On September 22 2025 06:54 Manit0u wrote: They could've taken some references from Infinity.
Haha, you know how to buy me (NMM painting style is sick)
That is actually a good idea, take inspiration from Infinity or Battletech, or any other game with mechas/robots, really. But as I said, no one was interested enough to take references. I'm 100% sure they didn't see a problem, and just didn't think believable vehicles in an RTS game are important. So the result was expected. They created something, generative AI would make better.
Serious question, is Stormgate still being developed or is it on pause until they get more funding? The devs have been silent and I remember the plan being to release a minipatch shortly after release.
On September 22 2025 16:04 CicadaSC wrote: Serious question, is Stormgate still being developed or is it on pause until they get more funding? The devs have been silent and I remember the plan being to release a minipatch shortly after release.
Some of those developers have left the company without replacement, and no news elsewhere in this case is very much bad news.
I expect they're working on making the campaign function without their proprietary server & anticheat rootkit so that they can turn off the servers without making the entire game inaccessible forever. FG won't want that on their record.
On September 22 2025 16:04 CicadaSC wrote: Serious question, is Stormgate still being developed or is it on pause until they get more funding? The devs have been silent and I remember the plan being to release a minipatch shortly after release.
No one knows, but it certainly looks bleak. People suspect they're doing _something_. Cyro may be on to something.
On September 22 2025 16:04 CicadaSC wrote: Serious question, is Stormgate still being developed or is it on pause until they get more funding? The devs have been silent and I remember the plan being to release a minipatch shortly after release.
Can you answer the question: Are the remaining FG staff still working on the game while you pursue partnership / recovery options? There is a small but loyal fan base that is dwindling away due to the lack of communication in the official discord. In order for Stormgate to have a future you must keep your remaining playerbase.
1 reply 1 Comment on Steven Boyle, CPA’s comment
Tim Morten Author Production Director & CEO at Frost Giant Studios, Inc. 4h
Steven Boyle, CPA Some work continues, but the only real path forward is through partnership. Stromgate has not been a commercial success, and though I'm extremely grateful for the players we have, companies run on capital.
"Some work continues" basically means no work is being done.
On September 21 2025 02:33 Cyro wrote: Did they fix drag scroll?
I use edge scroll instead, so I didn't know it was broken. Just tested it for ya, it works, I guess. Or was there some specific problem?
More specifically the cursor shouldn't move during the drag scroll and shouldn't be able to hit the edges of the screen and stop scrolling. Sensitivity multiplier is also quite important, and invert Y axis toggle can help (but isn't as critical).
Think about the case where you're 0.8 screens of distance away from where you want to be, and your cursor is in the middle of the screen
In SC2 you:
* hold the drag button * move the mouse * release the drag button and your cursor is still at the same place
In old WC3 you:
* hold the drag button * move the mouse 0.5 screens (now you've hit the edge, and any further movement on that axis will be dropped) * release the drag button * move the mouse in the opposite direction to get away from the screen edge * hold the drag button again * move mouse more in the movement direction * release the drag button * move the cursor back to the middle of the screen
This is 8 steps instead of 3, several of them polar opposites of each other, and it can require even more sequences of dragging and then adjusting the cursor before dragging again if you want to move a further distance - especially if the sensitivity multiplier is missing, as it can then require much more mouse movement to move the camera a set distance. It turns the objectively most efficient way of moving the camera into a complete shitshow that i cannot even use without active, conscious thought and playing at a fraction of normal speed.
Blizzard made these massive improvements between 2002 and 2010 (SC2), and a bunch of other games copied it. WC3 would be massively improved with the 2010 dragscroll instead of 2002 but it wasn't there when i first looked at Reforged.
Trying to go back to the 2002 drag scroll before we actually figured out how to make drag scroll not suck feels worse than riding a bike where the handlebars turn the wrong way.
I love the reference to the bike with the wrong handlebars. That experiment makes me reflect a lot on learning especially if, for some reason, it turned out that reversing the handlebar controls ended up being a more optimal way to ride a bike. Which is totally off on a tangent about the drag scroll issue. Or rather it's kind of the drag scroll issue in reverse. If you play RTS long enough then eventually a new game comes out with a more efficient UI but it can be unintuitive at first. SG and basically every new RTS of this decade are coming with "quick build" and "grid hotkey" default controls that any SC2 player can initially find uncomfortable. SG didn't sufficiently polish or solve their system though...
Some work continues, but the only real path forward is through partnership. Stromgate has not been a commercial success, and though I'm extremely grateful for the players we have, companies run on capital.
Yeah... FGS cannot survive in the barebones way that some indie games survive. Some indie studios are so incredibly lean from the start and the devs are just happy to be able to pay rent and eat rice in some low cost of living country or city, or alternatively a country with a social safety net (free healthcare obviously, and ideally some housing assistance). And each employee is taking on multiple roles and they're using tons of pre-made assets, or very cheaply outsourcing for limited original assets, or they've made a game with an aesthetic that is limited to their own artistic abilities. Tech-wise the game also can't be beyond their ability to manage. I imagine the tech in SG is already too complex to forgo employing some well-paid engineers.
So I think both the studio (FGS) and the game (SG) are created in a way that they can't survive without ample funding. Tim is talking "partnership" (and I haven't been keeping track of who all owns how much of FGS) but it's gotta be tough to find someone willing to invest in their continued leadership at this point. I imagine the most likely path of SG surviving is someone else taking over but they'd either rather let it die or that's the absolute last resort and they're not there yet.
I dunno how much they're personally really hurting from the failure thus far. The more they're personally hurting, the more likely they are to agree to relinquish control.
On September 23 2025 00:57 NonY wrote: So I think both the studio (FGS) and the game (SG) are created in a way that they can't survive without ample funding. Tim is talking "partnership" (and I haven't been keeping track of who all owns how much of FGS) but it's gotta be tough to find someone willing to invest in their continued leadership at this point. I imagine the most likely path of SG surviving is someone else taking over but they'd either rather let it die or that's the absolute last resort and they're not there yet.
Tim Morten and Tim Campbell each own 18% of Frost Giant shares. The rest are owned by investors, mostly Riot Games, Bitkraft, Mantis Venture Capital, Global Founders Capital, and Kakao games in Korea. A small portion of non-voting shares are owned by civilian investors via StartEngine (414 investors bought $1.1 million in shares at $8 each)
Tim Morten has been deliberately vague on what a "partnership" might mean, but he's hinted that another company might want to use Stormgate's "engine" (it's not really an engine, it's a set of unit pathfinding and networking libraries for Unreal Engine) for a new RTS game using an established intellectual property. But it's been a month so far of him talking about "promising conversations with potential partners" and nothing concrete has materialized. My guess is that Tim wanted enough money from licensing the "engine" to support both the new game and continued development of Stormgate, but the market didn't want to pay anywhere near that much.
The engine doesn't have realistic value (2v2 needs a reduced unit cap just to manage so its not like its a very well developed efficient engine) and the game has basically no value at its current interest level, and is already launched.
On September 23 2025 03:02 iamperfection wrote: Why are the only updates coming from LinkedIn
It's a good question! I've never seen a company go through this exact sort of extended death-rattle before.
My guess is that Tim Morten sat everyone at the company down and told them the grim financial situation, then gave them the same pitch he's giving us: "I'll be trying to find a partner to work with us to keep the company going, but it will take some time." But at the same time, he told them not to discuss anything about the company's future or even current work, perhaps as an aid to any ongoing negotiations with "potential partners" that may or may not be taking place.
But Tim's LinkedIn posts all read like obituaries for the game, and they break the rule that would explain the dev team's silence. So it's completely confusing to me what's actually going on.
The departure of Frost Giant's two art directors, the sound director, and basically everyone else involved in the creative side of the project indicates that even if Tim finds a "partner", the game of Stormgate itself is likely finished. The only people who would be hanging on would be the technical people, the software developers, hoping perhaps for an "acqui-hire" scenario that would at least have them landing on their feet.
Tim has done this before, actually. He and Chacko Sonny spun off a startup company, Savage Entertainment, splitting off from EA in 1997. They made a bunch of forgettable ports and one forgettable He-Man game, but then ran out of money. In 2011, he sold the company to Loyalize, an "audience participation company" (whatever that means), who apparently wanted a bunch of game developers to help build some sort of interactive TV service for Motorola Mobility. That dubious effort went nowhere, and the whole division was shut down in the same year.
Out of curiosity I've just checked the Iron Harvest KickStarter campaign and it seems that this project was planned much, much better than SG with clear goals and more reasonable budget allocation.
$450k - base game (project funded) with 3 playable factions, 20+ hours of campaigns, destructible terrain, hero units etc. (note that there's no cutscenes or multiplayer at this stage) $500k - adding New Game+ so you can replay campaigns with extra challenges $600k - adding cinematic cutscenes to the campaign $750k - single player challenge missions $850k - skirmish mode $1m - multiplayer $1.1m - co-op campaign $1.15m - co-op challenges $1.2m - ladder & seasons $1.5m - free DLC later down the line because adding more stuff to the base game would be too much
Not only did they make a full game and delivered on their goals for a fraction of FGS' budget it's so nice to see them having a very clear roadmap and not adding everything from the get go. Maybe if SG would follow similar path they'd find some success: focus on polishing your units and base gameplay, release only campaign but no multiplayer as demo/EA and work from there.
Meanwhile the other Tim's LinkedIn shows him continually signal boosting other game developers' #OpenToWork posts, or new job openings. That's a nice thing to do, but crucially, his LinkedIn was almost completely silent until a month ago. I'm guessing he's planning to make his own #OpenToWork announcement shortly, and wants to build up some good will first.
On September 23 2025 09:14 Manit0u wrote: Out of curiosity I've just checked the Iron Harvest KickStarter campaign and it seems that this project was planned much, much better than SG with clear goals and more reasonable budget allocation.
I'd assume it's also a lot of the rigidity of the project in general. To have a 3D story cutscene, you have to somewhat commit to art direction & character design, nail down some elements of storyline, get some voice acting talent and so on. You can probably somewhat second guess and pivot later on, but it's much harder if you're not running a secure triple A project.
On September 23 2025 14:54 crablogic wrote: Meanwhile the other Tim's LinkedIn shows him continually signal boosting other game developers' #OpenToWork posts, or new job openings. That's a nice thing to do, but crucially, his LinkedIn was almost completely silent until a month ago. I'm guessing he's planning to make his own #OpenToWork announcement shortly, and wants to build up some good will first.
On September 23 2025 09:14 Manit0u wrote: Out of curiosity I've just checked the Iron Harvest KickStarter campaign and it seems that this project was planned much, much better than SG with clear goals and more reasonable budget allocation.
I'd assume it's also a lot of the rigidity of the project in general. To have a 3D story cutscene, you have to somewhat commit to art direction & character design, nail down some elements of storyline, get some voice acting talent and so on. You can probably somewhat second guess and pivot later on, but it's much harder if you're not running a secure triple A project.
I'm not a gamedev myself (still a dev though) but the IH approach seems more reasonable, where they added the cutscenes later in the project lifecycle. I mean, from the perspective of a product lifecycle I think it would be better to have just some 2D static concept art and stuff to show people and get feedback and also even a rough but working tech demo to showcase the basic gameplay without necessarily committing to any particular art style etc.
IH had an easier time with the art direction I think because they were working off of an established set of artwork with specific style and mood (the whole Scythe IP is based off of the works of an artist) but I imagine having the game director meet with the story and art teams to produce some 2D concept art (while the dev team works on the game engine) would be infinitely cheaper and more efficient than doing a full 3D cutscene early on.
It seems like FGS decided to just skip some steps and work with it like they would be working with an already established IP (probably big ego made them assume they'd have instant success with it so why bother spending more time conceptualizing and iterating over design).
On September 23 2025 03:02 iamperfection wrote: Why are the only updates coming from LinkedIn
It's a good question! I've never seen a company go through this exact sort of extended death-rattle before.
My guess is that Tim Morten sat everyone at the company down and told them the grim financial situation, then gave them the same pitch he's giving us: "I'll be trying to find a partner to work with us to keep the company going, but it will take some time." But at the same time, he told them not to discuss anything about the company's future or even current work, perhaps as an aid to any ongoing negotiations with "potential partners" that may or may not be taking place.
But Tim's LinkedIn posts all read like obituaries for the game, and they break the rule that would explain the dev team's silence. So it's completely confusing to me what's actually going on.
This is unprecedented for me as well. I've been curious why Campbell has been so quiet and Morten has taken the lead, since community sentiment seemed to be much higher in the 2025 era where Campbell was the vocal leader compared to Morten.
Interesting insight about Savage Entertainment.
I found parallels with Morten's Generals 2 pitches to Stormgate: "we’ve got another mode that’s co-op against AI called Onslaught Mode. Post-launch we very much want to explore things like mini-campaigns and more traditional story-based content."
On September 23 2025 09:14 Manit0u wrote: Out of curiosity I've just checked the Iron Harvest KickStarter campaign and it seems that this project was planned much, much better than SG with clear goals and more reasonable budget allocation.
I'd assume it's also a lot of the rigidity of the project in general. To have a 3D story cutscene, you have to somewhat commit to art direction & character design, nail down some elements of storyline, get some voice acting talent and so on. You can probably somewhat second guess and pivot later on, but it's much harder if you're not running a secure triple A project.
I'm not a gamedev myself (still a dev though) but the IH approach seems more reasonable, where they added the cutscenes later in the project lifecycle. I mean, from the perspective of a product lifecycle I think it would be better to have just some 2D static concept art and stuff to show people and get feedback and also even a rough but working tech demo to showcase the basic gameplay without necessarily committing to any particular art style etc.
IH had an easier time with the art direction I think because they were working off of an established set of artwork with specific style and mood (the whole Scythe IP is based off of the works of an artist) but I imagine having the game director meet with the story and art teams to produce some 2D concept art (while the dev team works on the game engine) would be infinitely cheaper and more efficient than doing a full 3D cutscene early on.
It seems like FGS decided to just skip some steps and work with it like they would be working with an already established IP (probably big ego made them assume they'd have instant success with it so why bother spending more time conceptualizing and iterating over design).
Yeah, IH had clear visual style nailed down and in general they seem to have had a pretty good grasp of where they want to go. I guess a lot of it comes down again to the fact that "heir to the Blizzard RTS" isn't exactly a good way to describe any specific game or idea.
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