So... what went wrong with EC that required Behavior to try to get more cash multiple times, even necessitating a launch before the game was properly ready for launch? Did they really waste a huge portion of their funds on stuff that didn't pan out, like many people have suggested? Because, yeah, this absolutely explains why they said they were fully funded but still needed more cash, but if that much money is being wasted by the development team, I mean, should I expect a larger and larger emphasis on the cash shop if the devs are continuing to waste their funds? Did they fix the problems that were wasting their funds? Given how many features have been scaled back heavily or pushed further and further into the future or even canceled entirely, should I expect more planned features to be scaled further back or get canceled or simply put on the backburner indefinitely? I ask because my long-term enjoyment of EC is kinda dependent on the developers delivering what they said they will, and some of the features I was really looking forward to that were planned to have happen eventually as recently as 4 months ago have been cut entirely and replaced with substitutes which I consider wholly inadequate. Can I expect more and more of that to happen given EC's poor launch reception?
They were 3 years into development and had a big staff roll over. It actually costs a lot of money to hire someone. Players actually paid for a game so if they were/are going to pull the plug then at least they got something out to some what justify players buying into it.
Not to turn this into a discussion about particular features, but some of the stuff they've cut... if the current plan for EC had been the plan all along, I never would have bought it. Are their finances at least stable now so that we're not looking at more and more stuff being cut in the months to come?
Fully funded means their planned amount of money for the original strategy and plan is there. It does not mean "what ever happens we got enough money to do this". If that would be the case why do you think they released the game just beta ready? If you consider how much the game has changed from the original plan it's no wonder there was no longer enough buffer to account these changes. When something fails it affects everything and it's pretty normal for projects to run thin on their budget or having to tap into that buffer every project should have. Only thing that amazes me is that, in all fairness, Nathan is maybe one of the best, most experienced and successful video game producers there is and when he inherited the mess EC was after Miguel in he did not see that there will be turbulent times in the future. We cant expect anybody to see in the future, but this is where his experience should have came into play, it's not like there were not enough red flags to hint him about where he was going into. I think UE4 was a bad call (I use it almost daily so I somewhat know how it works) and I know GW is a bitch to work with, add Namco-cashgrab-Bandai and here we are. It amazes me more that ppl dont understand what fully funded means than how EC was released tbh.
I think their exact words were "fully funded for the development cycle" which was used even after the Picotech (spelling?) fiasco, but as to what that means I've no answer given that they seemingly didn't manage to develop most of the things they were supposed to.
Even ignoring the technical difficulties, theres still the whole refund train they honored. It doesn't mean much to be "fully funded", when you end up refunding a lot of those pledges.
Founders paid for 20% of the game and I don't think that many founders took that offer, so that's not the biggest moneysink they had. I don't know how much game developers get paid in Canada (1 moose and 3 apologies per week?) but I guess most of the money went for salaries and infrastructure, that's at least where it normally goes to and what starts to eat your profits if project is starts to fall behind schedule.
Admittedly the angle makes the snout less noticeable since it lines up with the far side of the face, but no, the character in my avatar is not a demon of any sort whatsoever. Really? Because I thought my description in the OP of what I thought "fully funded" meant was pretty close to the one you provided. And given that I'm willing to accept that stuff happens and plans don't work out as expected and things need to be changed, I'd say I have a pretty realistic view on what fully funded means. And yeah, I could see the game needing more funds due to stuff that didn't turn out as planned. But, I mean, the Founder's Program pumped WELL over a million dollars into Behavior. They got 25,000 Founders and the minimum Founder's package was 40 dollars. They also got 5 million dollars from the Quebec government. Then they put the game into Early Access because they needed yet more funding. At some point they started selling Rogue Trader Store items they hadn't actually designed yet. Then they started pushing back major features until post-launch. Then they cut the main draw of an MMO shooter - the Open World - entirely from the long-term plan. And then they launched the game in its current state because they're still running out of funds too quickly and needed runway money, whatever that is. How much money have they been blowing through that they're slashing immensely crucial features, pushing half the planned launch stuff back into the undetermined future years to come, doing cash grab after cash grab, and STILL don't have enough money to not feth the game over entirely by launching way too early? Given the current state of things, I think maybe the guys who asked for refunds instead of waiting and seeing how things turned out had the right idea and saw something I either didn't or was too blinded by hope and promises to be able to see.
