On May 15 2026 04:07 Jeremy Reimer wrote: It was dumb of Tim Morten to just pretend that everything was sorta-fine, that all he needed was a "partner" and everything would just proceed normally, when he knew the reality of the situation. He could have been honest. He chose not to be.
Morten's moves are very calculated.
For legal reasons has to appear to be "this close" to nailing a deal. This way he won't have to refund any players' money even though the game lacks a substantial portion of the promised feature set.
I don't think this is true. I don't think Tim Morten is legally obligated to issue refunds to Kickstarter backers. He delivered a "product". Yes, it sucked, and the company went under, but he did "ship" the game he said he would ship. And IGN even gave it a 8/10!
i think Steam will get pissed off at him for only half fhe product working as promised. Steam doesn't like outright frauds on their store. It harms the Steam brand. I think Steam is the big obstacle here not the kickstarter donors. It is also an image thing for Tim ... he has to "die with his boots on". He can't look like he "took the money and ran".
Poor little timmy. poor tim. poor, sad, sweet tim.
I don't think Steam cares that much about policing products that become half-working,
Steam does not want to get in trouble with consumer regulatory bodies over a a coupla 2-bit, pissant, pea-headed guys named Tim. Stop Killing Games is gaining momentum and they could easily slam a Frost Giant logo on one of their slide presentations. All it takes is a couple of loud angry people and Stormgate ends up on the Stop Killing Games list. They pissed off a lot of people with their Kickstarter campaign. If the angry people are loud enough no one will listen to Tim's cock and bull stories about how parts of the game do ... actually ... work.
If Steam as a platform has a flaw, it’s that its sheer size means it’s not exactly great at clamping down on slop, questionable attitudes to copyright or controversial Kickstarters
Doubt it’s going to be much of a headache for Tim et al
Tim is hedging. I would as well. Also, as I said before he must appear to be "dying with his boots on".
Is the Stormgate and Frost Giant saga officially over now or is there some aftermath to see? I guess there's always the a slight possibility that Tim somehow finds a business partner and creates something, but is there anything else left?
At some point sooner or later Tim or someone else needs to switch off the light at the Frost Giant, but that's it?
On May 18 2026 14:54 Bacillus wrote: Is the Stormgate and Frost Giant saga officially over now or is there some aftermath to see? I guess there's always the a slight possibility that Tim somehow finds a business partner and creates something, but is there anything else left?
At some point sooner or later Tim or someone else needs to switch off the light at the Frost Giant, but that's it?
On May 18 2026 14:54 Bacillus wrote: Is the Stormgate and Frost Giant saga officially over now or is there some aftermath to see? I guess there's always the a slight possibility that Tim somehow finds a business partner and creates something, but is there anything else left?
At some point sooner or later Tim or someone else needs to switch off the light at the Frost Giant, but that's it?
There is a zero percent probability that Tim finds a "partner".
Nobody, not even the most deluded investor of all time, is going to give Tim Morten $5 million to make a new game, just so he can pay off Frost Giant's $2.6 million in hard debt.
Especially after he spent $44 million to make Stormgate, which earned only $1 million in game sales during its entire lifetime.
Tim, however refuses to switch the lights off at Frost Giant. He is the only employee left, earning $1 per year. There is no office. The address given in the latest SEC filing is Tim's house.
The $2 million loan outstanding loan to Silicon Valley Bank is the biggest impediment to Frost Giant the "organization" continuing to exist. The loan is due with at least 9% interest, and must be paid off in full by May 2027.
The most prudent course of action would be to declare bankruptcy now and auction off Frost Giant's assets to the highest bidder. But that would remove Tim from a position of leadership at the company, which Tim refuses to do. So we're sort of stuck in a weird limbo that will last as long as the bank has patience.
I really want to know what's the mindset for any investors putting in so much money into a video game. The risk reward just don't seem to make sense at all.
On May 19 2026 09:04 ETisME wrote: I really want to know what's the mindset for any investors putting in so much money into a video game. The risk reward just don't seem to make sense at all.
Remember that Frost Giant was founded in mid-2020.
It was the combination of everyone being stuck at home at the onset of COVID, combined with near-zero interest rates. Venture capitalists were throwing money at anything they could think of, and video games seemed the perfect new type of investment, given the situation.
The way venture capital works is that the VC companies expect nine out of ten of their investments to fail, but for the tenth one to make up for all the others and more. So you get companies that will fund ten crazy software startups, in the hope that just one of them will turn out to be the next Google or Facebook.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, the video game business doesn't really work the same way. You would have to fund 100 games, maybe more, to get the kind of mega-hit that VCs require to make their business model work. Games don't typically blow up the way other software does. With a few exceptions (Fortnite), games tend to launch with a splash and then slowly diminish in popularity, at which point publishers start looking around for a new game, and the cycle repeats.
Anyway, the COVID lockdowns ended and the near-zero interest rates ended as well, blowing up what was left of the business model.
Mostly the best selling videogames each year are recurring titles like Call of Duty, Battlefield and sport games like EA Sports (Fifa), Madden, NFL, NBA. en.wikipedia.org Add to that the money spend in ongoing titles like CS2, Dota, LoL, there really isn't that big of a market in "classic" video games (PC, PS, XBox, Switch).
it was a funding bubble not a revenue bubble. 2025 saw revenues of $197B worldwide and $60.1B in the USA. Layoffs are happening in California so it gets publicized like the world is coming to an end. Software shops are leaving California because the business climate is "unfavourable" and that is putting it mildly. Many do not want to talk about that aspect. Most California laid off people want to be "shocked and stunned" and act like they deserve a job for life. Its weird to see that mindset in software. Making software is not a lifetime pursuit.. you get in ... make your money ...and GTFO ... to a real life.
The loud mouth know-it-alls at my university had a "California or bust" mindset; they laughed when I chose New York. Well boys... hows it going? They have to act shocked and stunned. It avoids them from facing all the indicators that California was going to hell.
When a new software shop opens up in upstate New York, where hydro and housing are super cheap, no one bats an eye. On $90K a year you can carry a fully detached house in the land of Mike Tyson and Jonny Bones Jones.
any how, the money is out there.
EDIT: and upstate New York has always been this way. my now wife and then new gf carried a mortgage on $55K with $0 from her family in 2015. $200K house @ 1.99% interest.
The $40 million or whatever investment could also represent less than 1% of their total capital also. A venture capital fund with $10 billion investing $40 million in something that has the chance of doing well is not a big deal assuming they have potentially hundreds of other investments - some will do well, some won't.
On May 19 2026 22:54 JimmyJRaynor wrote: "why the gaming bubble popped" huh?
it was a funding bubble not a revenue bubble. 2025 saw revenues of $197B worldwide and $60.1B in the USA.
You're right:
The market has fully recovered from the post-COVID downturn. Console sales seem pretty stagnant, and have been for a while, but PC and mobile keep growing.
But yeah, the "easy money" from the funding bubble is gone:
The State of Video Gaming in 2026 wrote: While global consumer spend is at all-time highs, these top-level headlines cover up what has really been a shrinking pool of revenue for most developers/publishers.
There are a bunch of reasons for this, including growth in China, Roblox eating the world, price increases tempering consumer demand, and so forth. Console sales in particular would be down 11% if it weren't for spending on "platform services" (subscriptions to PlayStation Plus, etc)
And yeah, the data suggests that only the top franchises (COD, Madden, FIFA, etc) have pricing power.
The overall trend suggest that gaming in general seems to have hit a saturation point. The extra revenue growth is mostly squeezing existing consumers.
Which is not a terrible thing! It will force gaming companies to, you know, actually make good games, because the squeeze can only go on for so long.
I don't think this has anything to do with Stormgate really. This project would probably fail regardless of how much money they got because it was a failed idea from the start. The vision behind it was really poor, the direction wasn't great and overall how the project was handled was a disaster.
This is a recurring issue for some years now where game or media execs think they know better than anyone else and huge investment of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars ends up in a massive flop that no one is interested in. A lot of games and movies went this route and they bombed hard.
it is fascinating to see what became of the people who worked under Bobby Kotick. I think Rob Pardo is a game design genius, however, since he left Blizzard 12+ years ago he has produced $0 in revenue. OTOH, after leaving Activision ... Respawn kept going like nothing changed.
On May 20 2026 03:56 Manit0u wrote: I don't think this has anything to do with Stormgate really. This project would probably fail regardless of how much money they got because it was a failed idea from the start. The vision behind it was really poor, the direction wasn't great and overall how the project was handled was a disaster.
This is a recurring issue for some years now where game or media execs think they know better than anyone else and huge investment of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars ends up in a massive flop that no one is interested in. A lot of games and movies went this route and they bombed hard.
Oh, absolutely, it has nothing to do with Stormgate's failure.
Stormgate failed because it was a crappy game. It was, to quote Day[9], a "1 or 2 out of 10" at its Early Access launch. The "release" was better, but even so, it was only a 4/10 at that point. At best.
And as Day[9] often says, there is no point in even releasing a 7/10 game these days, when there are so many 9/10 and 10/10 gems, both indie and AAA, to choose from. Much less an incomplete 4/10 mess like Stormgate.
It's notable that Stormgate, on release, didn't even get enough reviews from game websites (I think the minimum is three) to warrant a Metacritic score. IGN's infamous "8/10" was only because the reviewer was a True Believer in RTS in general and Frost Giant specifically. Most game sites won't bother to review a 4/10 game. Why would they? There are better uses of their time.
Stormgate had a poor and inconsistent art direction, broken and terrible sound design (with the one exception of the Celestial theme music), terrible performance, inconsistent laggy inputs, ludicrously awful and disjointed worldbuilding and writing, a laughable and occasionally broken campaign, tepid 1v1 gameplay, and boring co-op.
I kinda disagree on the "no point in releasing a 7/10 game" though. 7/10 game can and will do fine as long as it has potential.
Games don't have to be 10/10 out of the box, what they need though is the spark, something to distinguish them from the crowd. Sure, your game might not have the same budget or polish as similar game within the genre that's 9-10/10 already but if it has something that the others don't that you find appealing you'll be playing it.
Sadly, StormGate had exactly 0 distinguishing features and was lacking in the common departments too.
Edit: Also, I think the current state of the industry really underestimates the most powerful marketing tool that is word of mouth. You can have a game with bad trailer, crappy reviews etc. but when someone you know and trust tells you "it's rough around the edges but when you delve a bit deeper into it it's actually a lot of fun" you will overlook some of the bad parts and will at least give the game a proper try.
There's a reason why me and my friends were hooked on Darkstone long after we played Diablo 2 and stuff.
Obviously hard to say what they were internally talking and thinking, but to outside it looks like they thought they could do SC2 again in the production sense also.
SC2 was ROUGH initially. Most maps were absolutely terrible 1 base vs 1 base setups and it took people a long while to figure out anything more effective than building a blob and crashing it with the opposing blob. The game eventually got more varied and better paced an all that, but took them literally years of iteration over multiple expansions and reworks to get there.
To me it looks like they took the same route with SG, but they didn't have the Blizzard reputation or finances to keep doing the iteration.
On May 21 2026 07:21 Bacillus wrote: SC2 was ROUGH initially. Most maps were absolutely terrible 1 base vs 1 base setups and it took people a long while to figure out anything more effective than building a blob and crashing it with the opposing blob. The game eventually got more varied and better paced an all that, but took them literally years of iteration over multiple expansions and reworks to get there.
i disagree. the game was great on so many levels. lots of multibase action. at July 2010 the multiplayer maps did need to be refined and they were. check out the replays of the early CraftCups taking place in 2010. The games were great.
The campaign was awesome with a great story. 2v2s were wild. Skirmish mode was feature packed.
If you compare 2010 SC2 to RA3 or C&C4 or AoE2 or CoH ... it was awesome.
On May 21 2026 07:21 Bacillus wrote: Obviously hard to say what they were internally talking and thinking, but to outside it looks like they thought they could do SC2 again in the production sense also.
SC2 was ROUGH initially. Most maps were absolutely terrible 1 base vs 1 base setups and it took people a long while to figure out anything more effective than building a blob and crashing it with the opposing blob. The game eventually got more varied and better paced an all that, but took them literally years of iteration over multiple expansions and reworks to get there.
To me it looks like they took the same route with SG, but they didn't have the Blizzard reputation or finances to keep doing the iteration.
It was somewhat rough, but it did have one of the all-time great RTS campaigns behind it, and possibly the best RTS engine ever made for a game of that type. Certainly relative to its time if we’re looking at the latter.
I think a big part of its appeal, and a rather underrated part was also a combination of competitive viability alongside relative novelty and accessibility.
I know for a fact that the majority of me local RTS scene we’ve cultivated, a big chunk of whom eventually became Masters or even GMs, didn’t come to SC2 with a background in that genre. Myself I played BW casually from the age of 9 until WC3 came out. Which I played to a competent but not especially fantastic standard. Resources, especially with regards to mechanical speed were a bit thin on the ground before the streaming era.
While SC2 wasn’t a complete blank slate, and obviously you had good hardcore players from other games go there, for many people it was their first real hit of this competitive, APM-heavy style of game, and many people dug that shit when they got a touch.
Also worth noting it was in the era where Blizzard’s rep was so high that people would give whatever the next Blizz game was a shot, I know guys who got hooked on RTS who only got SC2 because they loved WoW and well, Blizz made WoW.
Fast forward a bit though, and with regards to Stormgate, I don’t think you have that potential audience transition in nearly the same way.
With recourse to myself, I played BW mostly mouse only as a kid, loved WC3 but wasn’t that great. SC2 well, it’s almost the perfect playground at the perfect time.
With Stormgate, if we discount for a second purely casual players, you’re now talking a returning playerbase reared on SC2 (or some other titles, but I’d say predominately that). And most of the competitive cohort have, to varying degrees had that novel experience of getting their mechanics down, spending that money and multitasking over many years in some instances.
I know I enjoyed that aspect, I may have played BW more seriously had I discovered TL earlier than I did, but it was quite a new experience for many of us. And because it was new, we didn’t really know necessarily what ‘good’ looked like, there were discoveries made all the time, it made tolerating the meta or maps like Slag Pits that bit easier.
SG doesn’t really have any of that going for it. It’s core PvP audience is now people who are accustomed to playing at 150-200 APM, who’ve got a good sense of how eco works even in slightly different systems, so it can’t appeal to novelty in those domains, it needs to either be comparable to the competition, or have a novel hook. Which it never really found.
It’s a very different ecosystem now from when SC2 launched. Even a mediocre SC2 vet will just annihilate actual novices in any game with even vaguely similar mechanics, so any new game has to attract a sufficient layer of actual noobs, or other noobs will just quit because they’re getting absolutely rinsed. Which Stormgate spectacularly failed to do.
I’ve dipped my toes into various arena FPS games and I see that problem from the opposite direction (being semi-competent at SC). I’m just getting destroyed by people who kept playing Quake or UT when I stopped approx 20 years ago, and even in different games their fundamentals are just way too strong and they can apply them to basically any game in the genre
When I pitched my data encryption layer in the past I included that scene from Rocky3 when the old man says "we need greasey fast speed". I should probably replace it with this "handles like an F1 race car" yap.
Frost Giant does not merely "know what they are doing". No sir! These people "know what the fuck they are doing".
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/waqZ7ft.png)
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