Quoting: abelthorneNot sure if it's the video, the Linux port or the original game but isn't the sound a bit off, with hits being heard slightly too early?

There are still some issues with the audio that need to be fixed for the port. We're aware of them, and they won't sound off the way they do in the vid here. It's just intended as a work-in-progress video so the people who've been patiently waiting for the port can have some sort of update and keep up hope!

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Quoting: EKRboihmm.. so with your whole couple of posts TiZ (registered 8 hrs ago) it's obvious you have shown up just for this thread.. who do you work for?

TiZ does not work for Lab Zero, and has been involved in the conversation in multiple threads on Reddit well before this article was posted.

Quoting: Nel"Throw us money, we'll try to find someone else to do the job for free."

When we started our crowdfunding campaign, we originally did not include any mention of a Linux port, and it was not part of our plan to even include one until a volunteer approached us first and offered to do it. We excitedly said "Sure! That's awesome! Let's give it to all of our backers for free!" and added it to the campaign part way through.

We DID NOT simply go "Let's find some poor soul to do this for free so we can reap the benefits muaahahahahaha!" and add it to the campaign.

We AGREE that it was our mistake to add it to the campaign when it was only a volunteer effort, AND we acknowledge that we weren't clear enough during the campaign or afterward that it was a volunteer effort, AND acknowledge that it's our responsibility to deliver on the campaign rewards we listed, but that doesn't make more money materialize out of nowhere. The money raised has been budgeted to very specific purposes, which we indicate clearly on the campaign page. Diverting that money to something else now is dishonest, and unnecessarily shafts the people who donated for more content.

I recognize the irony in that, considering that many feel we were dishonest about our inclusion of the Linux version in the campaign. But there's nothing we can really do to convince those who refuse to believe us when we say we made a mistake, and who are convinced that we were consciously being dishonest about the Linux port.

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Quoting: KiibakunBut you didn't say that during the indiegogo campaign, that's the point.

I paid for the Linux support that you promised DURING the campaign. If I knew that the work would be voluntary i never would paid 30 bucks. We criticize your promise for being pure marketing for the campaign.

I was responding to liamdawe's assertion that we withheld the information from the end of the campaign until now. That criticism is different from the one you're making here, so don't make it sound like I'm refuting yours.

I'm not denying that we mishandled the way we "announced" the Linux port and included it in the campaign. That much has become clear.

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Quoting: Von

Quoting: renderWe wish we had, but there's nothing we can do about it now.

Actually, you can and you do it by participating in this conversation and posting official announcements: even though the damage is done, you actually can compensate that by being more transparent on the matter and providing at least some kind of progress updates later down the line. I don't know how much effort it takes, and how often is good enough, but being quiet unless directly asked won't help, sadly. At least in my opinion.

We agree, and that's exactly what we're trying to do. I'm going to see if we can set up some sort of way to give more frequent updates regarding the port, either directly from the people working on it, or from them through us. It will take me a few days, though.

What I meant by "there's nothing we can do about it now" is that we can't change what we said in the campaign or in our tweets. Sorry - I wasn't fully clear there. >__<

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Quoting: WorMzy

Quoting: render

Quoting: kozecHow is anyone supposed to volunteer into porting? Did they released source code or something?

Anyone that wants to work on the port needs to be NDA'd because a portion of the codebase is proprietary, but we will consider just about anyone offering to work on it, and have NDA'd several people in the past few days to do exactly that.

Out of curiosity, how many people did you DNA 18 months ago, back on March 15 2013?

I will confirm with the team and get back to you, since I don't personally know the answer to that.

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Quoting: Vonrender,
I wonder, if there is a possibility of those volunteers being paid later down the line from the revenue the linux port generates. Am I right to assume that it is only fair that some kind of this thing happens?

We're looking into it, since we feel that's only fair too, but we can't make any guarantees about it yet. It also complicates things when there's more than one person working on it, since the question of "who gets how much?" is hard to address.

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Hiya, Liam! I work for Lab Zero. I've been trying to keep people informed and be open about all of this. I'm happy to answer any questions or address concerns you might have.

To address some of the points in your post, you are right in that we didn't do enough to make it clear to people that it was a volunteer effort from the beginning. We wish we had, but there's nothing we can do about it now.

I still think that they had more than enough money to fund the port properly, but this is how it's going down now.

I don't mean to be nitpicky here, but since the Linux version was always a volunteer effort from the beginning, nothing has changed. This is how it's always been "going down." That doesn't excuse our own miscommunication about it, but I think it's important to note the distinction, since what you wrote implies that something has changed. What HAS changed is that there is a new group of people working on the port, when previously it was a solitary effort.

Considering before the crowdfunding campaign began the game was already available for sale, and the campaign was only for DLC with massive over-funding I still struggle to see why they couldn't afford a Linux port. Do voice-overs and character models really take that much money to create?
This is coming from someone with no experience on the developer/business side of things, but still they didn't communicate it very well until now, and that was mainly the problem.

Until roughly July 2014, Lab Zero has never received any money for the sale of Skullgirls on any platform including Steam, and that is not retroactive, so we've never been making money off of the game until very recently.

Also, our game uses high-resolution 2D animation, not character models, which is very expensive to produce. Those extra funds raised have gone to further content development, which is still ongoing.

We did communicate over live streams and when asked on Twitter [External Link] that the Linux version of Skullgirls was a volunteer effort, but we acknowledge that that was not enough, and it should have been readily apparent on our Indiegogo campaign page.

It took ~18 months for them to come out with this.

This makes it sound like we were intentionally keeping this information from people for a year and a half, which is not true. We've said multiple times publicly that the Linux version was a volunteer effort. It is only now that we're discovering that we didn't do enough to make this fact clear to the general Linux gaming community, and we are doing our best to have an open dialog with them about it.

The silver lining in this is that because of the discussions surrounding the Linux version, we've had several very skilled volunteers step forward to take a crack at the port, and the chances of it happening are looking better than before.

We know that's little consolation for the people who understood the port to be a fully-funded done deal, but we simply don't have the budget to pay proper programmer wages for a port.

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Quoting: kozecHow is anyone supposed to volunteer into porting? Did they released source code or something?

Anyone that wants to work on the port needs to be NDA'd because a portion of the codebase is proprietary, but we will consider just about anyone offering to work on it, and have NDA'd several people in the past few days to do exactly that.

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Quoting: sevSo, they advertised a Linux port but didn't actually mean that they would do the port, and yet they also say they don't want volunteers because they believe the port should be paid for? This makes no sense.

The backers at $30 and above should contact indiegogo and file a complaint. Between the tweets and the explicit promise of a Linux port on their own crowdfunding page, this is fraud.

We didn't say we don't want volunteers. We have some very skilled volunteers working on the port right now. What we said in that post was that we don't have the funds to pay for a port. We wish we did, because we know porting a game is difficult work, and we would want people to be paid for that work.

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Quoting: zimplex1I wouldn't be surprised if all that extra money went to paying everyone more money (not saying that's bad), but if it only took 150k to get the dlc... then they could have done a lot more useful things for the game with the extra money.

What we did with all of that extra money is put it toward making more content, which is readily apparent on [url=indiegogo.com/projects/keep-skullgirls-growing/]our Indiegogo page[/url].

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