On August 20 2025 05:47 Gescom wrote: I think; A) Yes, maybe they are that delusional.
On a long enough timeline they're gonna run out of money, but the pathological haters have definitely been taking L after L in terms of how long they've stayed afloat amidst the predictions of imminent failure
I don't think the timeline is that long. Frost Giant's 2024 SEC report spelled out quite clearly that their burn rate was over $1 million per month, and that they had secured an additional $3 million in funding as of April 30, 2025, the date the report was issued.
That would have funded them through May, June, and July.
And then to everybody's apparent surprise, they left Early Access and prepared to do a full launch on Steam at the beginning of August, despite only being at version 0.6, and despite their fans urging them to wait. In their last AMA, they answered multiple times that they were doing the release at this time only because they needed funds to continue operations.
Then you have an interview with Tim Morten where he said that Frost Giant needed to be self-sufficient from this point on.
Then launch happened, and Tim Morten posted on LinkedIn that the launch hadn't brought in sufficient money, and that he would have to find a "partner" at Gamescom in order to continue.
So yeah, the company lasted longer than many folks predicted, but the old Hemingway quote applies here: "How did you go bankrupt? Gradually, then suddenly."
On August 20 2025 05:47 Gescom wrote: I think; A) Yes, maybe they are that delusional.
On a long enough timeline they're gonna run out of money, but the pathological haters have definitely been taking L after L in terms of how long they've stayed afloat amidst the predictions of imminent failure
Also, the part where they inevitably fail, but the haters want it to be sooner rather than later, is not relevant at all. Who gives a damn about haters?
The part where they drag it until the end, while selling microtransactions, is important. The game is online only, and it will just disappear. Even campaign. You pay $60, and it's gone in a couple of months. But Tim will tell us he made an 8/10 game with all features promised till the end (Which is factually false, because there's no 3v3 that was promised).
That's why I respect Battle Aces' devs a lot. They did their math and wrapped up the game before taking a cent from players.
A company can run indefinitely if it could have the growth rate and find the investors to fund it. Don't need to be a hater to know this isn't the case. 50% rating, 200ish concurrent players game, with millions invested and still barely there
Well, if SG wraps up, I guess I'll be looking forward to... Zerospace? Although it seems to get even less traction than Stormgate. Other than that, no RTS on the horizon that has a similar feel to Blizzard RTSes. Too bad!
On August 20 2025 09:35 SoleSteeler wrote: Well, if SG wraps up, I guess I'll be looking forward to... Zerospace? Although it seems to get even less traction than Stormgate. Other than that, no RTS on the horizon that has a similar feel to Blizzard RTSes. Too bad!
The Scouring is half decent, and may even be GOOD in 2026, but its more of a WarCraft II spiritual successor than anything else.
On August 20 2025 09:14 ChillFlame wrote: Also, the part where they inevitably fail, but the haters want it to be sooner rather than later, is not relevant at all. Who gives a damn about haters?
The part where they drag it until the end, while selling microtransactions, is important. The game is online only, and it will just disappear. Even campaign. You pay $60, and it's gone in a couple of months. But Tim will tell us he made an 8/10 game with all features promised till the end (Which is factually false, because there's no 3v3 that was promised).
That's why I respect Battle Aces' devs a lot. They did their math and wrapped up the game before taking a cent from players.
Exactly this. I respect your opinion, Wax, but these guys are getting into grifty territory now IMO, which is why I have gone from neutral to being a hater in the last two weeks. And they stole my money. And they communicate like entitled pricks.
On August 20 2025 05:47 Gescom wrote: I think; A) Yes, maybe they are that delusional. B) Maybe Tim is benevolent* and is finding job for his team rather than himself.
*after paying himself 200k+ USD a year for the last 4-5y he's probably ready to retire
I mean, he probably made this much every year at blizzard every year for however many years he worked there. I doubt this really does much for him tbh.
It's easy to forget being on this dang website that SC is 27 years old and SCII is 15 years old. Hehe. A young man working on SC is of retirement age now... =D
Both Tims, I believe, are in their late 50s now.
I only bring this up in the sense that I would probably be looking to save my 5y project rather than signing on to a new one. I'd be out of gas.
On August 20 2025 09:35 SoleSteeler wrote: Well, if SG wraps up, I guess I'll be looking forward to... Zerospace? Although it seems to get even less traction than Stormgate. Other than that, no RTS on the horizon that has a similar feel to Blizzard RTSes. Too bad!
ZeroSpace is extremely promising. The selling point for me is conquest map. As a person who spent at least 3k hours in SC2 co-op and Emperor knows how much time in DoW 1 Dark Crusade, now I have the reason to grind even more. I'll pick the weakest faction to outgrind the server and capture everything.
LMFAO Waxangel steps out into the open and gets pelted with tomatoes. Like really, the “haters” who just continually stir shit on reddit and troll the discord or whatever are obnoxious. It's obviously much more productive and respectable to articulate your piece and move on. But to me, the failure isn't related to how long their lights stay on, but the game they've made. And as Jeremy Reimer said, once the money runs out the game disappears, like how movies suddenly drop from a streaming service and you're like oh yeah, I don't own any of this shit!
Anyway, discussion about this game honestly just goes around in circles. I think a “RTS General Discussion” thread would be a lot more useful at this point. There are a lot of soulful efforts being made by people and will continue to be made and this Stormgate/Frostigant Megathread shouldn't eat all those blurbs and discussions. And then the 4 people who still want to talk about SG specifically can do that here. Just a thought!
its probably the most critical and negative video I have seen out of him. Some of it i think it's too harsh, but overall like many said, the game just lacks artistic vision in art, vibe, plot etc
Some of it i think it's too harsh, but overall like many said, the game just lacks artistic vision in art, vibe, plot etc
The world-building, story structure, dialog, and general writing is just off-the-charts terrible. Someone in the AMA was concerned about the lack of a good story structure and asked what techniques the team was using to construct the campaign plot. This was the answer:
Video game storytelling is certainly unique, and of course each genre of video game narrative is unique. Pillars that we uphold for every Stormgate mission include: Who is the protagonist? What is their goal? What is preventing them from achieving it (Quite often this revolves around an item or a location)? Which side wins? How does the state of the overall conflict change as a result? And how does the mssion move the overarching narrative forward? For the campaign and the saga as a whole, we focus on themes and character arcs. Also each campaign follows a general three act structure.
This the most basic and boring possible approach to narrative that I've ever heard from a (technically) professional writer. Oh, you have a three-act structure? And you focus on themes and character arcs? Does your script also use words, and did you type it into a computer? Did you use the Enter key to separate paragraphs? Fascinating stuff, I'm really getting a deep insight into your writing process here.
"Hey, it's super important that we know who wins each time and what item or location is involved!"
And if you play the campaign, yeah, that's basically how it works:
Amara is looking for the Key. What's the Key? Nobody really knows, but it does something super important involving Stormgates. So she tries to find it (checking where she last left it FIFTEEN YEARS AGO) but... surprise! It's gone. But instead she finds a frozen person who might know where it is! But she doesn't. But good news! Random cheery archaeologist friend who sounds like her sister but isn't has found an ancient map to a glowing pyramid! So they go get the glowing pyramid. And then randomly they find out where the Key is! It was stolen by one of the bad guys! So they go get the Key and kill the bad guy. But oh no! The glowing pyramid was stolen off-screen by another bad guy! And then the Key is stolen by Admiral Cruella De Vil! Oh no! We've lost both of our MacGuffins, whatever shall we do?
Fortunately, however, none of this matters! Amara can just run really fast at the glowing pyramid in a final cutscene, and then her eyes turn blue and she does a Mass Effect giant blue laser that becomes a world-spanning blue explosion thing and that somehow wins the war instantly! Somehow!
Honestly, it makes me want to throw up. There are so many good writers out there who could have put their heart and soul into crafting an interesting story. And instead we got this.
EDIT: I added spoilers. Honestly, the writing is so bad it doesn't deserve them.
^ I read through the spoilers and chuckled. I played half the campaign for $32CAD and then guffawed when they wanted $26 for the second "half". I'm not too worried about it. :D
On August 22 2025 00:45 goody153 wrote: Downloaded Stormgate. Any like description on the races ? Like comparison to like wc3, bw and sc2 races in a sense ?
Vanguard is a mix of SC2 terran and War3 human.
lancer = footman exo = rifleman (also sort of marine) medtech = priest/medic hedgehog = cyclone/vulture (no mines) atlas = siege tank (my favourite unit) etc.
They all feel a little different than their counterparts, but their roles are similar.
Infernal is like a mix of undead, orc and zerg
Celestial is pretty unique, but most similar to protoss and NE (after this patch, with moving their town hall around a lot).
Play a few games of each and you'll see. For celestial, you have to build using the "Q" build button.
I can't imagine that's a convincing sales pitch: "Hey, our game was never finished and it failed, but do you want to give us tons of money to license the engine* that we had to stop developing?"
The other option, layoffs, doesn't seem to quite math out. Their own SEC reporting showed they made less than $1 million from game sales in 2024, the year of Early Access. That was enough to pay their approximately 50 people for less than one month.
Launch had one fifth the maximum and average concurrent users that Early Access did. So if they laid off four fifths of their staff, and were left with 10 people, they would... also only have enough money to pay them for less than one month.
* Except that it's not a complete engine! It's a plugin for Unreal Engine 5, and it's also tied to two different online services that handle server orchestration, matchmaking, leaderboards, user accounts, etc, etc etc. So if you don't plan to use any of those things, you're out of luck.
The people making stormgate are trying to reinvent the newspaper. However, now you've got brainworm zombie algorithm doomscroll apps like tiktok, so you just put yourself in a losing (lost) position. Forced mate in 3.
Their only asset is the engine but from what I have seen its not even all that good. There are performance issues and the 3v3 was likely delayed because the engine can't actually handle it.
And yes I love the talk of downsizing, its something they should have done 5 years ago when they still had the funds to keep development going for a long time on a small team of good people. You can downsize when your out of money and have no income but thats not going to accomplish anything.
On August 20 2025 05:47 Gescom wrote: I think; A) Yes, maybe they are that delusional.
On a long enough timeline they're gonna run out of money, but the pathological haters have definitely been taking L after L in terms of how long they've stayed afloat amidst the predictions of imminent failure
I mean I predicted they would run out of money 8 months ago. But then they announced they raised a little bit more money. Then I updated my prediction to them running out of money right after those money would run out.
I don't see how they can have more shots at this point in time. Who would give them more money now? It's an atrocious investment. Tim Morten would have to be the best salesman to secure a few additional millions.
EPT
