Worlds Adrift Dev Tracker

Hi there,

So because of the special circumstances in this case we were able to work with Valve to extend the usual refund window from 2 to 4 weeks, as well as remove the 2 hour time limit. If Steam has denied your refund please can you submit a support ticket via this link - https://bossastudios.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new including your Steam details and proof of purchase and we'll get this sorted for you.

Thanks!

Originally posted by Menzagitat: Thanks for clarifying Nar'Gall.
So avoiding bugs in the first place is the learned lesson?

No, not at all: bugs are the priority.

The problem is when bugs keep on popping up no matter how much effort is put into fixing them, thus making it impossible to establish a proper balance between bug fixing and features expansion / balance.

The reason this is so has to do with what we tried: a massive multiplayer physics-based game. The technical problems that this aspect brought forward were way bigger than expected, fickle, hard to fix. Rubberbanding when crossing multiple servers boundaries, for instance, took over a year of fixes to get to where it is today. In order to make ... Read more

Originally posted by Fatikis: I don't care about your excuses. I care about you a large company ripping me off like all devs in EA seem to be ok with. 30 tiny updates in a broken game is not anything.

It's very hard to carry on a discussion in any direction if one keeps on going back to something that's factually incorrect. I'll paste below a single changelog of one of the 30 updates you label as tiny (this is not even our largest one...):

https://www.worldsadrift.com/patch-notes/will-of-the-council-update-29-patch-notes/

On your 'all d... Read more

Originally posted by TescoClubCardUK: For that reason, after taking millions of pounds off of people that supported the development of this game, Early Access needs to be abolished, will stop companies like yours from using it as an excuse for a cash grab.

That's not the case. Again, we spent on WA's development 3x more than it made in sales, plus years of our time. To suggest this is somewhat profitable... It's not correct.

Making games is hard and expensive. Making an MMO is an order of magnitude so. We had dozens of people working on WA for years, it's not rocket science to multiply their salaries and get to the value.

But that won't ease yours nor anyone's frustration.

That's exactly it: if we do something new with it, WA players will get it.

Originally posted by Yemmer: Worlds adrift Fell short because the developers refused to implement BASIC features into the game to help retain the playerbase Thats why your population Plummeted AND the reason why your not getting enough sales, this is on the Studio, you can use whatever excuses you like, But the facts don't change.

Why would we refuse to implement features that would help retain the playerbase? We know the playerbase plummeted because of the lack of core features.

The reason why we didn't implement the host of features the game needed is because we were too busy making it work, fixing bugs, keeping it online. 90% of our time was going into this, and that's why we didn't implement the features ... Read more

Hey sir. We did, and we would definitely do so if we could. But it is not that simple at all:

Why can’t you make the game Open Source?
Worlds Adrift is built with third party tools, plugins and licensed code we cannot share or open source ourselves. Without these the game doesn’t run nor compile. Going over and removing all these instances is a huge undertaking we cannot commit to.

Can you make the game P2P or allow player servers?
The network of Worlds Adrift is built on top of SpatialOS, a proprietary tech. Worlds does not run without it, nor can it be hosted outside of SpatialOS’s infrastructure. This requirement prevents us from making it P2P or allowing players to host their own servers.

Why don’t you sell the game to someone else?
If we believed there was a way to keep the game running even while making a small loss, we would do so. For a third party company to run Worlds Adrift they would need to make a profit or at least break even. ... Read more

Not sure about the visibility issues as described, but I wouldn't put it down to Steam's discoverability. The fact is that Worlds Adrift fell short of what it needed to be as a game, because we were putting all our effort in making it work, on fixing bugs, rather than implementing the features it needed to have.

When we find ourselves committing 90% of our time just to keep the game working, with a large team, there's no possibility of making the fundamental changes and improvements the game needs.

That's what really brought us here.

Originally posted by Rig Nan Roach: Yes, it could. First off, you have to know that prototyping is not done on massive numbers of servers.

"It also lets you use SpatialOS on your local machine, and offers free support via the forums."

Local deployment using "small" topology

They've had their own dev servers since the get go. This game does NOT have to be an MMO. Not at all.

People need to get mad and get organized. This sort of thing is just IP abuse. There's no excuse for it. There is no excuse for this pattern that emerged with Landmark and continues here of MMO's disappearing with folks' money.

Hi Rig. This is not quite right: local servers are for development only, if you look deeper ... Read more

Originally posted by Korben: Looks like you prepared this pitiful speech for the onslaught that you knew you would receive for screwing us over. All this reply shows is the type of people you really are. Entitled to our money and will take zero responsibility for it. It is our fault for supporting you, well done. Setting excuses and examples that do not even compare to the situation. Those other MMO's at least released their games, you did not. EA is not a release of the finish product that we were promised.

If you can justify treating your customers this way, you will not have many customers for long. I will never support your shady company again. Thank you for the lesson, it has been hard learned.

Imagine this? Think about...

Read more

Originally posted by tonberry: Will you get rid of Spatial OS then?

We wouldn't make use of SpatialOS on an eventual spin-off game such as this, no.

We replied to this topic a few times already: it's not a matter of not wanting to make it open source, nor not wanting to allow people to host their own servers. If we could do that, we would. But...

Why can’t you make the game Open Source?
Worlds Adrift is built with third party tools, plugins and licensed code we cannot share or open source ourselves. Without these the game doesn’t run nor compile. Going over and removing all these instances is a huge undertaking we cannot commit to.

Can you make the game P2P or allow player servers?
The network of Worlds Adrift is built on top of SpatialOS, a proprietary tech. Worlds does not run without it, nor can it be hosted outside of SpatialOS’s infrastructure. This requirement prevents us from making it P2P or allowing players to host their own servers.

Why don’t you sell the game to someone else?
If we believed there was a way to keep the game running even while making a small loss, we would do so... Read more

I never actually seen it, thanks for sharing.

Originally posted by Fatikis: Bossa Studios has the funds to keep the game alive, AND you never properly updated the game to begin with. The game has received minimal updates. Bugs are slow if ever fixed.

Bossa killed the game by barely working on it.The game was supposed to be released 3years ago. You admitted in the video it had only 20% of the planned content for release. 1/5 content 3years late. How about you actually work on the game we purchased?

We updated the game 30 times in the past year, every update meaningful and as large as we could make them. Yet, not large enough, as we stated when saying that 90% of our time was spent on making it work rather than making it better. There isn't much more to say about... Read more

Imagine this: you hear about a new MMO on the web. You get interested, the game is launched, you buy a copy of it and perhaps a subscription.

For a couple of years, said MMO goes from its early stages, full of exploits and bugs (like most MMOs under the sun, ever) and a year or so in, it stabilises and start to get better. Not perfect, not the final article (because no live MMO is ever the final article, as it keeps forever evolving). Devs continue to work on it.

Yet, not many players buy the game. Eventually, after a couple of years, dev announces it can no longer keep it going, and it's going to shut it down. It stops charging you a subscription, and will keep the game alive for another two or three months for you to play.

This has happened before. A lot of times, to a lot of MMOs.

Now, how's this different from Worlds Adrift on Early Access? We didn't charge a subscription. That's the difference. The only difference.

Case in point, ... Read more