On August 13 2025 06:27 ChillFlame wrote: This is pretty much game over message. I've seen it a lot. Finding "partners" when everything is in the open is unlikely.
I warned as many people as I could. Bying online only campaign from the studio that might close very soon isn't a good idea.
I could see it being an attractive buy, I think it almost entirely depends on how actually good their tech is, or what their other financial obligations are.
In theory, I mean they’ve got a UE5 ready RTS toolkit, their game isn’t crazy far off 1.0
You could buy them for effectively pennies on the pound, and without much further investment required to finish their particular game, and just license their tech to whoever is looking to make an RTS game, IDK say Games Workshop wants to commission another RTS. And just keep doing that and more than make your money back.
Now as I stressed earlier, it very heavily depends on how good that toolkit is, or indeed how licensing bolt-ons to UE5 would even work legally. And we know it’s not the most performant
But I’ve felt for a while that might be FG’s most lucrative revenue stream potentially. It’s even more attractive if you’re the saviour investor who’s needed to keep the lights on, you can just swoop in and have that with a fraction of the investment FG spent in building those tools.
I lack the expertise to get into the nuances of financing. I basically don't know what happens if someone wants to buy their tech for a penny. Do they wait till bankruptcy sell out? How do they split it with other investors like Kakao Games?
I'm not a software engineer either. How valuable is their tech? I have no idea. I heard Snowplay is a heavily specified piece of tech tied heavily to UE 5 and other services I don't remember =) There might be problems with licensing, as you mentioned. I'm pretty sure there are problems with tools and documentation, too.
So yeah, can't really answer on this one =).
Me neither. Cyro knows their shit in these domains but I certainly don’t!
From my understanding the main engines that people who don’t have the money (or do, but don’t want to) build their own engines can use aren’t especially good for RTS games in particular. So you have to spend a lot of development time re-purposing those tools for RTS
To my understanding Snowplay is basically a bespoke interlocking module with UE5, with some of its own logic, to basically ‘do the RTS stuff’. So it’s not a full engine as such.
Part of why Indie devs regularly pump out great games in other genres, and not RTS IMO is you wanna build x game? Cool, engine can basically handle that out the box. RTS you still need people to build the RTS-specific tools and behaviours.
If you had a toolkit that works well and skips that stage, it’s a pretty attractive proposition to would-be RTS developers. Or even RTS-adjacent genres.
As I said I’ve zero real idea and I might be miles off. I could see it though. If someone provides a compelling counter argument I may have to consider myself 100% wrong. For example if, legally, you can’t license a ‘we took UE5 and built a bundle’, because to Epic you’re still basically using a tweaked UE5 and you can’t sell that to others without giving most of that money to Epic
I'm wondering if "partners" means new investment or finally seeking a publisher. I imagine if they get a publisher, that many people will not survive the acquisition!
On August 13 2025 07:30 SoleSteeler wrote: I'm wondering if "partners" means new investment or finally seeking a publisher. I imagine if they get a publisher, that many people will not survive the acquisition!
I don't think publisher would buy an already released game with bad numbers and no IP value. What's the profit? Edit: If someone knows examples, it would be nice.
If a big publisher thinks the game has potential down the line with further development, and they can buy it cheap, I don't think it's inconceivable. This game's valuation must have suffered quite significantly. (Whatever that Start Engine investment round was - like $150M projected value or something? Ridiculous).
In a world where they didn't have to worry about money, and can have another year or two of development, I don't think it's too crazy to think they could make a pretty good, more complete product. It has improved over the past year, and they are proving they can listen to some (evidently not all) feedback.
How to make it profitable? What's the mechanism? The game is already released, Steam algorithms won't help much. Massive marketing campaign? It's more expenses on a risky and niche project, nobody will do this. They need six digit MAU for years to get even.
Maybe I'm too narrow-minded, but I don't see a good scenario. As I said examples would be nice.
Subpar at its best. I think it sums up the game pretty well.
Not too shocked at the poor launch. Didn't have the vibe, too slow to change up gameplay, releasing all these side contents when no one cares about the campaign.
I don't really envision a good scenario either; I also recognize I'm huffing copium as someone who's simply enjoyed playing the game for almost 2 years now (I was in from the Chronosphere alpha).
But there should be plans to monetize the game beyond the already released campaign that people have bought - skins, announcers, co-op heroes, further campaign missions etc.
I assume if they had a lot of people playing 1v1 (or 3v3 soon?) that people would be willing to drop some money on the game in various ways.
I don't follow the game development scene super closely to provide examples. I would think there's two ends to the spectrum, as seen from this thread also. Games that have a small staff and a lot of heart that make games self-published/funded and see success. On the other side, big publishers throwing AAA budgets at games.
I don't know if there are many games like Stormgate: former high profile developers (I know this is debatable) who secured tens of millions in investors money to build a game. I would think when this much money is thrown around, it's usually not in startup form, and instead from existing big companies/publishers.
So Stormgate seems (to me) fairly unique in that regard. I don't think any publisher would pick them up unless it was a pretty small investment and Tim Morten smooth talked his way as he seems to do into convincing someone it still has a lot of potential (which I genuinely believe it does).
I welcome corrections to my thoughts! Maybe I'm wrong on a few things here.
A) There are no examples like Stormgate. Anyone else pulled the plug earlier than this or pivoted harder at first (and second) signs of abject failure. No one else would have gotten this far but the Tims did a great job cashing in their reputations during the peak of industry VC spending low interest free money in 2020-1. B) They could probably resell or license the engine. I see no UE licensing restrictions that would prevent it. It's probably worth $1M cash or like 250k a licensing fee. This doesn't keep the game alive, but allows Tim & Tim to keep their house. It's not some golden goose or mystical asset. C) There's no path to profitability here because the game has already been written off by the community (violently so). Any new marketing push or new patch or new communication is going to give the game +25% from what it had the days before, and its actively hemorrhaging day over day back to the ~250 CCU it had in Early Access.
Prediction: FG closes their doors on Dec 31 2025.
****
I should point out, it's not impossible for SG to be profitable, but it would need to be run by a group of 6 Latvian teens out of a shed, not by FG in its current or even reduced form. It could be nursed back to life. Maybe someone would want to buy the whole thing for $1M and then squeeze blood from a stone, but there are seemingly numerous better options for that and time is the enemy right now. Attention span is short and FG continues to be tone-deaf by literally not saying a word to the community in the 7 days since launch. Yall employing 50 people and nobody could fix any bugs or tweet anything or discuss a roadmap or even say "thanks" or anything? Indie games run by 2-3 people community more actively.
Here's another game I've tried out and have been half paying attention to. Check out the update history since the 1.0 launch on July 22nd. About ten rookie devs in Brazil. Why is FG not able to keep up? https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782460/Hell_Clock/
Part of why Indie devs regularly pump out great games in other genres, and not RTS IMO is you wanna build x game? Cool, engine can basically handle that out the box. RTS you still need people to build the RTS-specific tools and behaviours.
Yeah, this is also my feeling. You can make a simpler and more linear RTS as an indie I'm sure, but are unlikely to produce something that would rival the big boys and imo that's the only point of starting on the journey.
Tim's post is tailor made to bring out the positive Stormgate people. A worthy, self-preserving effort on his part, but I really don't like the rhetoric. Frost Giant is not the victim, we are. If Stormgate fails, they move onto something else after getting paid for 5 years and we don't get a game. The hardcore RTS community loses out big time if they don't get something they want to play and make content for after years of anticipation and hype. I already “bought” the game for $60 during the kickstarter (oopsie) and I don't play it. I consider it a huge fail on FG's part that I don't find the game fun enough to play or enduring enough to make maps for. I was lubed up for it, now I'm soft. I lose, they win.
Tim's point about 'detractors coming out in force when a game underperforms' is also bad rhetoric. What potency do detractors have if the game is awesome? Or does he think there's just a huge lot of people who hate Stormgate out of spite—like they all secretly like the game but are throwing shit at it for reasons unrelated to the quality of the game—and the game is actually worthy of a huge audience? The real issue is they didn't make something that is beloved by anyone. They went for soft edges instead of hard ones. TBH, most people's feedback would have led them here. Very few people have the cajones to make the right game, the best game—to make choices that will alienate people in order to have other people love it. If your thing has neither love nor joy, it's hard to really root for, and you have very few ardent defenders. No one cries for cajones that are pequeño. Only cajones grandes. That ball that you sit and bounce on in preschool. This is the cajones size needed.
The Scouring launched today into Early Access with a $25USD admission price tag into about ~314 users peak concurrent users. Very reasonable for what I think is a classic 2-4 person team for programming and art (and not a 50 person "studio"). This one should grow organically via positive word of mouth. Reviews are good, but ultimately extremely early.
Will be interesting to watch if over the next two weeks these games trade userbases....
On August 13 2025 13:10 Gescom wrote: The Scouring launched today into Early Access with a $25USD admission price tag into about ~314 users peak concurrent users. Very reasonable for what I think is a classic 2-4 person team for programming and art (and not a 50 person "studio"). This one should grow organically via positive word of mouth. Reviews are good, but ultimately extremely early.
Will be interesting to watch if over the next two weeks these games trade userbases....
What's weird about the launch is that 1vs1 doesn't really play any better than on early access launch. They've reworked and changed a bunch, but it's not fundamentally better in any way (in fact the stormgates are arguably worse than the creeps, flawed though those were).
So I don't really see how they are hoping for it to attract more players than last time - it's just slightly slicker. The campaign is meant to be much improved, but no one is saying it's a must-play, and all the other modes are still work in progress/unchanged.
Was the calculation that casuals like campaigns and so if the campaign was great then that would provide the funding? This makes sense, but then it would have to be really great, and there'd have to be more missions coming very soon, neither of which are true.
A) There are no examples like Stormgate. Anyone else pulled the plug earlier than this or pivoted harder at first (and second) signs of abject failure. No one else would have gotten this far but the Tims did a great job cashing in their reputations during the peak of industry VC spending low interest free money in 2020-1. B) They could probably resell or license the engine. I see no UE licensing restrictions that would prevent it. It's probably worth $1M cash or like 250k a licensing fee. This doesn't keep the game alive, but allows Tim & Tim to keep their house. It's not some golden goose or mystical asset. C) There's no path to profitability here because the game has already been written off by the community (violently so). Any new marketing push or new patch or new communication is going to give the game +25% from what it had the days before, and its actively hemorrhaging day over day back to the ~250 CCU it had in Early Access.
Prediction: FG closes their doors on Dec 31 2025.
****
I should point out, it's not impossible for SG to be profitable, but it would need to be run by a group of 6 Latvian teens out of a shed, not by FG in its current or even reduced form. It could be nursed back to life. Maybe someone would want to buy the whole thing for $1M and then squeeze blood from a stone, but there are seemingly numerous better options for that and time is the enemy right now. Attention span is short and FG continues to be tone-deaf by literally not saying a word to the community in the 7 days since launch. Yall employing 50 people and nobody could fix any bugs or tweet anything or discuss a roadmap or even say "thanks" or anything? Indie games run by 2-3 people community more actively.
Here's another game I've tried out and have been half paying attention to. Check out the update history since the 1.0 launch on July 22nd. About ten rookie devs in Brazil. Why is FG not able to keep up? https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782460/Hell_Clock/
On August 13 2025 14:55 Tal wrote: What's weird about the launch is that 1vs1 doesn't really play any better than on early access launch. They've reworked and changed a bunch, but it's not fundamentally better in any way (in fact the stormgates are arguably worse than the creeps, flawed though those were).
So I don't really see how they are hoping for it to attract more players than last time - it's just slightly slicker. The campaign is meant to be much improved, but no one is saying it's a must-play, and all the other modes are still work in progress/unchanged.
Was the calculation that casuals like campaigns and so if the campaign was great then that would provide the funding? This makes sense, but then it would have to be really great, and there'd have to be more missions coming very soon, neither of which are true.
Compared to the last few patches the game is significantly better but you are right in that it's about equal with the very early creep versions currently. They utterly wasted this past year+ for gameplay refinement.
For general gameplay I find it pretty satisfying but a firm stance needs to be taken for 1v1 gameplay direction and maps so existing units can be numerically adjusted in a way to fit that mold.
I'm pretty sure we'll see stormgates and creeps both in the same game eventually.
We're pretty much rewriting sc2's history in terms of monetization fumbling just in a different way. People often get lost in the sauce in that 1v1 is and will always be a very small portion of the player base, and probably the least likely to care about mtx. From interviews they're very much aware that money will come from the bigger multiplayer and team games and customs. The problem is the development in all of these areas is at a snails pace with an obvious lack of leadership and internal communication.
Campaign/singleplayer shouldn't really be viewed as a way to generate money. If the story/art/gameplay is truly alluring then it will take care of itself. Reminder that WoW's first store mount(quite terrible too) generated more money than sc2 did in its lifetime, and that was for everything and not just a campaign. Just reiterating that its a small beans issue/focus in the big picture, and rather perplexing why so much effort is being put into it over gameplay experimentation.
Interesting that people brought up the Terminator series in comparison to SG. Did you know that the inspiration for T1 came to Cameron in a fever dream nightmare while in some ratty hotel in Rome? Something tells me Morten was not receiving dreams of scenes like this from the muses prior to creating SG. It seems some level of suffering/struggle is necessary for creating great art. Cameron was a working-class Canadian community college dropout that had hustled his way into the industry.
IMO T1 is clearly superior, the story wraps up in a nice neat little package, which the sequels of course then go on to destroy.
T1 is Brood War, T2 is SC2, and SG is T3, or perhaps one of the slop sequels, though I've never watched them due how bad T3 was.
Similarly, BW is the original Star Wars trilogy, SC2 is the prequels, and SG is the slop Disney sequels.
"history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce" - Karl Marx (not a fan of the guy, but it's a great quote)
I enjoy Harlan Ellison, but I don't see him mentioning "Acknowledgments to the works Borges, Kafka, and P.K. Dick" in front of all his stories! James Cameron got handed a rotten deal with that law-suit. there's a huge difference between inspiration and straight-up plagiarism.
I feel that Terminator was clearly inspired by the zeitgeist of the time: the cold war, the dawn of a computer age, and the horrifying threat of nuclear war. that's partly why I enjoy the chilling tone of the first film so much more. there were still a few great moments of comic relief - like that scene in the gun shop with the know-it-all clerk:
T-800: "Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range." Gun shop clerk: "Hey... just what you see, pal."
bro said that without any hesitation, as if he normally stocks a whole bunch of phased plasma rifles, but already sold the last one to his buddy down in Santa Monica there are so many great and often funny moments from the side characters. none of it feels campy.
"Bad to the Bone" playing while Arnold puts on a pair of sunglasses is cool and all, but I definitely enjoyed that more as a kid than I do now. I don't need Mr. Thorogood telling me that the T-800 is a badass. there is no practical reason why the T-800 needs to take the barkeep's sunglasses. in the original, the T-800's eye was all busted up and you could see the cogs turning in his mind. "tissue damage identified - optical systems compromised - self-repair protocol initiated - repairs complete - systems functional - human disguise severely compromised - options: acquire auxiliary disguise" and then he puts on the shades. in T2, there are many moments where I feel like I'm watching Arnold Schwarzenegger and not a T-800. that's really my main gripe with the film: the T-800's mannerisms seem wildly inconsistent and un-Terminatorlike. stuff like "Hasta La Vista, baby" and "I need a vacation" really should have been left out.
I also believe that the first film has a tighter script and better pacing overall.
there is a large portion of downtime during T2 where the T-1000 just... vanishes. he's off screen for such a long time that you almost kinda forget about him. you never get that with the original Terminator. the T-800 gets the perfect amount of screen-time in T1 and the time that he does get is never wasted. he's an oppressive force. he's always there: relentlessly hunting, planning, and manipulating people around him.
The whole point of the ‘Hasta la Vistas’ etc is established within the film, which is that they’re bonding, or if that’s not the right word, performatively doing so to make John Connor comfortable. Which is established in the film itself.
He’s not meant to be 100% Terminator-like, he’s a repurposed killing machine, turned into a babysitter. Everything human it does is entirely down to that. One could also argue that the machine’s capacity to emulate humans and their foibles is more terrifying than it being a remorseless killing machine.
And Robert Patrick fucks as the ice cold Terminator.
As sequels go, it’s both way bigger in terms of sheer scope and budget, but it’s also an interesting twist.
Less imaginative folks than Cameron woulda gone for round two, Cameron went ‘hold on, what if the Terminator from the first one is a good guy now?’ and it totally works.
You invoke ‘the terror of nuclear war’ as something Terminator 1 does better, which is like a central component of Terminator 2’s plot, being the ‘Judgement Day’ in the film’s subtitle, and is actively shown, albeit in nightmarish vision form.
One argument that can maybe be made is one of genre. T1 is a better tight thriller, T2 is a better action move. See also Alien being a better horror film but Aliens being a better action flick.
Which I could allow, but equally I’ll just say Terminator 2 is absolutely better, in almost every way.
On August 14 2025 03:18 townhouse wrote: Interesting that people brought up the Terminator series in comparison to SG. Did you know that the inspiration for T1 came to Cameron in a fever dream nightmare while in some ratty hotel in Rome? Something tells me Morten was not receiving dreams of scenes like this from the muses prior to creating SG.
Day9 points out in that video that "there are so many cutscenes". Feels like that's one of the last things any resource-limited product should compete with Blizzard. The voice acting I can understand, although even there bringing in some of the bigger names probably means quite a bit of production costs and scheduling and all that.
It's obviously easy to call it afterwards, but I do wish they had reconsidered the narrative methods and scope at some point. The Blizzard methods only work if you have time & resources to pull them off big Hollywood style.
You invoke ‘the terror of nuclear war’ as something Terminator 1 does better, which is like a central component of Terminator 2’s plot, being the ‘Judgement Day’ in the film’s subtitle, and is actively shown, albeit in nightmarish vision form.
neither film depicts fall-out or radiation sickness - the most cruel outcome of nuclear war. I'd happily fry in the blast wave than live through an aftermath like that depicted in When the Wind Blows.
while it might not depict fall-out, what Terminator (1984) does show is the suffering of those living in the nuclear winter - both directly through flashbacks, and through the PTSD-ridden portrayal of Kyle Reece.
T2's intro is a Bay'd up portrayal of the future war: a company of highly-organized, well-equipped resistance soldiers going toe-to-toe with an army of T-800's, VTOL aircraft and HK tanks. a fleet consisting of six Aerial HKs are losing a battle to a few ground troops in repurposed pick-up trucks. one of them is destroyed by a stinger missile. the intro ends with a steely-eyed adult John Connor, putting down his binoculars and assessing the aftermath of a victorious battle over the machines.
the only scene in T2 that solicits terror is the dream sequence of Sarah screaming from behind a fence when the bomb detonates.
point is, T2's future war is popcorn bucket action sci-fi. T1 actually depicts normal people suffering in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. the image that sticks out for me are the two malnourished orphans staring into a dilapidated television set - watching paper burn instead of cartoons.
you say that T2's T-800 is a repurposed killing machine, turned into a babysitter - that it's capacity to emulate humans and their foibles is more terrifying than it being a remorseless killing machine.
well, I would counter that Kyle Reece is a repurposed human, turned into a killing machine. a human's capacity to emulate the cold, calculating cruelty of machines is far more terrifying than "Hasta la Vista, baby". Reece has almost become Terminator-like in his harsh and arbitrary pragmatism. he was ready to mow down an entire squad of cops with his sawn-off shotgun. he matches the Terminator's ruthlessness and almost matches its inhumanity. Kyle, when he's dropped into L.A., is barely in touch with his humanity. the only thing that's kept him hanging on is the leadership of John, and the faded, torn photograph of Sarah Connor.
I really don't understand your suggestion that terror plays a serious part of T2. young John was never truly vulnerable with a T-800 and a minigun mom protecting him. Sarah is prepped like a super-soldier in T2. compare that to Kyle Reece: skittish, hunched over, ill-equipped, flailing and desperate. even when he fights back, he fights with cat-like evasiveness. the guy's been living on nothing but rats and nitroglycerin and I think it shows. his world is pretty terrifying
T2 is great, but it just doesn't have (1) the intensity, (2) the economy of direction, (3) the visceral edge, (4) the propulsive synthesizer score, (5) the originality, or (6) the legacy and influence of The Terminator. the definitive version for me is the fan edit by krausfadr, which fixes up a lot of the low-budget special effects:
EPT![[image loading]](https://i0.wp.com/www.theterminatorfans.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Harlan-Ellison-Terminator.jpg?ssl=1)
there are so many great and often funny moments from the side characters. none of it feels campy.
