[2022] Eleventh Hour Games | New Partnership

Hello, Travelers!

We have some exciting news that we’d like to share with you today.

As many of you know, Eleventh Hour Games comes from very humble beginnings. Last Epoch originated from a simple Reddit post asking other ARPG enthusiasts “Who wants to join up and make the next great ARPG?” It started as a true after-hours passion-project that most of us worked on in the evenings for nearly a year while holding other jobs to pay the bills (Our late night development is part of the reason for the name Eleventh Hour!). Since then we’ve grown rapidly as we and our community continue to share our enthusiasm for this game and genre.

It became clear that as we gained traction and set our sights on a more ambitious game, that our growth would require more talent, hardware, software, and ultimately more funds. Due to this, I spent 653 days (yes exactly) approaching and fielding publishers, angel investors, venture capital firms, and banks seeking more funds to ensure the stability and growth of Eleventh Hour Games and Last Epoch.

During that time we received multiple verbal and written offers but many came with a requested level of control, stipulations, insertion into operations, requirements, or involvement that I suspected may not be in the best interest of the game or company. I have meticulously crafted a team of ARPG fanatics that know and want what is best for Last Epoch and our community. This team is something that I’ve always protected at all costs, so giving up nearly any level of control was not something I was willing to entertain - which as you can imagine is hard for a lot of investors.

Luckily, after nearly 18 months I began talks with the team from Tencent Games who were already fans of Last Epoch and had followed us for quite some time. They had witnessed our ability to produce and release content for nearly 4 years in Early Access, grow a team, and grow an enthusiastic player base. Their team played the game thoroughly, and came into the conversation with the level of enthusiasm, and trust in us, that we were looking for. Due to their passion for Last Epoch, but most importantly because of their willingness to let us design, create, operate, and grow how we see fit, we have accepted a low-equity investment from Tencent Games.

This investment does many wonderful things for EHG and Last Epoch, including:

• Guaranteeing the stability of our development pipeline through the full 1.0 release of Last Epoch
• Allowing funds for required hardware, like more testing machines, and server infrastructure to support Multiplayer
• Allowing us to hire and contract industry experts and consultants for the most challenging aspects of development and live operations
• Allowing us to expand our team (we’re hiring, join us!)
• Allowing us marketing capital for the 1.0 release of the game - this means more players to share Eterra with!
• Ensuring our stability and growth as a studio for years to come

Honestly, we are thrilled to have found and executed this opportunity.

Now, I want to clear the air of some concerns that this news may bring to our long-term community. I have personally been on the player-side of this coin, where I see one of my cherished independent game studios partner with a larger company and worry that the independent company and games they produce may be altered for the worse.

I want to assure you that the reason that I held out so long to find the right investment and investment partner is because I believe it is of the utmost important that we maintain our ability to operate and execute under our own discretion. This partnership comes with no obligation to change any plans regarding our development of Last Epoch, and no binding development agreements to execute on. As a studio we’ve retained full creative control and autonomy and this only bolsters our ability to execute on our vision better.

Thanks to Kickstarter and players like you who have purchased the game and continued to advocate for us during Early Access, we were able to hold out for the right investment that allows us to fully preserve our vision for Last Epoch. So again I want to express my gratitude to all of our Travelers that have believed in us while we are in an early stage of development.

So what does this ultimately all mean? Eleventh Hour Games is healthy. Healthier than ever, growing more rapidly, and excited as hell to put these funds to work in creating an amazing action RPG for all of us to enjoy. Thanks again for all of your continued support from the entire team here at Eleventh Hour Games.

Judd Cobler
Game Director

I completely understand that this would be a major concern for the community but I want to assure you that there is zero pressure on any content releases from the agreement we have with Tencent. This is the type of deal structure I was hoping that we would be able to procure as it solely bolsters the studio’s resources

Meaning that they do own a small percentage of the total equity of the company.

The way this agreement was made, that small equity share does not come with any control over our design and development as a studio.

Less than 25%

I completely understand the skepticism and while I know this is a huge positive for Last Epoch and EHG, it will be up to us to prove that to our playerbase.

This has already allowed us to hire multiple talented network engineers, technical artists, story and presentation folks, etc that will have a noticeable impact on the quality, performance, and stability of the game over the next few patch cycles.

Again, it’s up to us to prove that this is a positive for everyone. We will work hard to do so.

This comes with no deadlines, milestones, or any pressure around game content whatsoever. We provided our own projected milestones and deadlines for a valuation while being very direct that we intend to remain flexible and things may change if we believe a change is what is best for the game.

Yea we have to provide them financial reports but we create this type of material anyway, so it’s not a large burden. It’s a very healthy practice for any company.

bet

Definitely allows us to “do more” and at a higher quality. This doesn’t directly change our content goals for 1.0, though as we bring in more consultants and expertise we’re already finding some things that may be wins that we decide we should divert some attention to in the near term. In the long term, post 1.0, this is probably more significant in terms of “additional content”.

Boardman, for people like you that have been with us for a long time I think you will quickly notice improvements in quality across the game in the upcoming patches. I’m not going to state anything specific as I would rather under-promise and over-deliver.

Those types of concerns remain EHG’s responsibilities and completely fall under our team’s purview.

This isn’t a contradiction to us. In our view there are very important differences between individuals, businesses, and governments. If a conflict breaks out between two governments, we do not take those actions as a reflection of the individuals who happen to live there - in fact our heart goes out to them.

This is an agreement that was made between two teams, two businesses, full of wonderful, passionate APRG gamers. It does not reflect on the political views of the individual team members on our team, or on theirs - nor does it have any hidden political subtext to read into.

A couple things I’d like to assuage concerns on that I’ve seen evolve over the day…

1. EHG is not providing Tencent any user data or any way to track any data, at all.
2. There have been no upticks or down ticks of development related to this investment. Going through the adventures of procuring funding has taken a lot of my time over the last couple years but our development team has been unaffected. There may be a couple patches that look like “less content” than some of the densest content patches we’ve released as we’re heavily focusing on multiplayer, quality, live operations needs and other foundational developments for the 1.0 release of the game.
3. Tencent is not requesting our source code to make a competing game - though that is very flattering speculation! Truly multiple folks from Tencent that I had spoken with, including a number of higher ups, had dozens (and some into a hundred+) of hours in Epoch. It was the only investment team I had spoken with, of over 20, where we actually chatted about the game content extensively and I could tell they were true fans of what we have built.

Hey there!

I understand your frustration and I do apologize that your experience is not what we strive to provide to our players. I can provide an update here but I would like to iterate that we cannot share specific details on the forums and ask that you submit a support ticket to discuss further.

• Your digital items have been delivered
• Your physical items have been shipped
• We have also issued a full refund back in May in response to your previous customer support posts. The receipt verifies this and would be happy to share it with you so you can take it to your payment processor should you have any further questions.

Again, I am truly sorry about the delay in physical item shipping. That is on us.

Wish you all the best,

-Aluxaeterna

Hi!

Through our back-end, we are only able to issue refunds using the same purchasing method that was used. We, being EHG, do not not have any other details besides the email you provide us. No credit card information, address, name, etc.

I will work with our support team first thing in the morning to figure out an alternative method to get your refund to you.

Talk soon,

-Aluxaeterna