http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/65443
If not, you guys might want to respond to this.
That may be true, but consider the possibility that the game didn't sell much beyond pre-orders. Add in the fact a certain percentage of pre-orders get canceled and then also add in returns like you mentioned. All three together may have been enough to precipitate the lay-offs, and not necessarily just returns. This is saddening to hear as Stardock has been a pretty good company to its players, and Brad isn't the first to make mistakes especially on a brand new IP with a just as new engine running it. Hopefully Stardock rebounds from this setback. Personally I like Elemental, and am eagerly awaiting to see it reach its potential.
ME!
I got a refund after 1.06. Game was stable, just mechanics are horridly off and more than a patch or two away from being "ready".
Sorry it is true, I did read it. I understand what you're saying but that's not what Brad said. He went from being fully committed to Elemental for the next two years to having to lay off one of two teams. One team with Elemental. One team working on future games. His words.
Here's my money point. Brad just laid people off due to poor revenue from Elemental. They broke even on preorders, right? Anything after preorders is profit, right? Since no Elemental revenue had been coming in before Elemental's release it seems kind of ludicrous to use poor revenue as a reason for laying people off. They had money to pay them before release but not after? Haven't laid anybody off since 1997 but all of a sudden because of poor Elemental revenue people get laid off. Doesn't make sense especially since any sales after preorders are profit. Maybe not the profit they were hoping for but still profit. I think maybe Stardock is having financial difficulties and counted on Elemental sales to bail them out.
AFAICT, there's no reason to assume the worst just yet.
Best regards,Steven.
I'm with tevans. things don't really add up. i don't feel like the "honesty" is 100% honest anymore.
Maybe. But consider this. All of the people who got laid off were being paid before Elemental was released. Now poor Elemental revenue is being used as the reason for laying them off. Stardock hasn't laid anyone off since 1997. Brad said they broke even with preorders. When in gaming history have you ever heard of a game making all of their sales on preorders and nothing else? In order for revenue to be that bad it has to be a combination of poor sales and massive preorder refunds. Since preorders had them breaking even it has to be preorders. Poor sales alone would still have them breaking even. It's got to be the preorders.
Proverb 16:18
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Who can pass up cool and relevant biblical references? Seriously though, it was all a grand mistake. Hell, I have even made some of those!
Your "money point" is bankrupt. You want to hate on Stardock so much you aren't even thinking of the possibilities. For example, their business software could have provided enough seed money (after years of income) to begin a second game team and fund it for a certain amount of time, with the expectation that profits from Elemental would then be able to continue funding the second game team after the seed money ran out. When they realized that Elemental wouldn't bring in the expected income, they were forced to lay off the second game team, because the initial seed money had run out and there wouldn't be additional income.
It amazes me how much hate some people have. How do you live with yourself?
As far as preorders and sale goals, remember that say they need 50K to break even (number out of air). If they only end up selling 51,000 copies, that'll break even and make a profit, yeah, but it's hardly enough profit to be able to really re-invest back into the company (ie expand and maintain a second team). If they needed 75K to break even on Elemental plus pay for the second team, well... 51K is far short.
As for the team prior, I'm guessing it's like so:
Stardock has 20 bucks extra. They use it to hire 20 people. 10 people (10 bucks) make Elemental. The other 10 bucks/10 people work on other stuff (and Elemental in spare time). Elemental only makes 10 bucks; enough to pay for Elemental but not enough to pay for the other 10 people working on stuff that isn't making money yet.
Not to mention the role of investors and such - Stardock may have taken on outside funding (and thus, debt) to fuel expansion. Without the extra profit to pay off that debt plus cost of development, well there's that.
At any rate, I doubt we'll get a perfectly clear picture beyond that without some word about it. And I doubt anyone at Stardock is going to give specifics on their finances. Suffice to say, all we really can say is that Stardock had to lay people off due to an inability to pay those extra people. It happens, it's no good for anyone, and that's about all a point we should make.
No. No. No No. No. Brad and Stardock aren't getting piled on. They deserve the criticism. I don't disagree that Sega/CA got away with ETW. It's all about the eye candy there. That still doesn't excuse the bad shape in which Elemental released. Elemental is not a Stardock quality game. At least not the Stardock I know. The Stardock I know created GalCiv1, Political Machine 04 & 08 and GalvCiv2 plus expansions. Those games may have had bugs but they were all good games. Elemental in comparison to Stardock's past work is a trainwreck and those reviews are very fair. The only review I disagree with is the Neoseeker 9/10 review. Anybody who thinks that Elemental deserves a 9/10 right now has mental problems and probably shouldn't be reviewing games. That's my pet peeve with Stardock right now. They link to that review in the news section of this website. They really should take that down. If Brad-Stardock can fix this game and make it something good, all of the bad reviews will be long forgotten. That's a big if though.
Just how did anything I say imply that I hated Stardock? Grow the hell up. Everything written is not always of the "fanboy" or "hater" variety. Let me tell you something. I hate certain sports teams. I hate certain foods. I'm also not too fond of some politicians. But I have absolutely no fanboy loyalty or hatred towards Stardock or Elemental. My loyalty only goes as far as Stardock producing a product that I want to buy and me buying it. That's it. You can call me a "hater" all day but there's no denying the fact that Elemental is not a Stardock quality product and I think Brad would agree.
As for your other comment. It's possible. So I guess revenue from their business software is drying up too? That's what you're saying. It was good enough to support two teams. Now all of a sudden it can't and layoffs occur due to poor Elemental revenue. That doesn't make sense. If two teams were sustainable before Elemental's release they should be sustainable after release unless Stardock is in some type of financial difficulty. That wouldn't suprise me given the economy and the fact that bigger fish have fallen.
How do I live with myself? Pretty damn good. I look in the mirror every day and I like what I see. I call things the way I see them. Do you really think it bothers me you calling me a "hater"? I'm too damn old and too set in my ways to care what somebody else thinks of me. I just consider the source and let it go.
Fanboy!
I never really posted on these forums, but I will try to share my views on Brad and his company.
I first discovered Brad on neowin.net back in the days of winxp customization and windowblinds & skindeveloper. Then the company slowly grew into iconpackager, icondeveloper, bootskin, cursorxp, etc. The days were quite glorius where you saw a very small customization company grow and become heard by the everyone (even the king himself.. MSFT). In the process, SD also created some other programs that they initially thought would be transformational. Many failed, but the company did something quite strange, it continued to support them. Eventually, they started making games (to be honest, they weren't really my type of games and they seemed for a lack of better word ... "dark" and cumbersome. SD for me is windowblinds, this galciv game (played it 10 mins and did not really get it), and elemental.
I am not much of a gamer, but personally I did like MOM, Larry's Quest, QFG (Hero's Quest), The Realm Online, Diablo, Warcraft, HOMM series, CIV series and finally I just played elemental. I don't find elemental as "bad" as most folks on the forums, but maybe because my judging is based on very few games or maybe because the games I played had similar issues (slowdowns at the end, memory leaks, etc.). Overall, I was actually quite impressed with elemental again because when I first saw SD, they were but a small customization company. So it is quite impressive that they reached this far with gaming.
The most enjoyable game I ever played was The Realm Online (even more than MOM), but it was incredibly buggy. I would have to log off off every 1 hour and then relog (in order to stop the game from crashing because of "too many handles"). The game changed owners quite a few times and at the end a rich game fan bought the game. For those worried about the future of the game, I wouldn't be because Brad isn't only the owner, but he seems to also be a fan which in my book translates to keeping the game alive.
Similarly, I wouldn't be afraid on SD's financials because I've seen how this company operates. They are persistent (even thou they might be silly at times). Again, all this I am basing it on my experiences with SD when it first started.
Anyhow, I should go back to playing the game and enough of this drama. It will all get sorted out. Brad is both stubborn and arrogant. Although those are some of his weaknesses, they are also his strength. I am quite sure his next project will be big.. whatever it might be.
Not really, the fundamental mechanics aren't bad. Exploration is in decent shape, I'm not thrilled with city development but it isn't a bad mechanic. They've got 4 primary issues IMO.
1. Magic is too weak. A Mage character isn't viable at the moment, Magic needs fixing. Stardock's already said they're going to redesign this.
2. AI. Tactical and Strategic AI isn't up to snuff. I don't need to elaborate.
3. Informational. The game has tons of things going on, but does a very poor job of telling the Player what's happening and/or why. I blame the manual for a good part of it, alot of the problems could've been avoided with a manual that tells you what things do.
4. Bugs. They're there, some like performance issues I could see, how shards not working made it out the door in a game centered on them I've no idea.
All of these things are quite fixable, none are beyond repair, none are fundamentally flawed. Just flawed in implementation. As far as the reviews go, I think PCG is wrong. Very strangely, I can't argue with Gamespot except for the crash complaints, I'm having a hard time believing those.
Overall I think Elemental is quite fixable, I just think it was released 4 weeks early. I just still really don't understand what happened to the magic system though...
Because you are trying your best to imply that Brad is lying, or Stardock is failing, and you are not even trying to understand how business works.
Whether Elemental is good or bad is not the point. See above.
No, it's not what I'm saying. Are you even trying to understand? Let me try again... it can take multiple years to accrue enough money to fund a second team for a few months. It's not that they are using their business software profit each month to pay the second team's salaries each month. If you can't understand this, then it's because you don't want to understand it. That's what makes you a hater.
Seems to me like you're calling things the way you want to see them.
FYI I still cannot see this game on UK Amazon website, or our Play.com website.
I think the answer, as may have been stated above, is better distribution, not the nature of the game.
PS independent amazon/ebay sellers: note that there is currently a gap in the market you can exploit, if you can beat amazon to it!
Messed up message. Sorry.
Quit acting like children you two.
Well, well. I'm sure glad I didn't spend that $50 bucks on this game. Is this new to most of you? bad product = low $$$, low $$$ = no jobs. Brad made the decision to release this unfinished product and is reaping its reward. I wonder how many of the 20 laid off (not fired, yeah ok) said "ITS NOT READY, what's he doing"
I read all the beta warnings about the state of the game. (Strike 1) I don't buy games without demos, period. (Strike 2) Now, the CEO is giving us contradicting stories (Strike 3). I'll wait for the K-mart dumpster.
Brad said Elemental was ready to ship/play at launch w the PC UK Gamer fiasco.
A week later Brad said it wasn't ready, but was clouded by how close he was to the game. That the bad reviews were warranted because EWoM wasn't a good game (yet).
In that same post he said
Stardock will be working on Elemental for years to come. Literally. Let me be specific: Stardock will NOT release a new game next year. It'll all be Elemental related. Releasing it in August wasn't a financial decision. Hell, Stardock's games aren't funded by PC game revenue.
I think most people would agree that Elemental has tremendous potential. The reason it was released when it was was because we thought it had reached that level ready to be shipped.
The real question, and the question I think every single person who shelled out $50+ for this game should ask is this: What is Stardock going to do to make me whole?And the answer, I hope, is in the coming months because, like I said, most of Stardock's revenue doesn't come from making PC games.
We are very fortunate to be in a position to make the situation right. We're our own publisher. We don't have the same financial constraints as other companies so we can spend months or even years if necessary to do right by you guys.
Now things are so bad that up to 20 may lose their job?
Which is it? Either Stardock's bottom line isn't affected by PC games or it is so much that a large portion of the co get laid off when a game bombs <period>.
If he isn't being dishonest then this is a Guiness record for chain of unfortunate turn of events in 2 weeks
IMO Brad should stop talking. A simple "I farged up" would do. No need for 4 paragraphs of driveling which 2.5 paragraphs of can be contradicted 2 days later.
This cycle is not making for good Stardock PR (or Stardock bottom line)
Good luck to the people who were laid off. Hopefully Stardock can recover and bring them back at a later date. If not, I hope you are all able to find new jobs hastily.
I don't get what confuses people so much about the financial situation here.
The gaming division isn't producing enough revenue to sustain another independent team, and potentially not enough to sustain the current size of the Elemental team. Regardless of this, Brad will invest profits from the other divisions to continue to keep enough people in the gaming division to develop and improve upon Elemental. He won't, however, throw good money after bad and try to keep two teams fully up and running when there's a fundamental problem in the way the gaming division is currently being managed as a whole.
Secondly, there's a difference between profit on a product, and enough profit to fund the continued existence of support for a product. Even if Elemental does break even, and indeed profit, there's nothing saying that said profit is enough to fund the continued development without essentially reinvesting some of the "breaking even" part of that revenue into the project. Now we're effectively running in the red again. This gets even worse if we're expecting the profits to fund a second team that probably didn't even exist for a significant chunk of the original game's dev cycle.
Theoretically, Stardock could probably continue to fund both teams for some time from a purely financial standpoint (ie: not going bankrupt), but this wouldn't be a very sound business decision until the underlying problem is fixed. Fixing the problem could very well require investing more money in other areas. It's not exactly logical to be funding the day to day operations of the gaming division (with profits from other divisions) when the failing division is larger than it has to be, while simultaneously pumping money into trying to fix the problem affecting the division.
Keep in mind that profits pulled from the non-gaming divisions, robs said divisions of money that could have otherwise been reinvested into them and most likely made further profits on. Brad is there to keep Stardock as a whole fiscally sound, not to sabotage the company in the name of being completely fair. It sucks, but the alternate situation could very well end up with Stardock bankrupt, and everybody working there being out of work. On the flip side, there's the chance that keeping everybody on board and biting the bullet in the mean time could potentially rebound and be a great success. There's no way of knowing these things, but to gamble with the jobs of everybody working at Stardock, and the company as a whole is a risky maneuver best saved for when there are no other viable options.
And on a somewhat unrelated note, I find it amusing how much people get all flustered over Stardock being evil or something for this, while the big studios routinely do this on a larger scale, even when the game is a massive hit.
ouch hope things gets better for you, I did my part I bought elemental (the collector's edition!) and made all my friends buy it :/ trought pre-order as well, for now the game didn't really made me too much happy but it has modding and can be improved alot (expecially bugs!) I kind of hope to get a new master of magic, but I guess it isn't the case :/ keep up the good work stardock you can do it! you listened alot to the suggestions of the community and made good games out of them ^^
Pretty much this. Stardock will persist, and may ultimately benefit from this failure. Had Stardock waited another month to release Elemental in a "good enough" state, the shortcomings of Stardock's game development model would remain unnoticed. I sincerely hope that this crisis will force Stardock to overhaul its development strategy and become a stronger, more consistent producer of games.
I would like to see Impulse grow and Impulse::Reactor mature so that developers and consumers may benefit.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
