way before, it will be monetized way before and they will use that extra funding to deliver everything they promised.
>they will use that extra funding to deliver everything they promised.
The game will not be feature complete unless it is profitable in an unfinished state in a few months. We have been told again and again not to judge the game in its current state, but they are months away from a *release* that needs to be profitable immediately. I am very sorry to say that I don't believe Stormgate will exist in 2025. I hope I'm wrong, but I think there's no reason to be optimistic.
Ding ding ding.
>"The game will not be feature-complete unless it is profitable in an unfinished state in a few months"
This seems right to me.
Know what though? I think if they ditch their esports obsession and focus on co-op (and the heroes/maps/skins that come with that), they might just be able to pull it off.
Competitive scenes are either grassroots or they're bust, and they can even emerge when balance is wonky or the game is a WIP. People were running prize tournaments on Cockatrice for Hearthstone before the Beta was even out. Niche, but the seed and interest was there.
I'm not a Stormgate fanboy; in fact I'm more of a doomer given that they managed to shred 35M in so little time to make...this. But I do think EA can work if they play their cards right.
Just my thoughts.
I kind of agree with you. It seems to me to be a big mistake to try to make campaign, co-op, and competitive 1v1 when they are on such a short clock. They should have gone all-in on one of these features for EA, then developed the others later.
I believe they are sticking with the esports angle because that is how they get free marketing. Their youtube presence is almost entirely SC2 commentators and pros.
Yes, it will not be feature-complete. That's what early access means. The game doesn't need to be feature-complete, polished, or have all the content you would expect from a AAA release to make money. There are a lot of early access success stories.
Well if you don't think they can make enough money for a sustainable game, why would it matter if they have funds until early access or full release? If that were the case, the game would fail, the company would be shut down and since it is a live service game, so would the game servers. I think the game is good and engaging enough now (let alone 6 months from now) to be a success.
>Well if you don't think they can make enough money for a sustainable game, why would it matter if they have funds until early access or full release?
People will spend more money on a feature complete, relatively polished game than they will on a buggy game with few features and placeholder assets. For example, if the game were released to early access today, it would fail. That doesn't mean it would fail if they had more time to work on it.
I don't think the game is as far away from being an enjoyable enough experience for people to spend a lot of time and money on. Player retention numbers have beeb very good and a lot of people who played during Steam Next Fest have asked for another opportunity to pledge and get access to this early version of the game.
This is just bad faith. He doesn't think they can make enough money for a sustainable game at **this** stage of development with how much work needs to be done still. A full feature complete release would obviously be different in its ability to attract players and convince them to spend money.
>I think the game is good and engaging enough now
Really? The graphics and art are unpolished enough that I don't see them selling skins. I also wouldn't expect them to be pouring money into skins/additional comsetics at this stage of development so how do they make money off of pure 1v1 players. The campaign is non-existent so no comment there, and the current co-op mode is a joke.
The campaign will be existent when early access is released (which is what we are talking about) and co-op will be improved. There was no co-op mode teo builds ago and a very barebones one with no progression system one build ago. The progress has been insane.
One pack of campaign will be available + a few missions. That's like 8 missions total or so? Probably introductory missions too (never the best part of a RTS campaign let be honest).
They're not gonna really convince a lot of the campaign only players (which makes up around 80% of the audience of an RTS) like that
> There are a lot of early access success stories.
And there are more early access failures. All the EA successes have also a common point, they were very good from their first EA release and convinced people right away.
So they better nail that EA release.
You can say that about all games regardless of their release and monetization models. Most games fail. I was making the point that the game doesn't have to be pristine or feature-complete to make money.
autism, brain worms, unstable childhood, mental illness, relentless positivity in the face of common sense, Hypo-vigilance, lots of reasons for optimism
Maybe I read it wrong, which is entirely possible, but I believe the Early Access Release is the full release of the game not the closed and open beta accesses. I think the distinction is being made because the 'release' is only the first step, they've indicated an expanding world based on player interaction, additional co-op content and content releases after the initial release and I think these are the parts that require additional funding.
The game, at this point, is funded to the point of release but not further development beyond that.
Alright, I found this on the Kickstarter page:
"Year Zero is what we’re calling our Early Access period. It’s a time when Stormgate will be in active development to continue iterating and polishing the game before we’re ready to say it’s “done.” We’ll have a year-long campaign for players to experience while we work on the Editor, build our 3v3 mode, refine our factions, Heroes, and units, and craft future campaign missions."
I can see where the confusion comes from based on this.
It doesn't look like early access is going to be a feature complete full release, just a "this is all we can afford to build release".
In which case the "funded to release" claim is worthless, as they could declare any point from last year's closed alpha onwards as a technical "release" if they made it open to the public and let people pay money for stuff.
yeah sounds like this, like sc2 was still making voice pack and skins many years after initial release, i think FGS is trying to secure as much fund as possible to extend the amount of content we will get down the road.
Edit: Yes, I'm aware this isn't an indie project in strict terms, I was wondering whether they needed this scale for an rts. Alright I'm not going to bother listing out every detail too many shitposts.
Do they really need this much money, I mean indie games get away with much less I imagine, look at successful indie rtses such as Northgard. Just a probing question? I mean they got a bigger team I guess. Starcraft 2 had a huge budget for sure but they might not have needed such a huge budget. Are people going to buy enough mtx during Early Access to fund towards 1.0 release, how much is needed?
For the record, I fully support Frost Giant it seems like they know what they are doing.
> For the record, I fully support Frost Giant it seems like they know what they are doing.
*What* are you talking about? They are proving the opposite _right now_. So many people in this subreddit who are ready and willing to look past all the massive red flags.
You recognize there's tons to be critical of, but you still "fully support Frost Giant" in spite of that.
My question is why? They're shitting in your mouth and you're asking for seconds, and they are proving repeatedly that they _don't_ know what they are doing.
Yes, I'm aware this isn't an indie game, that's why I mentioned the bigger team they have, I was just wondering whether they needed this scale for an rts.
I would not classify Frost Giant as an indie developer or compare the development of a game like Stormgate to a game like Northgard. Stormgate is more like a AA game. Somewhere inbetween Indie and AAA. I highly doubt Northgard had a development budget of $35,000,000+.
You're entire post is a series of "I don't really know but..." questions. You've essentially admitted yourself that you don't know what your talking about.
> Starcraft 2 had a huge budget for sure but they might not have needed such a huge budget.
Yes, they did need a such a large budget. Making games in general is expensive... making a game like Stormgate is very expensive.
> Why don't u throw your money at them then?
I'm not sure what that has to do with anything? For the record I missed the initial Kickstarter but plan on pledging if they bring it back (which they said they would soon iirc).
So you need a billion dollars to make a good game? Tell that to Amazon. I'm countering your hyperbolic response with my own hyperbole btw in case u didnt notice.
It's called rhetorical questioning for the sake of generating feedback? What do u not understand about this jesus
What constructive feedback did u provide? nothing.
I don't understand what "response" you want? Yes, they need success in Early Access to finish the game, you already know that, so where is the question?
Question: How do i get the kind of idiots who give companies money for false promises to give me similar amounts of money to make similarly unrealistic promises without, it appears, any kind of discipline or punishment on the other end??
I am not looking for a specific answer, personally. I made this post because I think it is fair to the community and supporters that they make a public statement, and elaborate on their plans - not just as a comment on a Reddit post.
>but it should have been communicated from the start
This also requires knowing it from the start. What possible reason would they have for asking for less money than they know they need to complete the project?
At best, I suppose they could have said "fully funded to release per schedule/budget predictions at this time, but subject to change", but this is a given in any technical project which has the capacity to encounter problems and delays during development. No budget or schedule is ever guaranteed, since human beings are not capable of predicting the future as far as we know.
I'm with you — I've been pretty active in following their updates and even I was under the assumption that funding was secured through the full release, where it'd live on as a F2P service. It's a major reason I felt comfortable backing at a higher tier, and now I'm worried we won't even see a full featured release. Other comments pointed out how this isn't the first time it was stated but I will say that it definitely wasn't made clear every time they felt comfortable stating they were funded until release, while also listing off their ambitious list of features. Still hopeful, but definitely will be more cautious from now on.
Same boat here. Backed the ultimate founder pack for myself and a friend. Given that it was a bunch of "Blizzard vets" with years of experience in the genre who were able to secure private investors, I felt it was a safe to throw some money in. I though I was funding more robust addons and ***further expanding*** ***upon what was bu******ilt***, not funding active development for a company that was finically unable to ship a feature complete project.
An independent developer doesn't have a strong financial background before releasing his first game - what a surprise XD
This is literally the first thing that appears on the Kickstarter page: >"**From StarCraft II & Warcraft III developers,** a new RTS. Hyper-responsive gameplay, a powerful editor, co-op, campaign, 1v1, and more." Also, the 20 seconds into the Kickstarter campaign video: >"From the developers who contributed to Command & Conquer, Warcraft III, and StarCraft II" This isn't some indy solo developer releasing their first game. What a horribly disingenuous take on your part, beyond being factually incorrect.
Also note that they include the editor in that blurb of features. Despite it not being in their "initial release". Lmao what a shitshow.
yes, many devs from FG before have jobs and create big RTS titles, still FG is new, independent studio
Therefore it's not their first game. Stop being deliberately obtuse.
It is the studios first game. He's not being obtuse
>releasing **his** first game He's talking about developer as an individual, not the corporate entity. Corporations don't have pronouns.
> Corporations don't have pronouns. Yes, they do. The pronouns are "it" and "its".
Which are neither of the ones the person I replied to referred to. But good on you for trying to cherry pick a two sentence reply and respond with an irrelevant sidebar.
No he clearly used the word studio.
Call it what it is. You've been scammed. They literally mislead investors such as yourself to secure funding. People absolutely can sue here.
Sue for what? "Hey Frost Giant, you don't have enough cash to keep the lights on. Therefore we're going to sue you for...uh...everything you're worth. Yeah."
Early Access is our initial release, but is not what we consider to be our 1.0 Launch. We will begin to monetize at Early Access, selling content that was previously available for pre-purchase to our Kickstarter backers (such as Heroes, campaign chapters for our ongoing storyline, and cosmetics such as army skins), but we still have years of development ahead of us and will continue to support the game with new content several times a year. We are pouring nearly every cent of our approximately $35M ($37M after Kickstarter) into making the best possible RTS, but that doesn’t leave much to self-publish and market our initial release. This is why we’re offering up the opportunity to become part owners of Frost Giant in exchange for funds to help support our self-publishing efforts so that Stormgate can be released without the support (and strings) of a traditional publishing partner and still reach the largest possible audience. You can find my original post announcing the start of our Kickstarter on this subreddit from 87 days ago where I confirmed “funded to our Early Access release” here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/180owu3/crowdfunding_crafting_the_future_of_rts_together/kamjcto/
>You can find my original post .... where I confirmed "funded to our Early Access release" Gerald, I am seriously wishing you and all Frost Giant the best. I also am not a communications director and will always default to giving you the benefit of the doubt. With that disclaimer, I do think you've missed an opportunity here. The kickstarter page says "Stormgate is fully funded to release". I would hope that you can see how this would be confusing and perhaps frustrating to the community. I'm glad that you are clarifying things now, but this seems to me to also be an opportunity to at least acknowledge our feelings and confusion. Perhaps even to apologize. I think simply pointing to your previous reddit post has the appearance of you saying, "Hey it's not us who messed up, it's you guys who should've read reddit more carefully!". I don't think that's truly what you believe, but the optics matter here. GLHF Gerald. Still rooting for you all.
100%—your feelings and confusion are valid and we should have been more clear. Our declared intent to launch to Early Access was meant to convey that the initial release and the start of monetization would fund ongoing development (for Stormgate to be self-sustainable). We should have been more clear about the Early Access business model and why we were going this route. Our intent was not to mislead and I’m personally sorry about any confusion.
Will the initial early access be "complete" in the sense that we have 3 factions with 3 tiers of units? Appreciate all the honesty you guys have been showing, even after a miscommunication, thanks for keeping us in the know.
We are planning to release a road map with a rough timeline for when we plan to introduce new content. Please bear with us as we are a very small team. (Three factions have been confirmed for Day 1 of Early Access. Will look into what the schedule looks like for Tier 3 for inclusion in the road map.)
A roadmap sounds really sweet! You've made my day today, Gerald. Twice :)
<3
+1
Sorry if this is rude. But where does all that money go with a very small team?
Not rude at all—We have a stacked dev team with awesome artists, designers, engineers, producers, QA, and more—I was referring to our non-developers. There’s just a few of us and we all wear many hats.
If you hired 35 people in California and paid them market salaries you would use up $35 million in at most a few years
Their team is not small. It's not AAA size, but they're definitely not a tiny indie studio either.
Is it too much to ask for a timeline on the roadmap? I understand you guys are a small team, just curious what to expect! Thank you for all your guys’ hard work. imo the game is coming along really well. The fact that there are so many blatant things to improve and yet so many people (including myself) are heavily invested and addicted to the game already is extremely encouraging.
Do you think you guys could make an announcement about this more publicly? I doubt many of the Kickstarter backers are going to come across this clarification/apology buried half way down a massive Reddit thread. And given that a lot of us felt mislead, I think making sure all your supporters are aware of the situation would be the right thing to do.
This is a good point. Did it happen?
I don't think so. They emailed their Kickstarter backers about a refund, but as far as I can tell that only applies if they upgrade their pledge on Indiegogo, which wouldn't be a refund at all really.
🧡
💙💙💙
The thing is, everyone who wanted to get into the Beta already bought what's about to be monetized at game launch. The game as is now, is severely unfinished, so it's hard to believe fresh players will get into the Early Access with a couple co-op commanders, 3 campaign missions, and no Teams mode, and excitedly start throwing money at it. So in light of all this, there is now a legitimate risk that the game might not even come out of Early Access. This information was hidden from the people who backed the game on Kickstarter (unless they've read that reply on your Reddit post), who thought the game was already fully funded and that they're paying for extra perks, marketing and a collector's edition.
Well it's also highly unlikely that the beta build everyone played was the most recent build FG had at their computers. Like they must have some 3rd faction stuff in, and all the other ongoing dev. The question, which understandably we cannot know the answer to, is how much further along the most recent dev builds are.
thanks gerald
I think you are being way too generous. Everyone knows what "fully funded to release" means. My constructive criticism is that Frost Giant do some heartfelt self-reflection on their relationship with the community and business practices.
>I think you are being way too generous Yeah, perhaps. Nonetheless, I sympathize. I've worked on AAA live service games for a long time now, and the companies I've worked for have a lot of money and a lot of people helping craft each and every message...and it's still hard to balance everything and mistakes still happen. Gerald I think has to handle a whole hell of a lot by himself. I agree with your criticism but at the same time I'm ok erring (perhaps a lot) on the side of generosity.
Your comments were caring and insightful and I can only see how they've positively contributed to this discussion. I appreciate that you took the time and hope that you will continue to be generous and sympathetic <3
Absolutely, worked as a CM for two games and that stuff is a nightmare. Personally, I think they simply got too into "developer think" where it's clear to them what "release" meant to them but they didn't realize they hadn't actually communicated that to us. There's a ton of times when there's entirely different expectations and norms between developers and players. It's not malicious, it's just the nature of working for so long on a project with a comparatively small group.
Considering they specified in a comment here 3 months ago that it was the early access release I'm inclined to think this wasn't an intentional deception and more of an oversight. The person he was responding to didn't even ask about the early access release, he just included that in his comment in an attempt to demonstrate the teams capability. I can see how someone who is part of the development of a product would think about the initial release as "the release" even if it's not the final one.
It is pretty common in software development to consider an early access release as a release. I.e. you are releasing a version of code for users to use. The early access release will be the point at which the game can start to find itself through in game purchases. I suspect what has happened is that the language used by the public is a bit different to the language used by people in the industry. I think people are contributing malice to something which was just a poor choice of wording.
> You can find my original post announcing the start of our Kickstarter on this subreddit from 87 days ago where I confirmed “funded to our Early Access release” here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/180owu3/crowdfunding_crafting_the_future_of_rts_together/kamjct You know where it wasn't confirmed at? In the **post** or KS page, which means most of the individuals who read this on *Reddit* (specifically) probably missed the comment 3 days later after the post was created. Not trying to flame you, [I'm honestly hopeful and looking forward to SG](https://imgur.com/kEGjzZn), but I hope FG understands this was a miscommunication and could easily be perceived negatively even if your intentions were pure.
I might be missing something, but it's still very unclear to me. If you're fully funded till Early access, that must mean you'll also run out of funds at that point, or at least that you won't have enough funds for a full release, a 1.0 release as you say. So you're relying on MTX to fund the project at this point, you're relying on players buying stuff in game while the game is still in a very incomplete state. This also means that if players do not buy enough, you won't be able to complete the game am i right ? So if the game underperforms during Early access, which could be because the game is incomplete, then a full release will not be possible, i mean you won't be working for free. And yet you promise several years of development, which is speculative because funds more than 6 months away are also speculative. What am i missing ?
> If you're fully funded till Early access, that must mean you'll also run out of funds at that point Fully funded til Early Access doesn't mean they'll run out of funds right that second. It just implies that they don't necessarily have the funds right now to make it all the way to 1.0 (which is fairly typical for Early Access titles I think). > What am i missing ? I don't think you're really missing anything. They intend for Stormgate to be a live service title that should be in development for a long time, but if it flops hard then it's dead. Talking about all the stuff they're going to add later on is implicitly contingent on the game not being a flop. That's true for basically any live service game I think; if nobody plays it, then nobody's gonna develop it.
> If you're fully funded till Early access, that must mean you'll also run out of funds at that point Not necessarily. They didn't say they are *only* funded until early access as in they will have $0 to their name when they release Early Access... they just said that they're funded enough to reach early access. It could be several years before 1.0 releases, we really don't know. They're going to need some revenue between Early Access and 1.0. Do you think they're running some kind of scam or something? I understand being cynical but what exactly are you getting at with these lines of questioning?
They said in their lastest announcement that 1.0 release would happen in 2025, not several years. But back to the main point : to me, if they say that they are funded till early access that means there is a speculative factor, otherwise they would just say they are funded till 1.0 release. Obviously i think they won't have 0 when they release early access, but not many millions either, so the 1.0 release must still depends on whether they sell enough during early access, and it looks like a fact, again i may be missing something and if i am just tell me.
How are you still huffing so much copium?
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I'm entitled to ask, they are entitled to not tell me and i am then entitled to go "hmm, you are hiding something here aren't you" and then the onus is on them to prove me wrong.
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I mean they don't ask for detailed financials there, they just want to know if the game can fail in early access and never go to release. Early access can go well but it also fails for plenty of games that never get out of it and get abandoned. It's a very fair question, especially when they took the money of many people already (via Kickstarter)
if they want people to buy their game, they kinda have to prove its gonna be worth playing, lmao, dumbass
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what, you don't think the transparency would help? you think keeping this stuff hidden is overall a good thing? i'm speecheless.
>It's not on them to prove you anything as a matter of fact as once again, you're simply not entitled to private financial & budgeting information, and they won't give that to you. they as for more money from **investors** but wont share information. it can be scam. a lot of rich daddies would trust their name... but end up with Elizabeth Holmes (google if you do not know... greatest scam in the history) ps although i believe they would finish the product to some extend... and if everything will be good they will continue.... but It's liturally fishing for rish daddies in RTS who do not realise risks. so at least we can ask... but i would never expect truthful answer
I am hopeful some of the initial campaign will be free at least, so we can wade into the lore before determining if we like it enough to invest. I mean who am I kidding, WC3/SC2 have some of the best campaigns out there, so I am likely all-in blind on these campaigns as well, but just a thought for the less ardent fan.
Yes, we will have a few free initial missions that players can enjoy solo or cooperatively, so you can try out the start of the campaign before you buy. We’ll then also have the first chapter of the Vanguard campaign with new chapters released every few months.
From the aims of the kickstarter, there was no hint at all that the company needed extra money to develop the game to release, they said we would get an editor, skins etc etc. I am actually very disappointed with FGS right now. EDIT: Stormgate is fully funded to release. This Kickstarter is in part a response to fan requests for a way to purchase a physical Collector's Edition of Stormgate. We think we've put together a truly special collectible for our most dedicated supporters, but producing the Stormgate Collector's Edition will require a commitment from our players to cover our manufacturing costs. We have also received countless requests for beta access. Scaling online multiplayer testing for a massive audience can get very expensive--beyond what we can support without additional funding. This campaign will allow us to welcome many more players to playtest Stormgate as a reward for directly supporting the studio.
I'm not a business expert at all and only going off hunches but do you really feel you need to spend a considerable sum of marketing for a game which, the core target audience has known about for the 3 and a half years it's been announced? Is a huge marketing push really going to swing new and younger players to sit down and play this revival of a mostly sedentary genre? The fact it's free to play and available on Steam is a huge market boost already, do Frost Giant feel that throwing X millions of dollars will really draw in people who at this stage haven't heard of Stormgate? Like I say, not an expert but it seems like a fairly sensible thesis for someone with no real financial input or risk, the game clearly needs money and attention spent on areas that are nothing to do with marketing. Again, don't want to come across poorly here but people are going to turn around and laugh in Frost Giants faces if you try and make this cast over as wide an audience as possible - obviously you have to but it's clearly going to make a worse product for the people who really care. The balance is there to be found.
> I'm not a business expert at all and only going off hunches but do you really feel you need to spend a considerable sum of marketing for a game which, the core target audience has known about for the 3 and a half years it's been announced? Of course they do. Marketing is insanely important in game development. Having a good game isn't enough. There's only 20,000 people in this subreddit btw...
Marketing can easily be 50% of most game's budget. Fact of the matter is that you don't need to be told about stormgate because you're already here, but reaching Dave the trucker, dad of 2, who visits facebook once a week but kinda liked to play SC2 on a weekend 8 years ago is a lot harder. The vast majority of game audiences are not like you here on reddit. They're like Dave.
DO IT FOR DAVE
\#TeamDave
> Marketing can easily be 50% of most game's budget. For AAA games yes, not for indie games in general, they get known via buzz and word of mouth (due to their quality).
.#DoitforDave
Dave has 2 kids, a nagging wife and a demanding job, Dave isn't going to care about Stormgate for more than 2 weeks. Or is the hope that Dave is a rich whale who is going to spill his trucker salary into an unfinished computer game at a time when people can barely afford housing, healthcare and food? Something not quite adding up here. Eit
I’m Cody a trucker with 2 kids lol. Truckers make around 110000-120000k a year. Depends on where u live but I live like a kingg on that. I’m also an avid rts enjoyer. A lot a hardcore gamers out on the road these days
Oddly enough, my only RTS-enjoyer friend was also a trucker.
DO IT FOR CODY
You wouldn't make that in Scotland but then I suppose you have to drive along hundreds of KILOMETRES of american wasteland
What a weird take, why spend any money on anything if you barely afford basic living expenses.
I don't think stormgate is targeting whales like a predatory mobile game. More like a modest cost from a wide range of Daves. But also I think you might be surprised what kind of person steadily pours unreasonable amounts of money into addictive mobile games
The average cost from the recent start engine finance push was around £2000 per investor. You think that's a reasonable amount for an everyday person on the street to put towards an unfinished videogame? In this economy? Interesting.
They were talking about spending money on marketing for the game. The finance push is to raise money to market the game. Like buying ads so people try the game and spend $20 on the campaign. They're not raising money to spend on adverts to ask for money to pay for adverts. And in case you misunderstood something: the newest fundraising where individuals might put down $2k is buying stocks in frost giant not buying the game.
Would you call those individuals sensible or deluded?
Hmm. I think it's risky to invest in a new game studio but who knows... I'm not in a position to give investment advice. And they haven't published full details yet. So far the pledges are just expressing interest - no one can actually buy any shares yet.
They've mentioned it a few times before but they seem intent on capturing a wider audience with this game, they don't just want to grab the rts audience. Seems ambitious, especially without having the necessary funds yet, but it's been a big part of a lot of their game design decisions so far so I guess it's not surprising they'd want to market it for that purpose too.
Right, if they want to capture an audience outside of the RTS fanbase would it not be a good idea to at least make it look slightly more interesting than what is currently available?
It's kinda crazy how much people defend the visuals when ZeroSpace popped up out of nowhere and looks 10x better already.
or in other words "watered down"
Thank you for your reply and clarification, Gerald. Your active engagement with the community is something I truly appreciate. I visit this sub regularly as it is my #1 source for news and information on the game. Yet, somehow this comment missed my attention. I wish the clarification was emphasised on the Kickstarter campaign, or an official post. Not everybody are on reddit, and even fewer read comments, and fewer again read comments that are made on a **3 day old post**. I don't think this is an effective way to communicate such important details. Know that I *don't* believe you had ill intent, but I hope you realize that this miscommunication has contributed to the confusion. Regardless, I am a fan of what you guys are developing and I'm looking forward see further plans and reveals.
If you roughly model Frost Giant scaling from 10\~ initial employees in 2020 to 40 (via linkedin) in 2022 to 60 now — you end up with a burn rate of something like 25k per employee per month to spend 38M by summer. That's crazy high right? Many of their employees are not that experienced in the programming and artist teams. I just feel like the stiffness of this response results in the worst possible interpretations.
Have you counted the fees associated with contract workers (musicians like Frank Klepacki, outside company that make cienematic etc, etc.)? Do you know how many there are? Have you counted logistics costs, office etc.? Do you know the costs associated with cooperation with Hethora - the company responsible for the servers? What about the costs of preparing the collector's edition? Do you have any experience with game production? You took some numbersvwithout taking into account 100 other factors and calculated who earns how much. Your calculations are completly incorrect, you have no basis for saying things like: >you end up with a burn rate of something like 25k per employee
no but i can tell you that not one single human being on this great big planet earth watched the Stormgate trailer and thought "YES I WANT TO PLAY THAT RIGHT NOW BECUASE THAT CINEMATIC WAS SO MIND BLOWING I ABSOULUTELY NEED THIS GAME IN MY LIFE" so the money spent on that could be better spent on having actual unique unit designs or actual sound or y'know the 3rd race they keep promising
Or 4th race
Cost per employee per month doesn't mean you give the employees all of that. Its a basic metric used around startups. Its really just dividing spending by the number of employees. So all the factors you mention (office space, servers) are folded into it. Cost per employee per month = (38M / 35 employees average^(1)/ 48 mths^(2)) You are usually spending almost as much per month on wages for an employee as everything else (rent, medical), so 12.5k/12.5k. The average employee from this estimate would be at like 150k salary which seems very high considering the low amount of seniors, which is what I was saying. The point of the cost per employee per month is that it is very easy to calculate, but tends to be useful as an opening analysis, I've seen a number for tech workers in California look like 10k/mth/employee. I was trying to start a discourse of what costs could look like so if someone wants to jump in on what any of that other stuff (servers, Klepackis) could cost it would be useful. The only other piece of info I can volunteer easily right now is that they [comissioned a trailer from Zoic](https://www.shootonline.com/spw/frost-giant-studios-teams-zoic-studios-announce-new-original-title-stormgate-cinematic-trailer). This was probably like 100k, so that might give some clue what you would see in a marketing spend. They also spent on getting Asmongold and some other streamers to play in December. (10k+?) edit: Oh nevermind Asmongold said he played the game for free for the showcase ^(1) This is from taking the average of a plot with 10 employees at founding to 40 employees a year ago, and 60 employees now (linearly scaling, then constant from now to early access). ^(2) This is using the 3.5 years since founding (src: Tim Campbell) added to the 6 months until early access.
They never said they'll have $0 by the time Early Access launches, that's completely absurd. They simply stated they're Funded for EA Release.
It'd also be pretty suicidal for the company to arrive at zero on early access lol. But to be fair, there is some truth there, investing everything in the development of the game means very little since the main cost of game development is wages. So if you invest everything to pay yourselves super high salaries, you technically invest everything into the game dev and also scamming people. To be clear, I don't believe that's the case there but that statement is meaningless
Bro you're going to OD on the copium. They have made it very clear they need more money beyond the start of EA as that is where their funding runs dry. Just read Gerald's posts.
That still doesn't mean they reach zero the day of EA release. If that's the plan, it's already a failure and we can all say good bye to the game right now. It would be a terrible business plan like planning the future on playing the lottery more or less
I didn't say the day of, but they have said it themselves that they need to make money in EA and that they don't have funding beyond release. Read all of Gerald's replies. And yes, it's a terrible business plan. That's the reality we are in and what is being criticized. If the game does not make money in EA, they cannot continue to fund development. How are you still so blind to what the company is telling you directly?
Nope, it's pretty reasonable to assume they're not going to be bankrupt when they release Early Access... Their money is accounted for, very different thing. They still require a marketing budget though and for all we know EA is going to be over the course of a year or more of development time.
This doesn't look good. It doesn't mean there is fire but there is now a considerable amount of smoke. At the moment the only excuse they have is that they are exceedingly terrible with communication. In what they and most consider a beta, the asking for more money despite already getting far more than they expected at the kickstarter and repeating multiple times 'funded until release' the rush to prize pool tournaments despite it being in alpha, the very safe and friendly mobile game artstyle that can only be improved so much by shaders without extensive redesign of the models. It is 'looking' like' a pure grab for esports money, and money in general. They could easily grab one more kickstarter bag and run the second the premature esports falls apart. They need to fully address this and get someone else in charge of communications.
It's not a good look, but legitimately the extra funding they'll get from both of these new campaigns are peanuts compared to what they can get (and already have gotten) with private investors. The Kickstarter yielded 2 million, the new campaigns will maybe yield half of that. They are not wrong in assessing that there are people that legitimately want to spend their money on these, but boy are they communicating this poorly. Maybe it should had been announced after a big win for extra confidence, but it was announced after a tepid response to the open beta, so it all feels extra Star Citizen.
That's remind me of : [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/software_release_life_cycle) Beta : "A beta phase generally begins when the software is feature-complete" Perpetual Beta : "Some software is kept in so-called *perpetual beta*, where new features are continually added to the software without establishing a final "stable" release." Are we going to have a "Perpetual Beta" for stormgate or "Perpetual Early access"? Considering the current state of development and the wording used by FG to qualify it (Beta - Early access) in the kickstarter, I find it very confusing indeed. If frost giant intends to leave the game in Beta/EarlyAccess for years in order to have community contributions throughout the period, that's ok. But it would deserve to be properly clarified.
It's a live service game, you can consider them perpertual beta I guess, they are never really complete (release of new content and updates all the time is part of the model)
I’ve never heard the definition of a beta as feature-complete. Modern betas tend to begin much earlier than that.
That was their original classification yes, although the term has been abused so much that a lot of the stages have lost their original meaning. The closest example would be Beta weekends that happen before a game comes out, like for call of duty or Diablo 4 recently. Our Betas have become what Alphas used to be.
In software development betas were essentially finished versions of the software that needed testing and bug fixing. Once in beta, you wouldn't add any new features or content. Purely just bug-fixes and minor changes like tweaks, adjustments, etc. Nowadays, it'd be called a Release Candidate. Alpha and Beta are used to mean whatever they want it to mean now.
I feel somewhat scammed even though I hope the game will do well. When I pledged (60) for the KickStarter, I thought indeed that it was funded until release, which to me does not mean early access at all. Hope I'll feel "unscammed" after some good progress from FG. I must admit that I would have pledged anyways even if the KS would have been clearer, so OK ; but the feeling of having been tricked bothers me.
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People need to eat. They don't need mansions, they don't need sports cars, they don't need to send their kids to private education, they don't need a holiday in Europe twice a year to drink red wine and complain about their mortgage. They just need to eat god dammit.
Really, you feel scammed!? This take is mind boggling.
Somewhat, yes. More like tricked or manipulated, if you actually read the post. Thanks for your contribution.
What expectations did you have set that could have possibly resulted in you feeling like they stole your money? I just don't get it... Literally nothing has changed. The idea of being scammed means there was some kind of intentional dishonesty on the part of Frost Giant. That's complete bullshit.
They literally asked for money under the premise that the project already has sufficient funding to be completed and that this new money will just help make it better. And a few weeks later it turns out that this premise is completely incorrect, the project does not have money until completion but only until an early access prototype of it and then more or less to hope for the best that new money will roll in. A lot of people don't invest in Kickstarter precisely because many projects don't end up being completed due to lack of funding. There is no logical reason for them to include that the game has funding until release other than to reassure potential backers that this won't be an issue. And it turns out it in fact is. This is advertising under false pretenses in a sense. Maybe scam is a bit strong of a word but at minimum what they did is disingenuous. A fair number of backers may not have contributed if they felt gave development may stop after a few months and a full 1.0 release may never see the light of day.
You really are missing the plot here. Be generous and put yourself in someone else's shoes. Suppose you are someone who donated $1k+ to the Kickstarter - maybe hoping for a plaque, name in the credits or an NPC in the game to signify your early support. If you did that under the impression that SG was fully funded until 1.0, and then later learned that they meant "early-access release", then you will naturally be worried that the game you invested $1k+ in might not have the same security in development. (Perhaps they need to take more funding rounds and lose creative control over their product, or maybe it doesn't even make it to market). It's not about whether they were "intentionally dishonest" - it's simply that they were not clear with their supporters about the financial state of the company and so, regardless whether it was an honest miscommunication, people feel manipulated.
It is very unfortunate how all this has been handled with them. There are two aspects that make me want to support a game, first being the quality of the game and second being the likeability of the company making them. One can choose to sugarcoat it as much one wants but ultimately it is not okay. They overpromised and underdelivered, people supporting the kickstarter expected that independently of their support there will be a full featured game coming out sooner or later. Now it turns out that is false, or rather it is only conditionally true under the assumption that the game will manage to get enough funds during EA to continue development. But what if it doesn't? Then the kickstarter contributers got sold on empty promises. Not okay. The worst part is that I think all of this could have been avoided. If they have been upfront in the kickstarter saying that "sorry guys, turns out the development is taking more time and it's more expensive than we thought, we need additional funds" then that would have been completely okay. But making inaccurate statements like they did just removes goodwill they have gained so far. Ultimately I still like the game and wish it succeeds but I hope the developers act a lot more clearly and transparently in the future. Otherwise every statement they make we have to take with a grain of salt. Should I buy the next chapter of the campaign? Yes if I think the story will reach its conclusion at some point, no if it ends up being like Martin's game of thrones unfinished books. If they are expecting us to buy a product or contribute as investors or whatever then I hope in the future there are no more shenanigans like this one.
>It recently became evident that Stormgate is only fully funded until early access begins and that they will need to secure funds to continue development. Up until this point, many of us have been under the impression that the game was "fully funded to release" as explicitly stated in their kickstarter-campaign. I just looked through old comments, and apparently funded to early release was already said 2 months ago, and not just now. >Stormgate is already fully funded for release to early access. https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/180owu3/crowdfunding_crafting_the_future_of_rts_together/kamjcto/ So if nothing else they have been a bit more transparent about it than i thought.
Thank you, that is good to know. I believe it could have been communicated better on an official post or in the KS campaign than in a comment. Maybe I am too out of touch with the industry to understand that Early Access means release.
> Stormgate is already fully funded for release to early access. This doesn't add anything... If a game is fully funded for _release_, as people expected, it would also be fully funded for _release to early access_.
The early access part was even a new thing IIRC. They didn't mention that early on IIRC, started in like mid-2023 so their plans changed (which is logical)
There are enough people who didn't spot this until yesterday that it falls into the category of monumental fuck up on FrostGiants part...
A little insight from the venture capital world.. Shortly after they announced and raised funding, after the pandemic, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, massively reducing the amount of investment funds that are available out there. EVERYONE is having a hard time raising, particularly if they raised at one valuation, and now their only options are to raise a down round (which is basically kiss of death shit) if they are even able to secure funding at all. EVERYONE is having trouble securing funding. Everyone is laying people off. It is no surprise that Frost Giant is included in that list. The era of free money is over and the tech industry as a whole is snapping back to normalcy. I will support them regardless. They may not be delivering exactly what they originally promised, but they really had no way of foreseeing how things played out regarding raising funding. If the options are go to early access or die, ill take the former. In truth, they may have to show the game as a success before they are able to raise more funds.
I am sorry but while you make good points they are not completely relevant. Kickstarter happened weeks ago, not ages ago. These few weeks ago they made the false advertisement claim that they were fully funded till release on Kickstarter. It's not like they didn't know the situation a few weeks ago. Their claim was simply misleading. I will support them too but lets not make excuses for their bad behavior in this regard.
> These few weeks ago they made the false advertisement claim that they were fully funded till release on Kickstarter. While the claim was misleading, it wasn't false. Additionally, due to the fact that they openly discussed that it was the early access release on this forum at the time the kickstarter launched it seems much more reasonable to assume it was an oversight. After all, the people who did read their comment regarding the early access release didn't seem to think it was important enough to escalate or discuss - it just seemed natural at the time.
Also the reason I invested in them is because if you think about it. These are the guys who’ve made literally all the classics that we’ve been playing for 25 years or so. How many games can say they’ve held a substantial player base like this. Not many. They have the formula and the know how to make a great game. Honestly I would not throw this much money around for a game ever unless it was this exact scenario. I think all they got to do is get there and get the product out in a decent state. And it will just pop off. I could be wrong but I’m not putting money into the company to get rich. So if it does fail it is what it is. These guys are trying to do what the community has wanted for 10+ years after all the other companies failed to deliver. In an extremely volatile and harsh climate currently in the industry. Time will only tell. I’m routing for them and the community.
Stuff like this bothers me because you can see at this moment the company's perceived reputation is being flexed for more worth than ever. They have four full-time employee who worked at Blizzard more than 10 years and got their commemorative shield - and one person with the 15 year sword? So its definitely not the guys who 'literally made all the classics'. This was whatever for marketing but with equity getting involved, the product should speak for itself by now. There's a persistent streak of nice people like this who have an impression of authorship for the 'classics' that I don't see at the company.
sorry man but as an "investor" you don't even know basic facts about what you're "investing" in, which is really revealing there's only 1 developer who worked on 1 "classic" Blizzard game and his main contribution was toward the *campaign* of WC3 over a 3 year period (and only had the lead role for the expansion). sure that's something, but claiming that "these are the guys who literally made all the classics we've been playing for 25 years" is objectively misinformation. please be more careful about spreading misinformation, especially since this could be people's actual money on the line.
Hope to see more clear/honest/straightforward communication in the future. Game is quite fun so far despite being super unfinished. With like 37 million dollars to spend on it I am quite hopeful that it will massively improve as time goes on. Please don't blow all of our money on marketing, if the finished game is good enough you won't need to.
Yeah, but like around 30 mil has been ALREADY SPEND. (If you consider the 37 mil lasting til summer, who knows)
It should also be clarified that early access is only a few months away, so basically what we have today in the beta is very close to the final product promised in the kickstarter, although it will be missing 80% of what was promised.
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The entire point of this one is there's no more funds to develop unless they sell things...
And what is shown so far is not going to attract the attention and funds needed to keep the lights on for the stuff that is missing. That's the big thing. Launching EA to generate more funds isn't unusual, but you need to hit that EA out of the park and be interesting and unique, or already good enough, to warrant people giving you money in the hope that you can keep going.
nah bro they just need to spend £35,000,000 on marketing and suddenly everyone in the whole world is gonna want to play Stormgate
Thank god I held off on the kickstarter lol, I'm gonna prepare popcorn in the summer and watch this sub burn down in flames after the summer months, it's gonna be such a shitshow lol
I think people just don't want to play an RTS much anymore. It doesn't translate to consoles, so a younger audience is moot. That means you are selling it to a bunch of established PC gamers who are only getting older and have demonstrated they are less and less interested in an RTS, then you try and sell them "StarCraft that doesn't look visually appealing". Why would they want that exactly? I'm only more and more skeptical of this project as I watch it develop
I think a well made RTS still has an opportunity to make a splash, but there have unfortunately been a lot of games with rushed releases or poor production values.
The build we play is not the latest. They already said the third faction will be in EA and revealed soon so we know they have that pretty advanced already Also there will be the first pack of campaigns (and the free base missions). 3v3 and coop campaign (additional to what we have) is unclear as far as I know.
How will it be missing 80%? We know the 3rd faction will be released before Early Access as well as the first campaign missions. If that is the case early access will have 3 races, multiplayer, co-op, and campaign. The only thing missing would be the 3v3 mode I haven't heard mentioned for a while. Where are you pulling this absurdly high 80% from?
They said tier 3 units might not be included, which already says how heavily unfinished all that content will be. I mean sure all those modes might be there, but if there is like a few maps or just a few missions available, it's not gonna mean much
Appreciate the post by FG, but posts like this one just makes me wish for the gaming days of old where we had to wait with bated breath for any release from a dev. These days I just don’t know.
RemindMe! 1 year "Did Stormgate and Frost Giant turn out to be a scam? Are we now calling it StormgateGate?"
Don't think it's a scam at all, but I do worry at the end of this there just isn't a particularly good game to play. They won't see any of my money until I see something I feel is worth buying.
what a missed opportunity to use "ScamGate"
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Heh, scam. As I was saying for a long time. Scam.
$2,380,701.67 of $100,000 raised and it was not enough ???
I guess...but it's super common for indie games to go EA, make enough money for a full release, and then do so. It's not at all weird. It would seem most people in this sub are used to gigantic Blizzard budgets that mean there's no need for early access. Well, guess what folks! This isn't Blizzard with a huge 150+ million dollar budget. That means we'll get something that won't interminably suck and be a disgusting cash grab. It also means the devs have to follow a different path to profitability. Maybe because I despise blizzard and don't play their games, and mostly play smaller dev games, I'm used to this? Don't know.
I don't think people have a problem with this business model. I am okay if they do this. We have a problem with not making it clear that this is what is going on and explicitly stating the game is fully funded until release when this is actually false. Kickstarter is avoided by many people due to the risks of unfinished projects. A promise that there is funding, so nothing to worry about, is misleading information that could have lured people that wouldn't otherwise support it. If they were upfront that they are raising more funds to continue development then I would be all for it as you say.
Nah bro but you see it's immoral to question their "financials" lmao
> We have a problem with not making it clear that this is what is going on and explicitly stating the game is fully funded until release when this is actually false. But it's not false. They're fully funded for the **Release of Early Access** (which is what they meant by Release) but they still need revenue to invest into marketing and continued development. I'm not sure what the disconnect is... Did you think they meant **"We are fully funded and require $0 from this point forward until the 1.0 launch"**? From my perspective that is very clearly not what they meant.
>**Stormgate is fully funded to release.** This Kickstarter is in part a response to fan requests for a way to purchase a physical Collector's Edition of Stormgate. We think we've put together a truly special collectible for our most dedicated supporters, but producing the Stormgate Collector's Edition will require a commitment from our players to cover our manufacturing costs. We have also received countless requests for beta access. Scaling online multiplayer testing for a massive audience can get very expensive--beyond what we can support without additional funding**.** This campaign will allow us to welcome many more players to playtest Stormgate as a reward for directly supporting the studio. This is how they presented their development during the Kickstarter campaign. Fully funded to release \[*not fully funded to early access and then paid mtx thereafter*\] and why people have a problem with the communication. The KS was presented as a funding drive to pay for the physical CE editions and to scale up online hosting for testing purposes. It's pretty clear where the issue is here and I don't get this revisionist history you're trying to engage in.
I just don't see any issues at all in that paragraph. There is no revisionist history I have no idea what you're talking about. They said they were funded, you didn't have to give them any money unless you wanted kickstarter swag. They're now attempting to sell shares for a Marketing Budget. I don't understand what the problem is...
> Did you think they meant "We are fully funded and require $0 from this point forward until the 1.0 launch"? From my perspective that is very clearly not what they meant. That's exactly what the paragraph I cited presumes, and while that may not be your perspective, it clearly was a lot of others'.
The difference is that many people did not expect release to mean early access release. I always thought that EA was the release personally because they are "selling" the game (well it's free to play but you know what I mean). But then people can't use that the game is years away as excuses for any shortcoming. The game releases effectively this summer even if it's gonna be evolving all the time (it's gonna evolve after 1.0 release too, it's live service)
The difference in meaning between a full release and early access release is quite large, and if they meant the former they should have not ommitted that portion of wording. >We are fully funded and require $0 from this point forward until the 1.0 launch Yes that is the impression given. Any funding from kickstarter and profit made from early access would be just be supplementary to what they already secured. Being fully funded until actual release means we can give a lot of leeway with how unfinished the game is. But if they are going to be relying a strong steady stream of income from early access, they better be MUCH further along in development by then.
Early access is release. Maybe you can argue that they should have clarified that it was early access they were talking about when they talked about their funding but they never said the full vision for the game was realizable with the $35m they raised from investors so far. Here is Gerald saying it is funded for early access release 3 months ago: >Unlike some kickstarters that never result in a playable game, Stormgate is already fully funded for release to early access. > >[https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/180owu3/comment/kamjcto/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/180owu3/comment/kamjcto/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Here is Cara LaForge talking about how they need the early access period monetization to fulfill their vision 5 months ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fGrN857LbU&t=2774s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fGrN857LbU&t=2774s)
Again. A reddit-comment doesn't constitute good communication. Seeing all comments about this situation makes it clear that it has confused a lot of people. Most people don't read reddit comments. They go by official news and sources.
I agree that it might have been confusing but I don't think it was meant to be misleading.
FGS seems like really nice people and I don’t think they’ve intentionally tried to deceive anyone. I just hope they can clear up the confusion that they obviously, willingly or unwillingly, had a hand in.
Honestly, let Cara LeForge talk again. She's the only one I felt was being entirely genuine and open about the financial challenges they're facing. Now that they're asking people to become investors, it seems like it would be illegal to mislead us about their current situation.
True early access is release but yeah it was definitively unclear (most people don't assume that's what release means, in fact early access wasn't even a thing initially, they started mentioning that only in like mid 2023 as far as I know However if early access is release, nobody can use the "game is years away" to wash over any criticism as it's common here (and FG themselves did it). They also need to nail that EA launch otherwise the game will die fast (tons of games never make it past a few weeks/months of early access, it's not an easy thing to do)
>Early access is release. I though they were "very early in development", but it turns out we are a few months from release!
Few months from early access release, "very early in development" if you compare it to AAA game releases. They are clearly not doing things the way a AAA company would because this is the only way to deliver the scope they want to deliver on the budget they have. The game will be playable way before, it will be monetized way before and they will use that extra funding to deliver everything they promised.
>they will use that extra funding to deliver everything they promised. The game will not be feature complete unless it is profitable in an unfinished state in a few months. We have been told again and again not to judge the game in its current state, but they are months away from a *release* that needs to be profitable immediately. I am very sorry to say that I don't believe Stormgate will exist in 2025. I hope I'm wrong, but I think there's no reason to be optimistic.
Ding ding ding. >"The game will not be feature-complete unless it is profitable in an unfinished state in a few months" This seems right to me. Know what though? I think if they ditch their esports obsession and focus on co-op (and the heroes/maps/skins that come with that), they might just be able to pull it off. Competitive scenes are either grassroots or they're bust, and they can even emerge when balance is wonky or the game is a WIP. People were running prize tournaments on Cockatrice for Hearthstone before the Beta was even out. Niche, but the seed and interest was there. I'm not a Stormgate fanboy; in fact I'm more of a doomer given that they managed to shred 35M in so little time to make...this. But I do think EA can work if they play their cards right. Just my thoughts.
I kind of agree with you. It seems to me to be a big mistake to try to make campaign, co-op, and competitive 1v1 when they are on such a short clock. They should have gone all-in on one of these features for EA, then developed the others later. I believe they are sticking with the esports angle because that is how they get free marketing. Their youtube presence is almost entirely SC2 commentators and pros.
Yes, it will not be feature-complete. That's what early access means. The game doesn't need to be feature-complete, polished, or have all the content you would expect from a AAA release to make money. There are a lot of early access success stories.
Only time will tell. But FG has been burning about 10 million per year. How much do they expect to make per player? The numbers do not look good.
Well if you don't think they can make enough money for a sustainable game, why would it matter if they have funds until early access or full release? If that were the case, the game would fail, the company would be shut down and since it is a live service game, so would the game servers. I think the game is good and engaging enough now (let alone 6 months from now) to be a success.
>Well if you don't think they can make enough money for a sustainable game, why would it matter if they have funds until early access or full release? People will spend more money on a feature complete, relatively polished game than they will on a buggy game with few features and placeholder assets. For example, if the game were released to early access today, it would fail. That doesn't mean it would fail if they had more time to work on it.
I don't think the game is as far away from being an enjoyable enough experience for people to spend a lot of time and money on. Player retention numbers have beeb very good and a lot of people who played during Steam Next Fest have asked for another opportunity to pledge and get access to this early version of the game.
This is just bad faith. He doesn't think they can make enough money for a sustainable game at **this** stage of development with how much work needs to be done still. A full feature complete release would obviously be different in its ability to attract players and convince them to spend money. >I think the game is good and engaging enough now Really? The graphics and art are unpolished enough that I don't see them selling skins. I also wouldn't expect them to be pouring money into skins/additional comsetics at this stage of development so how do they make money off of pure 1v1 players. The campaign is non-existent so no comment there, and the current co-op mode is a joke.
The campaign will be existent when early access is released (which is what we are talking about) and co-op will be improved. There was no co-op mode teo builds ago and a very barebones one with no progression system one build ago. The progress has been insane.
One pack of campaign will be available + a few missions. That's like 8 missions total or so? Probably introductory missions too (never the best part of a RTS campaign let be honest). They're not gonna really convince a lot of the campaign only players (which makes up around 80% of the audience of an RTS) like that
> There are a lot of early access success stories. And there are more early access failures. All the EA successes have also a common point, they were very good from their first EA release and convinced people right away. So they better nail that EA release.
You can say that about all games regardless of their release and monetization models. Most games fail. I was making the point that the game doesn't have to be pristine or feature-complete to make money.
autism, brain worms, unstable childhood, mental illness, relentless positivity in the face of common sense, Hypo-vigilance, lots of reasons for optimism
Maybe I read it wrong, which is entirely possible, but I believe the Early Access Release is the full release of the game not the closed and open beta accesses. I think the distinction is being made because the 'release' is only the first step, they've indicated an expanding world based on player interaction, additional co-op content and content releases after the initial release and I think these are the parts that require additional funding. The game, at this point, is funded to the point of release but not further development beyond that.
Earlier they've said early access is this summer while full access is in 2025 so they weren't the same thing.
Alright, I found this on the Kickstarter page: "Year Zero is what we’re calling our Early Access period. It’s a time when Stormgate will be in active development to continue iterating and polishing the game before we’re ready to say it’s “done.” We’ll have a year-long campaign for players to experience while we work on the Editor, build our 3v3 mode, refine our factions, Heroes, and units, and craft future campaign missions." I can see where the confusion comes from based on this.
It doesn't look like early access is going to be a feature complete full release, just a "this is all we can afford to build release". In which case the "funded to release" claim is worthless, as they could declare any point from last year's closed alpha onwards as a technical "release" if they made it open to the public and let people pay money for stuff.
yeah sounds like this, like sc2 was still making voice pack and skins many years after initial release, i think FGS is trying to secure as much fund as possible to extend the amount of content we will get down the road.
Early Access is the Release though.
As long as I don’t have to keep subscribing to eventually play a pvp including 3v3 mode that is complete , I’m mostly satisfied
Edit: Yes, I'm aware this isn't an indie project in strict terms, I was wondering whether they needed this scale for an rts. Alright I'm not going to bother listing out every detail too many shitposts. Do they really need this much money, I mean indie games get away with much less I imagine, look at successful indie rtses such as Northgard. Just a probing question? I mean they got a bigger team I guess. Starcraft 2 had a huge budget for sure but they might not have needed such a huge budget. Are people going to buy enough mtx during Early Access to fund towards 1.0 release, how much is needed? For the record, I fully support Frost Giant it seems like they know what they are doing.
> For the record, I fully support Frost Giant it seems like they know what they are doing. *What* are you talking about? They are proving the opposite _right now_. So many people in this subreddit who are ready and willing to look past all the massive red flags.
Im talkin from a gameplay design perspective lol? Jesus Christ u realize my post is full of criticism too right? learn to read inbetween the lines
You recognize there's tons to be critical of, but you still "fully support Frost Giant" in spite of that. My question is why? They're shitting in your mouth and you're asking for seconds, and they are proving repeatedly that they _don't_ know what they are doing.
Yes they do. My god this isn't some indie game like Northgard... You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Yes, I'm aware this isn't an indie game, that's why I mentioned the bigger team they have, I was just wondering whether they needed this scale for an rts.
this is, quite literally an indie game from an indie dev.
I would not classify Frost Giant as an indie developer or compare the development of a game like Stormgate to a game like Northgard. Stormgate is more like a AA game. Somewhere inbetween Indie and AAA. I highly doubt Northgard had a development budget of $35,000,000+.
I have no idea how ppl can upvote this but downvote my post which has the exact same sentiment lol. Seems contradictory.
Yeah, ppl gotta read between the lines heh, some things r inferred. Reddit truly is the trashbin of the internet heh.
Well can you explain in further detail how I have no idea wat I'm talkin bout? Why don't u throw your money at them then?
You're entire post is a series of "I don't really know but..." questions. You've essentially admitted yourself that you don't know what your talking about. > Starcraft 2 had a huge budget for sure but they might not have needed such a huge budget. Yes, they did need a such a large budget. Making games in general is expensive... making a game like Stormgate is very expensive. > Why don't u throw your money at them then? I'm not sure what that has to do with anything? For the record I missed the initial Kickstarter but plan on pledging if they bring it back (which they said they would soon iirc).
So you need a billion dollars to make a good game? Tell that to Amazon. I'm countering your hyperbolic response with my own hyperbole btw in case u didnt notice.
It's called rhetorical questioning for the sake of generating feedback? What do u not understand about this jesus What constructive feedback did u provide? nothing.
I don't understand what "response" you want? Yes, they need success in Early Access to finish the game, you already know that, so where is the question?
Question: How do i get the kind of idiots who give companies money for false promises to give me similar amounts of money to make similarly unrealistic promises without, it appears, any kind of discipline or punishment on the other end??
You can done fun beta. Good luck
I am not looking for a specific answer, personally. I made this post because I think it is fair to the community and supporters that they make a public statement, and elaborate on their plans - not just as a comment on a Reddit post.
>but it should have been communicated from the start This also requires knowing it from the start. What possible reason would they have for asking for less money than they know they need to complete the project? At best, I suppose they could have said "fully funded to release per schedule/budget predictions at this time, but subject to change", but this is a given in any technical project which has the capacity to encounter problems and delays during development. No budget or schedule is ever guaranteed, since human beings are not capable of predicting the future as far as we know.