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Chronicles of Elyria: Indie Developer Soulbound Studios closes shop, fails to deliver after $8 millions USD in crowdfunding

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60 comments, last by Baldouine 4 years, 1 month ago

Baldouine said:

@Launcher111 You have no idea of CR income. None, zero. This is opinion made out of gambling numbers just to prove something nobody can prove. At the end, nothing but pure speculation.

For Chronicles of Elyria, actually, we do ?

Throughout the entire history of their online store, they've always had a ticker at the bottom/top of the page where they'd show the amounts collected in near-real time:

Some of the players have been collecting that information, namely myself. Here's what I collected in the last 7 months of the store using a script: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRveb9N1J7Aff-gW6x5yRyrUrfdHQSNemuzAUNT0x_swOUON0UkwJEQR2GRzwLNOXUxo4NXDCf35Ohu/pubhtml?gid=89136746&single=true

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How irresponsible!

View my game dev blog here!

SolDirix said:

How irresponsible!

What is?

Launcher111 said:

… This project has enough money to buy 2 apache helicopters, 10 m1a1 abrams tanks, and 100 million dollars to toss around for mercenaries… they could take over small countries, particularly small island nations. This isnt a trivial amount of money.

Taking your own equivalence, a publisher like EA do have 115 times more revenues over the past seven years than CIG. That is even more helicopters, tanks. About mercenaries they could make a full army with their own staff of devs. But what did they delivered to gamer community? copy/paste of games and they are now going to remaster some of their past triple-A. No ambition. Meanwhile Star Citizen MMO, which is half of the project with Squadron 42 solo, do have more unique features packed in Alpha than any released triple-A from those publishers, now in its current status with much more gameplay to be added in upcoming quarters.

Pledges have always been to make original scope and deliver better experience IF the level of pledges can contribute to it. That was said back in 2014 by Chris Roberts to community. Since 2015 there is no extra features added which was not part of scope. Even the upcoming SC modes, Prison and Theater of War, are created using features and tech developed for either SQ42 or SC.

CIG does not beg for money. It is a commercial company paying salaries monthly to 500 devs and offering like any company, digital and non digital products to satisfy his customer community. Looking at pledges chart, new backers are joining every quarter by ten thousands or are free to support the project the way they want.

Still no one have to spend more than a 45$ starter package or to subscribe to anything else.

@HolyAvengerOne This sort of link is very well known by those following the project hence by myself. At no time in such file history CR's salary have been mention, nor any other CIG employees. But that does not stop @launcher111 to pretend “The 2020 numbers will show if he is taking a large amount for himself”. This is at best misleading to be nice.

As you said, this is a daily collection of pledges received by CIG as well as new registered individual count which is very useful to precisely demonstrate project support is strong and achieve by a wider community. Thanks for doing it for Chronicles of Elyria by the way ?

For everything wrong with EA… and there is a lot, they are timely, they never dropped a Madden game 2 or 3 years late.

Take forge of empires, they started off pretty plain, you go back now and they have guild expeditions, monthly challenges, pvp tournament's, new levels and units and buildings. You always have something to do in the game. Now why would they do this? Could it be It's to make money, to self fund the game expansion for the game? More importantly the new content if it turns out to be disliked by the community, it doesn't come back, it allows them to adjust the game on the community's preference.

Priority 1, make a game that works without crashing, once that is established you add on the extras.

Why should anyone need to look for a charity break down list of fiscal activities? It should be a given. Not sure if you understand this, but from an economic stand point your the shareholders of that project, they work for you, not you for them. With EA you buy a product from them, in Elyria and SC you fronted money for them to build a game.

If you have a fun project in mind, with nontraditional and obscene characters, probably save time and message me.

@Launcher111 That is precisely the problem with publishers by today standard. Date is everything. Fallout 76 was a slap in player face, a fork of fallout 4, literally the same game plus few assets and a bit of multiplayer and was a broken mess. Anthem was so good EA decided to re-work it from ground.

Two games released by companies with Billions $ revenues each year, hundred to thousands of devs and up-to-date pipelines. Companies without ambition but charging more than a triple-A (standard version versus “special"). What matter to them is the date of release which must match fiscal date to ensure steady profit sharing. Nothing else, gamer is the last of their focus.

Also backer are not more shareholder of a crowdfunded model than anyone buying game, then DLC's plus monthly subscription and micro-transaction for WOW, spending in the process ten times more cash than for SC in years of development. A pledge is like a pre-purchase of something to be done instead of something already done. Another definition is donation. None of those definition grant you the right of anything, like for EA or Bethesda. Except to get at some point a released project.

Priority 1, make a game that works without crashing, once that is established you add on the extras

That precisely what CIG is doing. The project did evolve with backers approval, through pools , pledges and backers count growing every year. Two triple-A (solo + MMO) are the project scope. One with beta in sight and the other SC getting quarterly patch with SQ42 being injected in with all its assets at release. As already stated SC Alpha have more unique features than any triple-A released by publishers. That is what backers pledges for and whats they get for the price of one game by the way. Contract fully fulfilled.

EA buys exclusive rights to sports leagues, star wars and the rest, with the ability to sue anyone infringing on them rights. Their power comes from buying good content exclusively and game studios ensuring they have no competition. EA spends over 50 million for exclusive rights to make madden per year. Star wars was undisclosed but I imagine it is 100 million plus. They make games they don't own the content for, if they are outbid the next time long term contracts come up, they are done. Making and owning the content is were the money is, EA is only surface rich, they are paying tens to hundreds of millions per year for content. Paying royalties and cutting huge checks for studios to acquire their content and developers to add to their own. In a few years the developers leave, the franchise goes under, and they become just another studio EA ate.

If you have a fun project in mind, with nontraditional and obscene characters, probably save time and message me.

Jeromy Walsh was brilliant in his vision and either a scammer or incompetent in executing upon his vision.

We will probably never know which it is - my own personal experience with him is that he has lied to me, threatened me, and deceived and manipulated an entire community.

I will stay way clear of any project that involves him in any way in the future

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