On June 11 2026 06:25 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I am still waiting for Bonfire Studios to announce they are shutting down. I'm giving them 6 months.
Their first game is about to drop right? I played it a while back in a larger test end of last year. It wasn't my cup of tea but it's had decent numbers no? https://steamdb.info/app/3401450/charts/#1y
A peak of 3,122 concurrent users doesn't seem that big for a public test of a highly-anticipated game from the "former lead designer of World of Warcraft".
I looked at a gameplay demo video and I don't see how this would have any kind of mass appeal. Apparently it won't be free-to-play, so that's one good decision they made. But it appears to be PvP-only, which seems bad, and maybe incompatible with a pay-to-play model these days? I'm not sure.
What I did notice is that it was Diablo-style isometric graphics, but the combat seemed to require you to constantly be spinning your camera around like crazy. Just watching it for a few minutes started to make me feel dizzy, and I'm a VR guy.
I don't know. The name is hard to remember. The game setting seems generic as hell, like even Stormgate had more personality than this. The graphics seem... fine, nothing special. The gameplay is... okay? But the spinning camera makes me never want to play it.
I guess we'll see.
While playing I don't remember having a camera angle / spinning problem. Just a field of view problem. I hate to get shot by something a screen away. Now that you mentioned it I can't unsee it though. This is disgusting for viewers xD Highly anticipated? Honestly if I weren't regularly on TL.net in "Other Games" I would have never heard that one. It's PvEvP with about 15 squads of 3 players like in BattleRoyale games. It plays a lot like Path of Exile meets PUBG. Your other points I dunno. Arkheron is short enough. Graphics are fine if nothing extraordinary. Gameplay was new and engaging but to stressful? for me. I'm not big on BattleRoyal
Here is a vid from Shroud trying it out if anyones interested
It looks interesting, it does seem there’s a lot one needs to know to play it to any standard, and it strikes me as a potential nightmare to single queue in it.
I’m genuinely confused by the choice of camera angle, or at least it being locked to that perspective. It definitely feels there’s times being able to switch to say, an over-the-shoulder would suit some scenarios
The problem with Pardo's new game is that it doesn't have the word "gate" in its name.
Matchmaking and latency are going to be a problem a couple of weeks after the game's release. Are they going to be making physical copies of this thing and sticking it in Walmart? LOL.
Anyhow, the best Bonfire can hope for is a success on the level of Dreamhaven's Wildgate. Dreamhaven released it and had to lay off a bunch of people and now the game limps along after the layoff. Dreamhaven has a bunch of games in the works and they've proven they know how to publish games. So even though Dreamhaven is producing several failures at least they've assembled a "game making factory" cranking out product. Mechabellum is pretty good... it's also under $10. Bonfire still has not produced a single game after 10 years. Bonfire is working on one PvP game.
Bonfire is either going to shut down because the financial people don't want to spend the cash to fully release the game OR the game comes out and they have to lay many people off because this title can not support 75 full time employees.
After a few weeks people will start complaining about match making during non-peak playtime hours. Then they'll be complaining about latency issues with some guy in Flin Flon, Manitoba who is 8347397 kilometres away.
I'm giving Bonfire six months.
On June 12 2026 18:14 Harris1st wrote: Highly anticipated? Honestly if I weren't regularly on TL.net in "Other Games" I would have never heard that one. It's PvEvP with about 15 squads of 3 players like in BattleRoyale games.
it is highly anticipated by the suckers who gave Rob Pardo $100M. Because the investors gave him so much cash he had to make the game playable on PS5 and XBox Series X. Gee, I wonder how it runs on the MS console the majority of people own.. the Series S?
I check out what Pardo and Wyatt are doing because they were big contributors to Starcraft Brood War. That is how I know about it. Not many people do that though.
This is comedy gold...
“At a time when our industry is navigating rapid technological change and evolving business models, his perspective is both grounding and forward-looking,” said Nina Brown, President of GDC, in a press release. “Rob’s commitment to building games that players return to again and again reflects exactly the kind of creative conviction GDC Festival of Gaming is here to celebrate.”
Here let me try one.. Mr. Pardo has successfully aligned multiple motivational vectors, creating a synergistic gameplay ecosystem that leverages emergent player agency while preserving a framework for long-term engagement optimization.
Here let me try one.. Mr. Pardo has successfully aligned multiple motivational vectors, creating a synergistic gameplay ecosystem that leverages emergent player agency while preserving a framework for long-term engagement optimization."
On June 13 2026 02:21 Creager wrote: Harstem just dropped an interview with Tim, haven't watched it myself, but since there's so much profound love for the guy I thought I'd share it:
Despite being the longest recent interview by a large margin I think we already knew most of what he said here.
I want to note how masterful he is at crafting the narrative around StormGate's failure and the hate it got. Over several minutes, Harstem asks some questions that probe whether the team thought they were running out of money and feeling unprepared before Early Access, which Tim totally denies. If his poker face had cracked at all then he'd have no way to explain all the scummy things they did in that period:
The mysterious "ping booster" partnership, which funnily enough is still available in case you want to level up your StormGate network performance.
The Kickstarter, which infamously described the game as "fully funded to release", but even worse said that it was just their answer to fans demanding physical copies of the game.
The StartEngine campaign which infamously valued the company, with zero releases, at $150 million.
So then later when Harstem asks about the hate, Tim can give his "aw shucks, we did our best, we just wanted to make something you'd like" spiel, then as a cherry on top claim "we had more than our fair share" of bad-faith actors. I forgot about those darn Battle Aces shills, apparently still at work on Reddit to cut down StormGate's ascent.
FrostGiant just wanted to share their imminent success with the broader community, and give them lower latency to boot, so these business practices, which only incidentally extracted cash from fans, weren't even worth mentioning.
On June 13 2026 02:21 Creager wrote: Harstem just dropped an interview with Tim, haven't watched it myself, but since there's so much profound love for the guy I thought I'd share it:
Despite being the longest recent interview by a large margin I think we already knew most of what he said here.
I want to note how masterful he is at crafting the narrative around StormGate's failure and the hate it got. Over several minutes, Harstem asks some questions that probe whether the team thought they were running out of money and feeling unprepared before Early Access, which Tim totally denies. If his poker face had cracked at all then he'd have no way to explain all the scummy things they did in that period:
The mysterious "ping booster" partnership, which funnily enough is still available in case you want to level up your StormGate network performance.
The Kickstarter, which infamously described the game as "fully funded to release", but even worse said that it was just their answer to fans demanding physical copies of the game.
The StartEngine campaign which infamously valued the company, with zero releases, at $150 million.
So then later when Harstem asks about the hate, Tim can give his "aw shucks, we did our best, we just wanted to make something you'd like" spiel, then as a cherry on top claim "we had more than our fair share" of bad-faith actors. I forgot about those darn Battle Aces shills, apparently still at work on Reddit to cut down StormGate's ascent.
FrostGiant just wanted to share their imminent success with the broader community, and give them lower latency to boot, so these business practices, which only incidentally extracted cash from fans, weren't even worth mentioning.
Man, that was a long interview. At one point I got so bored I skipped to reading the transcript, but that didn't help, so I went back to watching it in bits and pieces.
There was a brief interesting bit where Harstem was trying to explain how Starcraft II improved by leaps and bounds from, say, 2006 to 2007, or 2007 to 2008. He said that in comparison, Stormgate didn't seem to improve that much in a similar time frame from its initial demonstrations in 2023 to the Early Access release in 2024. Tim seemed surprised to hear that. I think it messed with his narrative of how Frost Giant had no hope of competing with Starcraft II because they had so much less time to develop it.
There was no new information given, except one tiny tidbit that Tim dropped: he claims that a new publishing deal for a new Frost Giant game was "this close" to happening, it would have been a licensed IP, but then the publisher lost the rights to the IP and it all fell through.
I mean, maybe. Or maybe the publisher looked at Frost Giant's finances and noped right out, and "we can't get the IP" was just an excuse. Or maybe it wasn't quite that close to a done deal in the first place.
Tim did admit that many former Frost Giant employees had to "move on" in the eleven or so months since Frost Giant ran out of money, but he said there was a "core group" who were still interested in doing a second game, if Tim ever manages to get that check. Which I think might be true, simply because we are in a terrible spot in the video game industry right now, where there are only negative numbers of available jobs out there.
I did notice Tim visibly wince when Harstem brought up his "loan" of $500,000 to Frost Giant. Definitely a wincing moment.
Also, and this was hard not to notice, during the course of the interview, his wife walked down the same wine-bottle-filled corridor three times, like she was pacing giant circles around the house or something. I have no comment about that, it's just a thing I noticed.
On June 13 2026 07:32 Jeremy Reimer wrote: There was no new information given, except one tiny tidbit that Tim dropped: he claims that a new publishing deal for a new Frost Giant game was "this close" to happening, it would have been a licensed IP, but then the publisher lost the rights to the IP and it all fell through.
I mean, maybe. Or maybe the publisher looked at Frost Giant's finances and noped right out, and "we can't get the IP" was just an excuse. Or maybe it wasn't quite that close to a done deal in the first place.
Wasn't that the Lord of the Rings deal that floated around at that time? Snowplay Engine, LotR IP, singleplayer focused RTS?
On June 13 2026 07:32 Jeremy Reimer wrote: There was no new information given, except one tiny tidbit that Tim dropped: he claims that a new publishing deal for a new Frost Giant game was "this close" to happening, it would have been a licensed IP, but then the publisher lost the rights to the IP and it all fell through.
I mean, maybe. Or maybe the publisher looked at Frost Giant's finances and noped right out, and "we can't get the IP" was just an excuse. Or maybe it wasn't quite that close to a done deal in the first place.
Wasn't that the Lord of the Rings deal that floated around at that time? Snowplay Engine, LotR IP, singleplayer focused RTS?
I don't recall any rumors about a Lord of the Rings RTS game floating around, nor does anything come up in a search (save for the 2004 EA game Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth and its sequel in 2006).
Are you thinking about the rumors of the Game of Thrones RTS, War for Westeros? That wouldn't be it either, because that game was (and is) being developed by PlaySide, and they clearly still have access to the IP.
There was a single guy on Reddit with no other post history who claimed inside knowledge that War for Westeros was using Snowplay (or, possibly, had considered using Snowplay). However, there has been no other indication that this was ever true. Tim Morten has never mentioned this possibility, and he's literally mentioned War for Westeros as an upcoming RTS that he's looking forward to.
On June 13 2026 07:32 Jeremy Reimer wrote: There was no new information given, except one tiny tidbit that Tim dropped: he claims that a new publishing deal for a new Frost Giant game was "this close" to happening, it would have been a licensed IP, but then the publisher lost the rights to the IP and it all fell through.
I mean, maybe. Or maybe the publisher looked at Frost Giant's finances and noped right out, and "we can't get the IP" was just an excuse. Or maybe it wasn't quite that close to a done deal in the first place.
Wasn't that the Lord of the Rings deal that floated around at that time? Snowplay Engine, LotR IP, singleplayer focused RTS?
I don't recall any rumors about a Lord of the Rings RTS game floating around, nor does anything come up in a search (save for the 2004 EA game Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth and its sequel in 2006).
Are you thinking about the rumors of the Game of Thrones RTS, War for Westeros? That wouldn't be it either, because that game was (and is) being developed by PlaySide, and they clearly still have access to the IP.
There was a single guy on Reddit with no other post history who claimed inside knowledge that War for Westeros was using Snowplay (or, possibly, had considered using Snowplay). However, there has been no other indication that this was ever true. Tim Morten has never mentioned this possibility, and he's literally mentioned War for Westeros as an upcoming RTS that he's looking forward to.
His insider knowledge though... Didn't he predict the announcement of the game before it happened? Hearing them overtalking at dinner. It seems reliable source.
On June 13 2026 07:32 Jeremy Reimer wrote: There was no new information given, except one tiny tidbit that Tim dropped: he claims that a new publishing deal for a new Frost Giant game was "this close" to happening, it would have been a licensed IP, but then the publisher lost the rights to the IP and it all fell through.
I mean, maybe. Or maybe the publisher looked at Frost Giant's finances and noped right out, and "we can't get the IP" was just an excuse. Or maybe it wasn't quite that close to a done deal in the first place.
Wasn't that the Lord of the Rings deal that floated around at that time? Snowplay Engine, LotR IP, singleplayer focused RTS?
I don't recall any rumors about a Lord of the Rings RTS game floating around, nor does anything come up in a search (save for the 2004 EA game Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth and its sequel in 2006).
Are you thinking about the rumors of the Game of Thrones RTS, War for Westeros? That wouldn't be it either, because that game was (and is) being developed by PlaySide, and they clearly still have access to the IP.
There was a single guy on Reddit with no other post history who claimed inside knowledge that War for Westeros was using Snowplay (or, possibly, had considered using Snowplay). However, there has been no other indication that this was ever true. Tim Morten has never mentioned this possibility, and he's literally mentioned War for Westeros as an upcoming RTS that he's looking forward to.
His insider knowledge though... Didn't he predict the announcement of the game before it happened? Hearing them overtalking at dinner. It seems reliable source.
No, he didn't predict anything. Someone on Reddit said that he did, and then everyone went "oooooh", but then someone else actually checked and the game had already been announced at the time of his post. You can check it yourself if you want.
"A guy on Reddit with only one post said he overheard someone talking at dinner" is not a reliable source. It's kind of the opposite of that. I can't wait until War for Westeros finally comes out and we can put this one to bed.
On June 13 2026 07:32 Jeremy Reimer wrote: There was no new information given, except one tiny tidbit that Tim dropped: he claims that a new publishing deal for a new Frost Giant game was "this close" to happening, it would have been a licensed IP, but then the publisher lost the rights to the IP and it all fell through.
I mean, maybe. Or maybe the publisher looked at Frost Giant's finances and noped right out, and "we can't get the IP" was just an excuse. Or maybe it wasn't quite that close to a done deal in the first place.
Wasn't that the Lord of the Rings deal that floated around at that time? Snowplay Engine, LotR IP, singleplayer focused RTS?
I don't recall any rumors about a Lord of the Rings RTS game floating around, nor does anything come up in a search (save for the 2004 EA game Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth and its sequel in 2006).
Are you thinking about the rumors of the Game of Thrones RTS, War for Westeros? That wouldn't be it either, because that game was (and is) being developed by PlaySide, and they clearly still have access to the IP.
There was a single guy on Reddit with no other post history who claimed inside knowledge that War for Westeros was using Snowplay (or, possibly, had considered using Snowplay). However, there has been no other indication that this was ever true. Tim Morten has never mentioned this possibility, and he's literally mentioned War for Westeros as an upcoming RTS that he's looking forward to.
Upsi yes that was what I meant. How dafuq did I confuse LotR with GoT ^^' It probably was just reddit talk
Day[9]'s mom is awesome, but that thread is somewhat disingenuous. It makes it seem like this is some sort of weird one-off error, but in fact every single person who bought things on the Stormgate in-game store has lost everything they bought.
When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Steam purchases are stored on Steam. You go to Steam and redownload a game you already bought, no problem. Steam knows because the data is on Steam's servers, tied to the player's Steam account.
But in-game store transactions (which Frost Giant set up deliberately to be the best way to purchase the campaign, so they could avoid Steam's 30% fee) were stored on Stormgate's servers. Which, as we know, have gone to Server Heaven. All that data on player in-game store purchases is just gone, erased, oblivionized. And there's no way for the game to check to see if they exist. The only reason this hasn't come up more widely is that very few people who bought the campaign on the in-game store have ever bothered to replay it.
To be fair, Cara Laforge hasn't worked for Frost Giant for a while and probably has no idea about what's happened. She sees the post on Reddit as a customer support issue that isn't being handled, when in fact it's a systemic issue that Frost Giant literally has no way to fix.
Also, Day9, her son, rated the game a 1/10. That is ruthless honesty.
That was quite the moment for Stormgate. And it was just after the EA release, at the height of all the hype by so many Starcraft II "influencers". Day[9] has always been clear that when a game is released, even in Early Access, he will evaluate that game based on what it is, not what it could be. It's the Total Biscuit philosophy of game reviews.
It's also worth noting that even after the "release", Day[9] didn't bother to play the game again. Not even in 2026, his "Year of RTS". If he had, he probably would have rated it as better, maybe a 3 or a 4 out of 10. But he knew that you don't just go from a 1/10 to a 10/10. That never happens. Tim Morten loves to talk about how Baldur's Gate 3 was criticized for its Early Access release, but he just can't fathom that Baldur's Gate 3 was awesome right from the very first frame. Their EA release was clearly incomplete, but it wasn't bad the way Stormgate was.
On June 17 2026 02:35 Jeremy Reimer wrote: But in-game store transactions (which Frost Giant set up deliberately to be the best way to purchase the campaign, so they could avoid Steam's 30% fee) were stored on Stormgate's servers. Which, as we know, have gone to Server Heaven. All that data on player in-game store purchases is just gone, erased, oblivionized.
doesn't Steam have rules against doing this sort of thing, otherwise, major publishers would start using this loophole?
You can still play the campaign and co-op missions with your heroes offline... I was curious to see if it still worked - it does. They had a patch to make it available offline.
I bought everything through their in game store (originally via the Kickstarter). I didn't have to rebuy it on Steam.
On June 17 2026 07:22 SoleSteeler wrote: You can still play the campaign and co-op missions with your heroes offline... I was curious to see if it still worked - it does. They had a patch to make it available offline.
I bought everything through their in game store (originally via the Kickstarter). I didn't have to rebuy it on Steam.
If you bought via the Kickstarter, maybe they just enabled the Steam purchase? Because at the time of the Kickstarter, they didn't even have an in-game store. There have been several others reporting that the MTX they bought on the in-game store no longer works.
But I suppose Frost Giant might have tried to convert the data to Steam before the shutdown? Maybe they just did a sloppy job.
On June 17 2026 06:43 JimmyJRaynor wrote: thanks for all the additional context.
On June 17 2026 02:35 Jeremy Reimer wrote: But in-game store transactions (which Frost Giant set up deliberately to be the best way to purchase the campaign, so they could avoid Steam's 30% fee) were stored on Stormgate's servers. Which, as we know, have gone to Server Heaven. All that data on player in-game store purchases is just gone, erased, oblivionized.
doesn't Steam have rules against doing this sort of thing, otherwise, major publishers would start using this loophole?
It's unclear. Steam will let you use their own API and services for microtransactions, but they will take their usual cut. I don't think they forbid making your own in-game store, though.
EDIT: For no good or valid reason, I dug further into the StormgateArchives Twitch mystery. It seems like FrankSrirachaJr stopped maintaining the channel five months ago:
I decided to speedrun the campaign on beginner... I'm on mission 5 but it's bugged out - I can't click and talk to the guy I need to proceed. Funny, but a little annoying!
I was even able to get two achievements playing it single player offline.
On June 17 2026 02:35 Jeremy Reimer wrote: Tim Morten loves to talk about how Baldur's Gate 3 was criticized for its Early Access release, but he just can't fathom that Baldur's Gate 3 was awesome right from the very first frame. Their EA release was clearly incomplete, but it wasn't bad the way Stormgate was.
I am not a fan of BG3, I've beaten almost every CRPG ever existed, never bothered to play BG3 past act 1. IMO, it's too pop-cultury, filled with annoying mechanics like forced manual dice throws for every damn trap or lack of group checks at all in a party RPG.
But anyway, it's not even comparable with SG. It's not even funny. SG is like a solo school project compared to BG3.
I played a bit of BG3 during the EA. It was incomplete, but it was obvious you're looking at a CRPG with the biggest production value ever, even if you don't like it.
On the other hand, SG was terrible right before shutting down. Sound mixing, visual effects, optimization, engine, everything was terrible. During the EA, it was the worst RTS I've ever played, hands down. And I played almost all of them.
P.S. There are a couple of mysteries surrounding SG that I still haven't solved. For example, everyone was talking about how smooth and responsive the game was. It was second only to SC2, with the potential to surpass it.
Did I play some other game? It was ALWAYS terrible mechanic-wise. From the first rounds of beta to the EoS. Units never did what I told them to do. And I'm fine with SCBW (or even stupid WC2 dragons :D). Some of the inputs didn't register, animations were out of sync, stupid global matchmaking added delay, Systems like auto build or autogrouping never worked properly. It was really unpleasant to play.
I am pretty sure that was real people, not bots or Tim's alt accounts. And I used to see this argument quite a lot. Did they really find the game one of the best mechanically, or did they lie to themselves because of the personal investment?
I understood most of the takes of SG's fans, even if I didn't agree. But this one is not just how the game feels. I'm pretty sure it's provable and quantifiable.
EPT
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