I don’t know where I read it, but i think the devs of Rollerdome want you to pirate it anyway, since the publisher screwed them over and they don’t get anything out of sold copies.
Still: Really shitty from a game conservation standpoint.
Probably something to do with the fact that Take-Two fired everyone and shut the studio down last year.
I really hope the Palworld publishing is as great as it seems, it could spell the end for these scummy publishers.
A solid advice for game devs (and anyone who ever enters a contract with anyone): always read the contract. No matter what they tell you, what’s written there is what can be enforced.
always read the contract. No matter what they tell you, what’s written there is what can be enforced
My friend signed with a publisher when he released his game. The reason he did it was because they offered to port his game to consoles as well as localize it to several languages. They said the fees for those services would be taken out of sales. My friend agreed because he though it gave him far more reach than if he just put the game up on Steam himself.
They charged him $50,000 for the porting and localization. The game hasn’t sold anywhere near that amount and he doesn’t expect it ever will. They will continue to take 70% of revenue (after Steam takes their cut!) until he makes up that debt. He’s lucky he asked for a cut because originally the contract read 100% to publisher until he pays off the debt. He wouldn’t have made any money at all!
Ah. The old record label approach.
i think the devs of Rollerdome want you to pirate it anyway, since the publisher screwed them over
And they screwed us paying users over. After only one month, they stopped making any bug fixes. Not even very basic accessibility options – which should have been in the game from the beginning anyway – were added.
I was so pumped for Rollerdome but despite wearing glasses I sometimes have trouble focusing on small text and Rollerdome is full of it. A few weeks after release: Game is end of life. Like WTF!
Maybe another developer who knows what a font size slider is will make remake Rollerdome.
I’m sorry, but if they weren’t being paid for any further work they did, then they don’t owe you anything. Blame the publisher.
Blame the publisher.
That’s an excuse to deflect all blame. I’m not talking about super advanced accessibility options that take weeks or months of work (like how Last of Us 2 is apparently completely playable for entirely blind people). I’m talking about a font size slider. Other games by the same publisher take accessibility into consideration, so it’s not the publisher. Read at https://ablegamers.org/accessing-a-colorful-dystopia/ how a different studio under the very same publisher works just fine for colorblind people because the artists used easily distinguishable shapes.
There are things that don’t add extra work if they are taken into account right from the beginning and that’s planning and design phase, such as scalable text, distinguishable shapes, visual cues for audible events, subtitles. It’s not like any publisher would demand to have a lower customer base and have those removed. It speaks for the mind set of the individual developers that the basics were not covered in the first place. So yes, as a paying customer, I’m fully entitled to criticize this.
