Update on Beta Backer Demo

There will be an update about it today. Keep in mind that the groups that push out the updates are on pacific US time, so their day is just now starting (8:07 AM).

Update confirmed: backer demo delayed until June 28th.

Why do they wait until the last possible minute to tell people things are gonna be delayed? I'm not impressed by how the kickstarter has been for the last couple of months. I am very disappointed and expect the main game delayed even when they announce a release date and when it is they're gonna wait until the last minute again to say it is. Unbelievable.

Nothing like waiting until the last minute to tell us. I'm still excited for the game but this campaign has been a bit of a train wreck.

It's a bummer to be sure, but I really appreciate one of the things Angel-Corlux mentioned in the update.

"One advantage that will come of this is that the feedback you all will provide will not focus on some of the common issues we ran into with the E3 2018 build."

I'd feel embarrassed if I found out I commented on a problem they were already in the process of fixing.

Personally, I'm not very much bothered by this at all, though I agree waiting until the last minute was bad PR. The nanosecond they had a sliver of a doubt as to whether or not the release date would be met, they should have officially delayed it. Transparency is one of the things that's most valued by the community, after all, and even if the reason is that they were working over time not to delay the game... it'll leave a bad taste in people's mouth. Now they don't know if they should be excited for the release next week, because they might wait until the last minute to delay it again.

Sorry,  Angel-Corlux , this is one area where your credibility is being hurt. You've been promising a deluge of awesome information since late last year, and said deluge has been a trickle, at best. Obviously, I have no doubt that when you made your promises, you were sincere; but it never materialized, so when you tell me again that it's coming, I won't really be excited, because I've been let down before.

I must add that I still love you guys and support you 100%. I've no doubt that this is simply the result of  the difficulty in handling a project like this, but I've worked in game development, so I can relate; most of the people here haven't.


Actually, I think delay would sum up pretty much all videogame kickstarters. It's something backers should be very aware of.

The thing is, delays are FAR more common in game development than people realize. So are major shake ups in development. I worked on one big game that got delayed over a year and a half from it's original release date and the public was never the wiser. Neither do they know that the original director was removed from the project and literally half the features ended up on the chopping block. Why did they never find out? Because they weren't doing regular updates like you do in a Kickstarter. They just waited all they could, announced a release date, and then pulled staff from pretty much all the other projects to finish the game in time. The other projects were, again, obviously delayed because of it - but people never found out.

Oh, and the game was released to glowing reviews.


Very believable, actually, because they don't share our perspective. The dev team and the publisher know what's coming, how things are going, and we don't. So it doesn't sting them as much - or fan reaction might sting so much that they'll avoid delaying it at any cost, until they realize at the last second that no, it won't be on time.

Also, this Kickstarter thing is still relatively new, and so is the PR behind it. What 505 needs to realize is that backers are very forgiving when  you level with them; but do something that looks like you're toying with them (even if that was not the intention, obviously), and all that positive feeling turns to an equal amount of hate. 

And I'd absolutely hate for that to happen to this project.


Again, obviously they could have handled the announcement better, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it a train wreck, just yet.
For train wreck, see MN9

Comment of the year right there 

An annoyance that should have been communicated earlier. This wasn't a build server going up in flames or lightning strike causing a blackout or something else suddenly destructive, from the sound of it. This was a dev delay that we could have at least received a warning about.

But it is an understandable delay. What use are bug reports about bugs that are already being fixed, after all? Which is why I don't get the doom and gloom about the delay. It was a communications screw-up, but not the wrong decision overall. What's with the sudden "Oh this campaign is going up in smoke, MAN THE LIFEBOATS" attitude?

Just some natural frustration from people because of the delay.

The problem's really just managing expectations: they had trouble with the backer codes for Curse of the Moon, didn't announce neither a release date nor a release window during E3, and now this. Everybody was waiting for the backer update to download the game, and instead they got a message telling them it had been delayed a week.

On their own, they're minor missteps - but taken together, some people's frustration boiled over.

If they'd gotten the Curse of the Moon thing right, had given a firm release date (even if it's 2019), and delayed the demo beforehand, this would probably have not been a problem.