Possible red flags with the current state of eco

I'll just comment on those with quotes:

them removed the update tree from the website(which was the main way to see what they were working on)

The tree on the website broke a good while ago after it became outdated from a technical standpoint over the years of backend updates, it was no longer possible to view the details and as such it was removed until we have the resources to fix it up when we released the website update for the new cloud backend. I'm pretty sure I said that elsewhere. We only have a single part-time backend and web developer that currently needs to take care of the cloud integration and still has multiple items to bring back, given we said in the release notes of Update 11 that the new backend is rolled out in stages (Tiers, Tokens, Icons, etc.), so that will still take a while.

The last News on the website is from Jan 2023(v10 reveal) but they did add a way to purchase the new eco credits.

News haven't existed on play.eco for a good while since our main communication channels became Discord and Steam many years ago (and since the news were actually simply moved ingame, people barely use websites anymore for such information), so I assume you refer to the company website. That one is actually separate from the the play.eco backend (that also has the marketplace), not actively maintained and only updated sporadically as needed as it is targeted to business partners not players, but I agree it should at least have major update news, so I'll get that fixed.

added a predatory and money-hungry new marketplace that "supports" server owners and modders (by giving them in-game coins)

Everything about the marketplace has already been said on all channels, just not by everyone. It's implemented as a way to support the development, also giving back and recognizing those people in the community that have a big part in making Eco great.

they have an unannounced game on their website for a while now but have yet to talk about it

The unannounced game actually exists since longer than 2018 and is mostly a design prototype at this point, it hasn't been worked on actively for years. I unfortunately can't tell you anything more about it.

beyond bad reception of the latest update (no player increase and 49% positive with a chunk of positive reviews complaining about the shop)

the complete silence on the reception of the new update from the devs)

There actually was no silence on the reception of the last update, I have personally been communicating with everyone that wanted to on all channels about the marketplace. There I also said that we obviously were aware that adding a marketplace will not be the most popular decision we can do, but that we nontheless stand behind it due an additional way for funding having been necessary. I can't change that fact, but we didn't hide from the feedback.

the 1.0 update supposedly coming out Q4 2024/Q1 2025(as said on the wiki)

That has been announced early this year and is still the general plan.

Those facts combined make me think that they might be planning to abandon the game and run with the money,

If there was so much money "to run with", we wouldn't have needed to add a way to support the development for existing players.

what the tree signified(and this is a direct quote from the 9.0 update)"Eco is our forever game, something we plan to continue growing and expanding indefinitely. As such, the vision of where we’re going is something we really want to share with the community, inviting them to participate in its creation. So with 9.0, we’re also launching the Eco Tree, which is our new interactive hub for presenting the game and connecting the community and devs", its removal could mean that the "forever game" stopped being that and is nearing its end

The early access note still states the exact same, nothing changed.

the new marketplace ruining the economy which is the core mechanic of the game (servers are incentivized to keep it on to earn money and even if you can't sell the items there doesn't seem to be anything that would stop you from simply placing it on the buyer's plots directly and selling them like that) means it's possible they no longer care about the game

Yes, they could do that - but the buyer could then never move it. It's easily preventable by admins or laws as well. Though the actual interesting point is that we of course as promised monitored the situation and the feedback we received post-release was generally (though of course not in every singular case) exactly what we expected - the servers that allow trading have not noted any negative impacts within their concepts and communities and there has been no notable problems on normal servers either. Ultimately many more servers allow trading than disable the marketplace, which was an actual unexpected surprise. Of course it will take longer than a few weeks to gauge the actual situation, when everything is no longer as fresh and one can see things in actual daily application instead of assumptions, but we don't expect that to change from what is already visible - the marketplace is not ruining the economy.

the obvious lack of comments on the current state makes me think that they genuinely don't care what the players think anymore

Well, I don't know where you are looking out for us, but we're basically responding and commenting everywhere, on every single channel, all the time. You can even just chat with us on Discord. There simply is no lack of comments.

The 1.0 update supposedly coming in the next half a year when so far they added only one of the roadmap items(and possibly the simplest) seems unlikely

I already addressed that on Steam in detail as well, but:
Update 11 already introduced outdoor rooms, cultural expansion and maintenance. Off-grid placement is also already contained as a hidden, disabled feature coming soon. That's not just one item.

The next update brings maintenance to vehicles and more objects and adds repair bounties. The tutorial has been reworked as well for improved new player experience. It also expands painting to land vehicles, Jens will have a developer stream about it on Friday.

Generally the only two items no longer planned is oil spills and beyond meteor challenges that will be moved to after the release. Some items are adjusted, additional professions and infinite star spend is planned to be merged into a talent rework and the already added ability to limit professions and more easily configure your server settings, now also ingame.

We'd like to add the electricity selling feature that is currently the second most voted on feature and a research overhaul to tackle group, rush and dropoff issues instead of those. The next new feature addition in any case will be explosives.

In the end the marketplace was introduced exactly for the purpose it was stated - offering a way to support development for existing players, to allow us maintaining and hopefully expanding the resources we can afford without needing to make major changes in direction to appeal to different audiences, for example by adding PvP. The general plans for Eco have not changed at all.

I think it might not be very obvious that credits don't actually cost us that much to give. We still retain the money that a purchase made aside of the shares we spend on charity and systems where credits can be used to interact with third-parties (like hosting, which is not there yet), the vast majority of the spent money hence remains with us.

We did that because it was a common request and with the necessity to create a new backend system with the old one regularly falling apart it just made sense to implement that when we start from scratch anyway.

I don't think that's dumb to say - that's exactly what we plan, Eco has always be intended to ever expand similar to a live service game, just not in the form of seasonal content, but permanent content. There is so much one can add to a game like Eco to explore.

Of course that is a plan - means it depends on if people are even interested in more stuff coming later to play with and if and how long we can do it financially. Many games that aren't subscription based or even have any other cash flow than new sales add more stuff after release in free patches, we always wanted to do that as well.

Eco at its core is a social experiment all about players finding together and dealing with different personal opinions, goals and behaviour - including all disagreement about them. The society building necessary due to that is inherent part of the gameplay and as such to be expected on a vanilla server - the whole law system was specifically created as the means to deal with undesired behaviour by self-policing based on majority opinions on a given server.

Toxicity is a generally very subjective term, my personal experience for more than 15 years is that the term has a wildly varied use that makes it hard to talk about it, as one can't actually know for sure what the other person considers toxic to begin with. I often see that people simply unhappy about something express a sentiment of others behaving in a toxic way (often at each when in dispute) despite there not being any objectively classifiable misbehaviour. That often also includes admin actions, no matter if they were correct or not. It even tends to get used more and more inflationary, calling everyone that at core just has a different opinion and plays by that toxic. That is against the spirit of the game that intends players to deal with others doing things different, including in ways one fundamentally disagrees with, working to find a compromise for collaboration or at least means to coexist - which the settlement system was intended to help with. It's a problem all servers deal with, not just the official servers, as I can easily see by looking into the daily server reports that objectively are most often unfounded.

We generally recommend to play on community servers as Eco was intended to be played, official servers in most games tend to be a collection pot for players that want to just play a vanilla experience, according to their own ideas (which are not always positive to community efforts) and without needing to deal with community admins. Barely any game administrates them at all, as that is not really feasible. Our four standard official servers were only introduced as late as 2019 - and as a direct reaction to people asking for servers without "community admin abuse". We originally had no intention to offer such servers.

Aside of White Tiger (which is basically a community server following a very in-depth, specific concept that certainly isn't for everyone and requires to be willing to play along the concept, but nontheless very popular) the official servers are also not actively administrated (and volunteers generally also don't actively play there), but we do provide some basic rules for all of them that are enforced on reports. Those depend on the server, each one having a bit different idea in their description. But that's also all we do, the rest is part of the game and up to the players - volunteers are not allowed to bend the rules for behaviour that is simply not prohibited, because dealing with everything else is part of the game.

And no, we do certainly not make "well-known toxic players" admins. The volunteer program is open to everyone and every volunteer needs to follow a strict code in their actions, most likely the strictest you can find when you'd compare it to any community server, also because they have no option to enforce "house owner rights", but have to act based on the rules. All their actions are also up to review - you can always complain about a volunteer action at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). Volunteers also have been removed in the past for violating the code, we take that very seriously. But otherwise they are normal players as everyone else giving up their free time for nothing but helping players with issues and enforcing the rules, they get to keep their quirks as everyone else has them, their personal opinions and also the ability to play. You wouldn't find a lot of volunteers if you made them effective staff members without pay either. And the vast majority of players thankfully respects and commends them for the work they do.

The actual problem is most often expectations that don't align with what the game and / or server is about - volunteers being expected to step in, deal with things or not do things when playing that simply are not covered by the rules and as such are objectively fine to do. Which is then sometimes considered toxic, despite everything handled fully correct. Volunteers enforce rules, not expectations.

The general official servers purposefully have rules that reflect kind of a "lowest common denominator", as the society building is up to players themselves. And while its clear not everyone likes that behaviour, there is people that play Eco due to wanting to get the most out for themselves or even be criminals. That is within the gameplay possibilities and on official servers supposed to provide the most vanilla gameplay they can play that way, as long as they follow the rules - e.g. especially Coast Redwood can sometimes become a very anarchic place when players don't step in themselves, but that's still a valid way to play and one that not few people want to play. Nontheless, all servers have a basic ruleset that enforces a respectful communication and our ToS including all zero-tolerance policies also apply, so the differences are mostly in how the game is played. And when violations are reported, they are dealt with.

Community servers have a much wider range of options given they can just make any rules and deal with matters outside of the rules as they please as well - and there is tons of great community servers that have their own ruleset that may be better suitable to someones personal expectations and that will be very happy to greet a new player that may become a resident and several of them are bigger than the official servers as well - so there is plenty of choice to be made based on one's own preferences. And that choice is important if one doesn't want to deal with personally undesirable behaviour as the game intends, as obviously players then have the best personal experiences with people that have similar opinions and ways of doing things, that is what community servers establish, they are often founded based on principles on how to do things which makes finding like-minded people easier. The vanilla experience however is a step before that - finding the principles and establishing them. Making it easier to find a personally fitting server is a main goal we currently pursue and the recommended server program is an outpour of that.