True, but you still don't see many high profile "AAA" if you will games out there and we want to encourage them to do more. Waiting for a sale is nice, but it doesn't encourage future ports.

That's very true, but in my case considering I paid full price for Tropico 3 & 4 on the 360, I just don't want to pay £35 for a game which sees pretty small changes between each iteration. Don't get me wrong, I think Tropico is great fun and if I hadn't paid so much for the other two, I would be more willing to pay the full £35. Even the 15% off they had for pre-orders would be enough for me to get it now.

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I believe the issues stem from the way the went about things rather than the to jump straight to 1.0.

If they had not put the game on sale shortly before announcing it and making statements that they would not cease development just a month prior, but instead made a much more apologetic statement offering some form of compensation (vouchers or something) to those who paid a ludicrous amount of money for the game then the perceptions people have of the announcement would be more sympathetic.

The reality is that they made money off this game have given no clear indication of why they are ceasing development and likewise are suddenly calling a game "finished" despite labeled as "very early alpha" up until recently and has only been in EA for less than a year.

The point of the article isn't really "Double Fine are scumbags" but instead "Double fine are being perceived as scumbags, which is creating a lack of confidence in EA and crowd funding".

Also, just to clarify something which should have been in the article, the new features in 1.0 are limited to tutorials and game objectives, and although they never said they would implement all of the features on the list they had, realistically people expected a much higher percentage than this.

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Delays don't bother me and it's great that they're keeping people posted (wish more devs would do the same). Much better this than pushing out a buggy game.

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a godly mix of Angry Birds, Scorched Earth and a Tower Defence game all in one

Looks a bit like worms too! Might pick this up if it goes a bit cheaper, decent multiplayer games are few and far between on Steam.

Worry not for I have a press key! This is scheduled for my next week's GOL Cast.

Looking forward to that :)

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I just found this, which has annoyed me even more:

Spacebase DF-9 went into open alpha last month and recouped the entire $400k investment two weeks from that date. 85% of the revenue came in via Steam Early Access, and the other 15% via direct sales by Double Fine.

That announcement was from a year ago, so they actually made a profit on something and then never even be bothered to finish...

Just look at everything they had promised (and now removed from their site, obviously):

http://web.archive.org/web/20131018054131/http://spacebasedf9.com/devplans [External Link]

It's a bit like Valve did with TF2, but in fairness to them the game was released in 2007 and to this day is receiving updates.

... and TF2 is now free, I doubt they will make Spacebase DF-9 free.

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Well you just answered it there. The reason we are kicking up so much is because a hell of a lot of people didn't buy the game early but bought it on sale just a few weeks ago or even hours ago. What about our game time?

Yup, that's probably the most dickish thing they did. Without that, I would probably let them off the hook, but that kind of behaviour is the kind of thing a conman does, not "the lovable creators of Psychonauts".

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Well, open source or not, they're still charging £18.99 and letting other people do all the work now.

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The main reason no-one has heard of it is bad/non-existent PR, media relations, etc. It's amazing how many great games go under the radar just because they haven't hired someone to publicise it, send out press releases, reach out to the community. They spend a great amount of resources developing something, then make no effort in selling it. This is the case with most developers in Argentina, which is why I am looking for work there.

As for how good the game is, I have only just started the first two chapters today, so I didn't comment on it because I don't know. It does look pretty promising though as I think having n weapons is a plus - it's not as scary when you can easily blow up any potential threat you see. Creating a sense of helplessness is far more effective (it's why the first Amnesia was s terrifying).

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Steam should just remove Early Access from their network. it's not a good idea.

I have to completely disagree with this. While DF and others clearly abused the system, Early Access is a great initiative as a whole if you take into consideration some of the games it made possible:

Kerbal Space Program
Wasteland 2
Rust
Planitary Annihilation
Starbound
Prison Architect
etc.

In fact, if you look at the vast majority of early access games, they are brilliant and made possible thanks to the life line that is alpha funding. It's just a shame that companies like DF have to ruin it for the rest of them and cast doubt on their otherwise fantastic projects.

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I don't know whether to be annoyed or pleased. I'm pleased that a very promising looking game wil be community-driven, but I'm very annoyed at the fact that I paid for a game which the devs have given up on and will now never finish.

Their reasoning must be that they have a lot of other projects right now (Grim Fandango, Massive Chalice, Costume Quest 2) but that's still no excuse to just abandon development mid way through a game when people paid money with certain expectations for it. But then again, maybe they should do the same with Broken Age and it may cease to be the travesty which it currently is and becme a decent adventure game rather than casual crap for infantile iPad users who don't like anything more challenging than jabbing at a bright rectangle with pretty colours on it from time to time.

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