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On October 07 2025 16:29 Bacillus wrote: 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. 50% of sc2 wol users. No i am serious. By their own filings they thought 50% of sc2 was a reasonable expectation.
https://tl.net/forum/games/594282-stormgate-frost-giant-megathread?page=99#1973
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On October 07 2025 16:29 Bacillus wrote: 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. Yeah, if you search you can find this napkin math. People were ringing alarm bells like crazy over a year ago. It was something like 20x what they had in EA was needed, and then of course launch had sizably LESS than EA. X_X
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On October 07 2025 16:29 Bacillus wrote: 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. ~75k CCU to brake even, assuming they make lots of new content regularly, and people pay for it.
This is my rough evaluation. The little thing that stop Tim from succeeding is 3 orders of magnitude.
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On October 07 2025 07:50 Gorsameth wrote: "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?
let's not over complicate game making. Let's not pretend it takes the best electrical engineers and computer scientists on planet earth to make a game these days. i know a guy with zero C# experience who doubled the scope of a UNity developed game called Fire Pro Wrestling WOrld. It was a part time side hobby.
The reason there are 87 bazillion games on Steam is that today's software tools make it super easy to make a game. All kinds of games make all kinds of money where its 2 or fewer guys in their garage.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1173370/Slapshot_Rebound/ is there even 1 full time guy on this game?
Zealot Hockey in SC2 was made by 1 guy in weeks. The game lasted for years.
Wasn't Hollow Knight made by 2 people?
Retromania Wrestling is made by a group of 4 part timers. 1 of the guys is strictly a business guy. The game just keeps on selling and its been selling for years. The core combat is great.
The most fulfilling way to build the foundation of a software development studio is by strategically spending the money made from the software you make. Once you get investors involved your vision and decisions are compromised. Building a development studio from the ground up is best done by a few starving 22 year olds who are willing to live in the office to push out their first few projects. Guys Tim's age with their accumulated wealth do not have the killer instinct required to make that happen.
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The most fulfilling way to build the foundation of a software development studio is by strategically spending the money made from the software you make. Once you get investors involved your vision and decisions are compromised. Exactly, what's the point of calling yourselves an indie studio, if your decisions are dictated by investors? (except for using "indie" term as a marketing buzzword).
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https://steamdb.info/app/1173370/charts/
Slapshot: Rebound looks like it was made by 1 guy in a matter of weeks using Unity. Peak of 365 concurrents today. The game is 2.5 years old it continues to get updates. it lives on a steady diet of microtransactions and it looks like the guy working on it is doing so part time.
If Mr. Morten is the game design genius who was going to pioneer the next generation of the RTS genre...surely he can crank out a game that makes money. Surely, he can start bringing in more cash than a game like Slapshot: Rebound before the summer of 2026.
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On October 08 2025 10:42 THIRD_DEGREE_ wrote:https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1o0vjdm/exchanges_between_tim_morten_and_his_detractors/Tim calling out people for fake accounts is the funniest thing. Getting perma banned from the Stormgate reddit, probably by the Turkey leg, for "witchhunting" with the voidlegacy speculation turned out to be great value. I'm glad to see an astroturfer get egg on their face. Timmy calling out people for fake accounts is peak irony. After everything, watching this unfold feels like comedy in karma. I'll just copy my comment: "Don't want to be too negative, but this guy is like a corporate two-faced hypocrite snake from the Plato heaven."
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On October 07 2025 23:00 ChillFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2025 16:29 Bacillus wrote: 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. ~75k CCU to brake even, assuming they make lots of new content regularly, and people pay for it. This is my rough evaluation. The little thing that stop Tim from succeeding is 3 orders of magnitude.
75K concurrent users? That is like a top 5 Steam game and utterly ridiculous. 5-10k should be more than enough
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On October 08 2025 10:42 THIRD_DEGREE_ wrote:https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1o0vjdm/exchanges_between_tim_morten_and_his_detractors/Tim calling out people for fake accounts is the funniest thing. Getting perma banned from the Stormgate reddit, probably by the Turkey leg, for "witchhunting" with the voidlegacy speculation turned out to be great value. I'm glad to see an astroturfer get egg on their face. Timmy calling out people for fake accounts is peak irony. After everything, watching this unfold feels like comedy in karma.
can we remove the accounts that are clearly meant as alts just to spread hate? I mean it just isn't cool. SG is a burning ship that won't be saved. We know this but like literally just to make an account to infest TL isn't cool man.
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On October 08 2025 17:53 Mizconout wrote:
can we remove the accounts that are clearly meant as alts just to spread hate? I mean it just isn't cool. SG is a burning ship that won't be saved. We know this but like literally just to make an account to infest TL isn't cool man.
I would love to use my forum of choice, but alas.
Also, this isn't an alt; this is my first tl.net account and can tone the rhetoric back if it bothers the admins.
One, it's relevant.
Two, I'm not spreading misinformation.
Three, I think it's all connected to the larger conversation about how previous content creators, pros, and other alpha/beta testers alluded to FGS's ability/inability to act on feedback. There seemed to have been a shift in early 2025 with the arrival of Allen Dilling.
Four, as far as official communication from FGS is concerned, they're still cooking something new and unique. I may check out Felhog Farmer or Celestial Dew Valley or Fort Nokitoff once it's out of the air fryer. I don't think expressing negative sentiment is "infesting" the forum with "hate." In fact, this suppression and lack of acknowledgement towards negative sentiment may have been an ongoing theme that led to this game crumbling...
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I went a little far in my last post. Went too far in a few places. But something more constructive to say is that, judging by the comments in all these threads, and in response to SG's failure, you can really tell that people care and are starving for something. Lots of smart, articulate people too. And my thought is, why on god's green earth would you not make your game specifically for these people. Like if they love your game, many more people will join in. If they don't love it, you're deader than a black dude in a 90s horror movie. Like you just can't tell me Warz and rizzy kitty and the billy crystal monsters inc monster is for this audience. 'This audience', like the people who gave the game more than a brief look and are still here scratching their heads. That's the one, dude. Not someone who briefly saw the very bad game poster on steam (is it even a game poster anymore, an avatar????) and didn't give a shit for a second. Not even going to get into Tim's terrible linkedin posts, there are already a thousand darts in that board. But the failing of taking your core, passionate base for granted is the meme of the century. Every time I think of anything about this game I just see that scene from Ice Age when the bird spikes the last melon.
edit: my black dude horror movie joke sounded bad, sorry. it's alluding to the racism in those movies, not to sound racist myself. apologies if this isn't clear. my bad. im an idiot.
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Northern Ireland25853 Posts
On October 08 2025 17:53 Mizconout wrote:can we remove the accounts that are clearly meant as alts just to spread hate? I mean it just isn't cool. SG is a burning ship that won't be saved. We know this but like literally just to make an account to infest TL isn't cool man. I recognise the name from the subreddit and they made a load of good posts.
Migrating to TL seems fair enough if they got banned from there
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On October 08 2025 17:42 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2025 23:00 ChillFlame wrote:On October 07 2025 16:29 Bacillus wrote: 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. ~75k CCU to brake even, assuming they make lots of new content regularly, and people pay for it. This is my rough evaluation. The little thing that stop Tim from succeeding is 3 orders of magnitude. 75K concurrent users? That is like a top 5 Steam game and utterly ridiculous. 5-10k should be more than enough I talk of CCU peaks during releases of expansions. That's when people buy stuff. The last sentenceThe little thing that stop Tim from succeeding is 3 orders of magnitude. is a joke.
If they manage to get stable 5-10k CCU for years, yes. Might still be hard with their monetisation model.
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On October 08 2025 17:53 Mizconout wrote:can we remove the accounts that are clearly meant as alts just to spread hate? I mean it just isn't cool. SG is a burning ship that won't be saved. We know this but like literally just to make an account to infest TL isn't cool man. Bit rich of a 52-post account to accuse a 4-post account of being an alt. By all the same reasoning you applied, I could also accuse you of being an alt. I don't, because I simply don't have all the info. If you suspect someone of being an alt, you can report them, as it's against forum policies, and mods, who can see things like IP addresses and locations, can make an informed decision.
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On October 08 2025 22:41 RogerChillingworth wrote: I went a little far in my last post. Went too far in a few places. But something more constructive to say is that, judging by the comments in all these threads, and in response to SG's failure, you can really tell that people care and are starving for something. Lots of smart, articulate people too. And my thought is, why on god's green earth would you not make your game specifically for these people. Like if they love your game, many more people will join in. If they don't love it, you're deader than a black dude in a 90s horror movie. Like you just can't tell me Warz and rizzy kitty and the billy crystal monsters inc monster is for this audience.
That's because Tim Morten only cared about the dedicated RTS audience when it was time for fundraising.
His real plan for the game was to make it the Next Big Thing, like Fortnite, or League of Legends at the very least.
That's why he abandoned everything that the core RTS fanbase cared about, in order to double-down on the toy-like art style and the Monsters Inc demons and the "Rizzy Kitty". It was all in a vain hope to chase a mass audience who would never care about Stormgate. Very much a "How do you do, fellow kids?" moment.
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On October 09 2025 04:38 Jeremy Reimer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2025 22:41 RogerChillingworth wrote: I went a little far in my last post. Went too far in a few places. But something more constructive to say is that, judging by the comments in all these threads, and in response to SG's failure, you can really tell that people care and are starving for something. Lots of smart, articulate people too. And my thought is, why on god's green earth would you not make your game specifically for these people. Like if they love your game, many more people will join in. If they don't love it, you're deader than a black dude in a 90s horror movie. Like you just can't tell me Warz and rizzy kitty and the billy crystal monsters inc monster is for this audience.
That's because Tim Morten only cared about the dedicated RTS audience when it was time for fundraising. His real plan for the game was to make it the Next Big Thing, like Fortnite, or League of Legends at the very least. That's why he abandoned everything that the core RTS fanbase cared about, in order to double-down on the toy-like art style and the Monsters Inc demons and the "Rizzy Kitty". It was all in a vain hope to chase a mass audience who would never care about Stormgate. Very much a "How do you do, fellow kids?" moment. Would you stop mentioning Rizzy Kitty if I ask nicely? =D I think Tim created a remote cringe bomb. I mean, I also like to make fun of Warz, but Rizzy Kitty is too far.
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On October 09 2025 04:38 Jeremy Reimer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2025 22:41 RogerChillingworth wrote: I went a little far in my last post. Went too far in a few places. But something more constructive to say is that, judging by the comments in all these threads, and in response to SG's failure, you can really tell that people care and are starving for something. Lots of smart, articulate people too. And my thought is, why on god's green earth would you not make your game specifically for these people. Like if they love your game, many more people will join in. If they don't love it, you're deader than a black dude in a 90s horror movie. Like you just can't tell me Warz and rizzy kitty and the billy crystal monsters inc monster is for this audience.
That's because Tim Morten only cared about the dedicated RTS audience when it was time for fundraising. His real plan for the game was to make it the Next Big Thing, like Fortnite, or League of Legends at the very least. That's why he abandoned everything that the core RTS fanbase cared about, in order to double-down on the toy-like art style and the Monsters Inc demons and the "Rizzy Kitty". It was all in a vain hope to chase a mass audience who would never care about Stormgate. Very much a "How do you do, fellow kids?" moment.
I strongly feel that there are many different directions you could take the core RTS audience and they would be happy and into it, just as long as you're a huge believer in it yourself. Frost Giant never seemed into their own journey at all. It's a bit of a tangent but I personally don't think you have to cater all that hard to people's comfort zones. You just have to show the answer to a math problem and the work that brought you there that proves your answer is legit. People only start projecting the game they would want when they see that you have nothing. I really don't think you can ask for a better community than this one to receive your project. You just need to actually have something. I'll probably expand on this stuff in the other thread at some point because it's about looking forward while FG and SG feel very much in the past already.
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People so fed up by now with the disingenuousness that Tim getting bodied on his LinkedIn safespace is hilarious.
>This guy could run over a pedestrian texting and driving and blame the changing traffic patterns and competing messaging apps
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