On October 02 2025 04:30 Spirral wrote: Will Gobsmack save the future of RTS? Or will the nerd hopes get crushed once again? The StormGate saga continues
Who in fuck's name is going to install Stormgate again. It's like dude, guys, I came up with a new way to play with lincoln logs, you're gonna love it.
Nope, I ain't re-installing this piece of C**p.
I find myself keep coming back to this thread to see what people are hallucinating on about to imaging normal people be like my bi-polar brain doing mentally ill thing without pill or an actual condition. That's my excuse sir.
Jokes aside, I find this thread entertaining from time to time.
i read people complaining about how they backed the game for $50+ USD but did not get the campaign for free. they had to pay for the campaign missions. Is this true?
On October 06 2025 23:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i read people complaining about how they backed the game for $50+ USD but did not get the campaign for free. they had to pay for the campaign missions. Is this true?
I don’t think so, I may be incorrect.
From what I recall, people were annoyed more on things like Co-Op heroes and their top tier backing not giving them all of them until there was sufficient backlash.
On October 06 2025 23:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i read people complaining about how they backed the game for $50+ USD but did not get the campaign for free. they had to pay for the campaign missions. Is this true?
I don’t think so, I may be incorrect.
From what I recall, people were annoyed more on things like Co-Op heroes and their top tier backing not giving them all of them until there was sufficient backlash.
Their pricing structure is so convoluted it was hard to know what you were getting when you spent money. Hopefully, Frost Giant will shore that up and simplify things for people spending money.
I'm really excited to see the next update to Stormgate!
I believe some people never activated their Kickstarter code (or whatever you call it) on Steam to "redeem" the campaign missions that they paid for through it. Something like that.
I played 100 or so ladder games and still find it enjoyable (although ultimately underbaked). But obviously the player base is so low that almost no games are vs. someone close to my MMR. Back to SC2 for now.
On October 06 2025 23:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i read people complaining about how they backed the game for $50+ USD but did not get the campaign for free. they had to pay for the campaign missions. Is this true?
I don’t think so, I may be incorrect.
From what I recall, people were annoyed more on things like Co-Op heroes and their top tier backing not giving them all of them until there was sufficient backlash.
Of course, I bought a bundle and got locked out of the 2nd half of the campaign. It's what spurred by hatred for Stormgate and Tim.
If you spent $40USD you got half the campaign and a slew of garbage. If you spent $60 you were clear, but still didn't get all the garbage. "Secretly" you could buy the campaign in-game for like $30USD, but this was never offered anywhere else. The only time in history where buying individual items somehow had more value than buying the "developer recommended" bundle.
I assume Jimmy is trolling when he asks about updates to pricing structure and next updates.
On October 06 2025 23:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i read people complaining about how they backed the game for $50+ USD but did not get the campaign for free. they had to pay for the campaign missions. Is this true?
I don’t think so, I may be incorrect.
From what I recall, people were annoyed more on things like Co-Op heroes and their top tier backing not giving them all of them until there was sufficient backlash.
Of course, I bought a bundle and got locked out of the 2nd half of the campaign. It's what spurred by hatred for Stormgate and Tim.
If you spent $40USD you got half the campaign and a slew of garbage. If you spent $60 you were clear, but still didn't get all the garbage. "Secretly" you could buy the campaign in-game for like $30USD, but this was never offered anywhere else. The only time in history where buying individual items somehow had more value than buying the "developer recommended" bundle.
I assume Jimmy is trolling when he asks about updates to pricing structure and next updates.
Yeah, the idea of selling the campaign two times cheaper than KS backers paid for it is disrespectful and spectacular at the same time. Also scamming backers for CO-OP heroes, and that "funded until telease" thing. I think Tim hates his backers in particular.
Hey, hey, it's Monday, and you know what that means! Time for another Tim Morten postmorten!
Except this time it's different! This time it's about THE FUTURE of Frost Giant and Stormgate!
Which, apparently, means starting a completely new game from scratch:
Sincere thanks to everyone who reached out to me after last week's post. This week, I'll talk through my hopes for the future, but it's important to set some context first.
In 2019, when I left Blizzard and started pitching Frost Giant, there were about 8000 games released on Steam. In 2024, when Stormgate launched into Early Access, there were over 18000 games released on Steam (source: SteamDB). In late 2019, the Fed's interest rate target range was 1.5% to 1.75%. Today, the Fed's interest rate target range is 4% to 4.25%, after recent cuts.
The market is more than twice as crowded. Capital is more than twice as expensive. Glen Schofield recently observed that target game budgets for new titles have dropped to the $3M to $5M range, which is a fraction of target budgets five years ago.
From a practical perspective, Frost Giant will need to adapt to the current market. To survive, Frost Giant needs to start a new game, and this game will have to be built on a fraction of the budget. Starting a new game should also enable continued improvements to Stormgate.
Frost Giant is fortunate to have a strong technical foundation to start from and a passionate, experienced team. However, between Stormgate's lack of commercial success and the headwinds of the current market, financing a new project is uncertain.
My goal is to strike a partnership that enables Frost Giant to capitalize on the tremendous technical investment that we've made in SnowPlay to build a new game. And in conjunction, I hope to be able to continue to improve Stormgate.
Frost Giant's SnowPlay engine technology should find its way into games from other developers. We built a solution that benefits any networked game with large unit counts, and our server infrastructure is extremely cost-efficient.
But engine licensing is not sufficient to sustain Frost Giant; a new game would provide a meaningful future. Financing new games takes time, and the outcome is never certain. I remain hopeful, but also cognizant of the challenges.
Next week, I'll discuss what I believe the future holds for RTS as a genre.
What kind of game is Frost Giant supposed to make? Who knows, but deeper in the comments section someone asks if it's a mobile game and Tim rules that out. Also he doubles down on how awesome the Snowplay "engine" (it's not an engine) is, so presumably the new game will have to be some sort of RTS or RTS-like game, like a MOBA.
Sincere thanks to everyone who reached out to me after last week's post. This week, I'll talk through my hopes for the future, but it's important to set some context first.
In 2019, when I left Blizzard and started pitching Frost Giant, there were about 8000 games released on Steam. In 2024, when Stormgate launched into Early Access, there were over 18000 games released on Steam (source: SteamDB). In late 2019, the Fed's interest rate target range was 1.5% to 1.75%. Today, the Fed's interest rate target range is 4% to 4.25%, after recent cuts.
The market is more than twice as crowded. Capital is more than twice as expensive. Glen Schofield recently observed that target game budgets for new titles have dropped to the $3M to $5M range, which is a fraction of target budgets five years ago.
From a practical perspective, Frost Giant will need to adapt to the current market. To survive, Frost Giant needs to start a new game, and this game will have to be built on a fraction of the budget. Starting a new game should also enable continued improvements to Stormgate.
Frost Giant is fortunate to have a strong technical foundation to start from and a passionate, experienced team. However, between Stormgate's lack of commercial success and the headwinds of the current market, financing a new project is uncertain.
My goal is to strike a partnership that enables Frost Giant to capitalize on the tremendous technical investment that we've made in SnowPlay to build a new game. And in conjunction, I hope to be able to continue to improve Stormgate.
Frost Giant's SnowPlay engine technology should find its way into games from other developers. We built a solution that benefits any networked game with large unit counts, and our server infrastructure is extremely cost-efficient.
But engine licensing is not sufficient to sustain Frost Giant; a new game would provide a meaningful future. Financing new games takes time, and the outcome is never certain. I remain hopeful, but also cognizant of the challenges.
Next week, I'll discuss what I believe the future holds for RTS as a genre.
What kind of game is Frost Giant supposed to make? Who knows, but deeper in the comments section someone asks if it's a mobile game and Tim rules that out. Also he doubles down on how awesome the Snowplay "engine" (it's not an engine) is, so presumably the new game will have to be some sort of RTS or RTS-like game, like a MOBA.
Smaller scope. Probably just pvp. New units, new game objective but same engine. Probably won't try and re-invent the wheel. In my opinion they should capitalize on popular arcade games and make them "mainstream".
Like how Riot Games made autochess into TFT or Mechabellum made Direct Strike into well mechabellum. Something like that. My first vote would be Squadron Tower defense but who knows.
"There are 10k more games on steam now" The fact your even in the same discussion as the 9k asset flip 0/10 garbo that is most of steam shows how bad Stormgate is.
"so we are making a new game and its going to fun work on stormgate" really? And here I thought you were bankrupt, and these new investors who will fund you after the epic failure you just had are going to be ok with also funding your old, completely faceplanted flop that needs years more of development work? I highly doubt it
"A strong foundation and experienced team" The experienced team that all quit and left to find work elsewhere when it became clear you wouldn't be able to pay them going forward? And the strong foundation of your tremendously invested engine? The same engine that can't handle 2v2 without reduced unit caps?
"I hope to find another sucker who will pay my top rate salary while I flush their money down the toilet" GL with that!
And the idea that someone who delivered the biggest pile of odorous excrement in recent RTS history is going to talk to us about the future is just funny in and of itself. My advise is to make the opposite of what you ended up doing Tim.
Another Monday, another Tim. Dude is approaching sociopath levels. I guess if he saved the last $1M of the money from SG (the 1.0 launch proceeds?) and fired everyone other than himself and one person (Goblinsmack) he can spam LinkedIn for another 5 years if he wants. /sigh
"its tough to operate when the economy is not functioning in an unprecedented, pandemic-driven tech bubble that saw video game sales double overnight."
On October 07 2025 08:07 Gescom wrote: Another Monday, another Tim. Dude is approaching sociopath levels. I guess if he saved the last $1M of the money from SG (the 1.0 launch proceeds?)
The numbers are far worse. The Early Access launch in 2024, which peaked at just under 5,000 CCU, earned Frost Giant just under $1 million in revenue according to their SEC report. That accounted for less than a month of their burn rate, so that money is long gone.
The "1.0" (actually 0.6 but numbers don't mean anything) launch peaked at under 1,000 CCU and had a similar drop-off in numbers as the EA launch. So at best it would have paid for less than a week of Frost Giant salaries.
Given that no work and no patches have happened in the two months after the 1.0 launch, I think it's safe to say that nobody at Frost Giant is being paid any more. We don't know this for sure, but Tim repeatedly stressed that they launched at 0.6 because they were out of money.
On October 07 2025 08:07 Gescom wrote: Another Monday, another Tim. Dude is approaching sociopath levels. I guess if he saved the last $1M of the money from SG (the 1.0 launch proceeds?)
The numbers are far worse. The Early Access launch in 2024, which peaked at just under 5,000 CCU, earned Frost Giant just under $1 million in revenue according to their SEC report. That accounted for less than a month of their burn rate, so that money is long gone.
The "1.0" (actually 0.6 but numbers don't mean anything) launch peaked at under 1,000 CCU and had a similar drop-off in numbers as the EA launch. So at best it would have paid for less than a week of Frost Giant salaries.
Given that no work and no patches have happened in the two months after the 1.0 launch, I think it's safe to say that nobody at Frost Giant is being paid any more. We don't know this for sure, but Tim repeatedly stressed that they launched at 0.6 because they were out of money.
I'll add one more thing. In 2024, FG made $944,877 and spent $15,460,752 Paid early-early access revenue is included. Early-early acess had a peak of 4854 CCU. We can substract closed beta testers and other people with keys and do some rough calculactions. I suspect they made from $300k to $720k selling early-early acess. So they made more like $450k from the other sources during the 2024.
1.0 (0.6) Necrolyte (tm) release had a peak of 986 CCU, and didn't have paywalls of any kind like EEA did. So yeah, they made ~$100k.
Has there been any number on how many CCU they roughly needed to make the game viable? Looking at the numbers now, I don't think even a moderate success would have been sufficient to keep 40 person studio afloat in California over extended period of time.
Obviously the whole monetization thing is way more complex than the CCU, but it's at least some number we have pretty reliable access.
Sincere thanks to everyone who reached out to me after last week's post. This week, I'll talk through my hopes for the future, but it's important to set some context first.
In 2019, when I left Blizzard and started pitching Frost Giant, there were about 8000 games released on Steam. In 2024, when Stormgate launched into Early Access, there were over 18000 games released on Steam (source: SteamDB). In late 2019, the Fed's interest rate target range was 1.5% to 1.75%. Today, the Fed's interest rate target range is 4% to 4.25%, after recent cuts.
The market is more than twice as crowded. Capital is more than twice as expensive. Glen Schofield recently observed that target game budgets for new titles have dropped to the $3M to $5M range, which is a fraction of target budgets five years ago.
From a practical perspective, Frost Giant will need to adapt to the current market. To survive, Frost Giant needs to start a new game, and this game will have to be built on a fraction of the budget. Starting a new game should also enable continued improvements to Stormgate.
Frost Giant is fortunate to have a strong technical foundation to start from and a passionate, experienced team. However, between Stormgate's lack of commercial success and the headwinds of the current market, financing a new project is uncertain.
My goal is to strike a partnership that enables Frost Giant to capitalize on the tremendous technical investment that we've made in SnowPlay to build a new game. And in conjunction, I hope to be able to continue to improve Stormgate.
Frost Giant's SnowPlay engine technology should find its way into games from other developers. We built a solution that benefits any networked game with large unit counts, and our server infrastructure is extremely cost-efficient.
But engine licensing is not sufficient to sustain Frost Giant; a new game would provide a meaningful future. Financing new games takes time, and the outcome is never certain. I remain hopeful, but also cognizant of the challenges.
Next week, I'll discuss what I believe the future holds for RTS as a genre.
What kind of game is Frost Giant supposed to make? Who knows, but deeper in the comments section someone asks if it's a mobile game and Tim rules that out. Also he doubles down on how awesome the Snowplay "engine" (it's not an engine) is, so presumably the new game will have to be some sort of RTS or RTS-like game, like a MOBA.
It's bonkers how delusional Tim is. Almost a parody at this point.
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/B5VhPzF.jpeg)
