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Refuting corrosive "conspiracy theories" about Guild Software and VO
For some years, we've been hearing players occasionally say strange things about our company and game, which don't make much sense, but end up having a corrosive effect on the game and the community.
We've responded to these kinds of claims a number of times (in-game, on Discord, etc), since around ~2016 when they started to emerge, but they still continue to persist. So, I'm going to write this static post so people can reference and re-read it if they're confused or concerned.
Common Theories:
"Vendetta Online is a side project, Guild Software or the developers make their money somewhere else."
FALSE - We are a full-time professional game studio that spends practically all of our time on Vendetta Online, and always has (a little on VendettaMark, occasionally). Vendetta Online is the primary income stream of Guild Software. We are a small studio, but we make living wages and do okay.
"Guild Software did secret deals with Google and Samsung and primarily works on these efforts."
FALSE - As of this writing, we've actually never had gainful (paid) relationships with either of those companies, beyond our game being on the Google Play Store. Google did help us get featured in TV advertising with Verizon, years ago. But, we didn't have a paid relationship with Verizon either. (Nor am I clear how this would work, or what we would be "continuing to do" for these companies).
"Guild Software is only focused on engine development to license it to other developers."
FALSE - We've kicked around the idea of engine licensing in the past, but we've never put much time into it. All actual engine development has been specifically to enhance Vendetta Online.
Why do people insist on their Weird Theories?
To put it simply, certain older players become unhappy at the pace of development progress. We understand that, we're often unhappy about it as well; but unlike everyone else, we see all of the "everything" involved in maintaining and operating a custom-engine cross-platform MMORPG in a complex and evolving world (including regulatory and other challenges).
At the same time, when we do run into problems, it's often not in the company or the game's best interests for us to post publicly about how some internal development has gone horribly awry, or how some platform-provider has arbitrarily decided to force us to make some change that requires a major code rewrite. We do answer questions when people ask, and try to be reasonably transparent, but we aren't going to make a Press Release style news-post that may substantially damage our relationship with a large company (at least, not without thought).
Similarly.. just operating and maintaining an MMORPG is quite difficult. The sheer overhead of community-management (dealing with users behaving badly), server live-ops and provider stability challenges, constantly evolving driver/hardware/OS problems across a huge breadth of devices: this is all a major challenge.
Unfortunately, while some unhappy players are technically aware of all of this, it isn't "good enough" for them: it isn't sufficient to offset their disappointment and (eventual) bitterness that the game hasn't evolved in the direction they wanted, or hasn't done so as quickly as they hoped.
Thus enters the Conspiracy Theory, a more-palatable explanation (for some people), in which they try to create a scenario where they are more comfortable blaming us, the developers, for directly taking intentional and dubious actions that resulted in their disappointment. They can then self-righteously shake a virtual fist or wave a virtual torch in our direction, and say "You've done this to me! You're a liar and a terrible person!" and avoid the potentially conflicted feeling of empathy for a very small developer who does their best to maintain a very big and complex product.
We never want anyone to be disappointed, so to some extent, we do feel sadly responsible whenever anyone is unhappy with the game's progress (whether their complaints are reasonable or not).
But, at the same time, our company is an anomaly on earth. As far as we're aware, we're the only game studio that has ever built something so complex, with such a small team, and actively kept it going with new releases every week or two, for over two decades.
We frequently try to evolve and improve our development processes and plans and technology to try and be more efficient and more effective. But the reality is simply that "game development is difficult" and arguably, there is no more difficult type of game than a custom-engine, cross-platform, single-persistent-universe MMORPG.
The application of Occam's Razor.
Occam's Razor states that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation to a given situation is probably the most accurate.
Given the fact that we're still pushing patches on a (roughly) weekly basis, as we always have, it seems pretty self-evident that we're still "working on the game".
If that's the case, isn't it more likely that the game's large-scale game progress is slow to move, simply because the problems being solved are quite difficult, and the development resources are limited?
As opposed to, say, us secretly working on some "other project" that takes up all of our time.. in which case, how would we have the time to develop these patches every week?
When games are abandoned, development usually ceases. We're constantly doing significant development. It just often isn't "as significant to immediate gameplay" as some players may want.
Traders don't care about PvP features, PvP people aren't interested in capship enhancements, and no one is interested in hearing how hard it is to roll out a new economy, or make the server more scalable.
There are lots of other Challenges to operating this kind of game.
I could go on and on about why we have to make a lot of the decisions that we do. The unexpected user-influx loads we've seen in the past at around 50,000 (genuine) new users per hour, and how we have to plan and test for this kind of challenge (little is more terrifying to an MMORPG than "extreme and unexpected success"). Or, I could talk about the abrupt and unforeseen provider-architecture changes that drastically reduced server capacity and required us to re-write backend code.
Expanding and operating a game like this, in a stable and robust way, is genuinely difficult.
We certainly have relationships with Other Companies, but that isn't a bad thing.
We talk periodically to NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm and other GPU companies about their latest tech advancements. We even sit on the Vulkan Advisory Panel, a special invite-only group of developers that helps steer the evolution of the Vulkan API at Khronos.
We've done co-marketing, content and bundling deals since the beginning, including an elaborate pre-order deal with GameStop for the original retail release of Vendetta Online, back in 2004.
But, again, this all relates to the game. Promoting, distributing, advertising and improving the game. Giving us channels of communication to solve driver issues with GPU vendors, etc.
Even "content" deals, where a developer is paid for their app to be included on, say, a new phone, is a one-off deal for the game as it already stands; there's no on-going development overhead.
None of this leads to some kind of weird conspiracy in which we abandon or intentionally delay development of Vendetta Online.
The game "Is What It Is", and always has been.
While we definitely try to listen to player feedback, we also have to do the best we can with what we have. Some people like the game and want to play, others don't and move on. That is as it should be.
No game is ideal for "everyone", and certainly not a quirky space-MMORPG. There are lots of other cool games, and we wish everyone well.
If people have genuine feedback and want to improve the game: create a Suggestions Forum thread.
But, if the game, for whatever reason, is not for you: Please don't make-up stories about us, and don't spread rumors. We end up seeing these rumors crop up all over the place, including dozens of Play Store reviews written by confused newbies. It's false and corrosive to the game.
Similarly, it is incredibly demoralizing to hear from players about how "this game is your side-project" when you're committing most of your waking hours to that project, and have been doing so for over half of your life.
We've responded to these kinds of claims a number of times (in-game, on Discord, etc), since around ~2016 when they started to emerge, but they still continue to persist. So, I'm going to write this static post so people can reference and re-read it if they're confused or concerned.
Common Theories:
"Vendetta Online is a side project, Guild Software or the developers make their money somewhere else."
FALSE - We are a full-time professional game studio that spends practically all of our time on Vendetta Online, and always has (a little on VendettaMark, occasionally). Vendetta Online is the primary income stream of Guild Software. We are a small studio, but we make living wages and do okay.
"Guild Software did secret deals with Google and Samsung and primarily works on these efforts."
FALSE - As of this writing, we've actually never had gainful (paid) relationships with either of those companies, beyond our game being on the Google Play Store. Google did help us get featured in TV advertising with Verizon, years ago. But, we didn't have a paid relationship with Verizon either. (Nor am I clear how this would work, or what we would be "continuing to do" for these companies).
"Guild Software is only focused on engine development to license it to other developers."
FALSE - We've kicked around the idea of engine licensing in the past, but we've never put much time into it. All actual engine development has been specifically to enhance Vendetta Online.
Why do people insist on their Weird Theories?
To put it simply, certain older players become unhappy at the pace of development progress. We understand that, we're often unhappy about it as well; but unlike everyone else, we see all of the "everything" involved in maintaining and operating a custom-engine cross-platform MMORPG in a complex and evolving world (including regulatory and other challenges).
At the same time, when we do run into problems, it's often not in the company or the game's best interests for us to post publicly about how some internal development has gone horribly awry, or how some platform-provider has arbitrarily decided to force us to make some change that requires a major code rewrite. We do answer questions when people ask, and try to be reasonably transparent, but we aren't going to make a Press Release style news-post that may substantially damage our relationship with a large company (at least, not without thought).
Similarly.. just operating and maintaining an MMORPG is quite difficult. The sheer overhead of community-management (dealing with users behaving badly), server live-ops and provider stability challenges, constantly evolving driver/hardware/OS problems across a huge breadth of devices: this is all a major challenge.
Unfortunately, while some unhappy players are technically aware of all of this, it isn't "good enough" for them: it isn't sufficient to offset their disappointment and (eventual) bitterness that the game hasn't evolved in the direction they wanted, or hasn't done so as quickly as they hoped.
Thus enters the Conspiracy Theory, a more-palatable explanation (for some people), in which they try to create a scenario where they are more comfortable blaming us, the developers, for directly taking intentional and dubious actions that resulted in their disappointment. They can then self-righteously shake a virtual fist or wave a virtual torch in our direction, and say "You've done this to me! You're a liar and a terrible person!" and avoid the potentially conflicted feeling of empathy for a very small developer who does their best to maintain a very big and complex product.
We never want anyone to be disappointed, so to some extent, we do feel sadly responsible whenever anyone is unhappy with the game's progress (whether their complaints are reasonable or not).
But, at the same time, our company is an anomaly on earth. As far as we're aware, we're the only game studio that has ever built something so complex, with such a small team, and actively kept it going with new releases every week or two, for over two decades.
We frequently try to evolve and improve our development processes and plans and technology to try and be more efficient and more effective. But the reality is simply that "game development is difficult" and arguably, there is no more difficult type of game than a custom-engine, cross-platform, single-persistent-universe MMORPG.
The application of Occam's Razor.
Occam's Razor states that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation to a given situation is probably the most accurate.
Given the fact that we're still pushing patches on a (roughly) weekly basis, as we always have, it seems pretty self-evident that we're still "working on the game".
If that's the case, isn't it more likely that the game's large-scale game progress is slow to move, simply because the problems being solved are quite difficult, and the development resources are limited?
As opposed to, say, us secretly working on some "other project" that takes up all of our time.. in which case, how would we have the time to develop these patches every week?
When games are abandoned, development usually ceases. We're constantly doing significant development. It just often isn't "as significant to immediate gameplay" as some players may want.
Traders don't care about PvP features, PvP people aren't interested in capship enhancements, and no one is interested in hearing how hard it is to roll out a new economy, or make the server more scalable.
There are lots of other Challenges to operating this kind of game.
I could go on and on about why we have to make a lot of the decisions that we do. The unexpected user-influx loads we've seen in the past at around 50,000 (genuine) new users per hour, and how we have to plan and test for this kind of challenge (little is more terrifying to an MMORPG than "extreme and unexpected success"). Or, I could talk about the abrupt and unforeseen provider-architecture changes that drastically reduced server capacity and required us to re-write backend code.
Expanding and operating a game like this, in a stable and robust way, is genuinely difficult.
We certainly have relationships with Other Companies, but that isn't a bad thing.
We talk periodically to NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm and other GPU companies about their latest tech advancements. We even sit on the Vulkan Advisory Panel, a special invite-only group of developers that helps steer the evolution of the Vulkan API at Khronos.
We've done co-marketing, content and bundling deals since the beginning, including an elaborate pre-order deal with GameStop for the original retail release of Vendetta Online, back in 2004.
But, again, this all relates to the game. Promoting, distributing, advertising and improving the game. Giving us channels of communication to solve driver issues with GPU vendors, etc.
Even "content" deals, where a developer is paid for their app to be included on, say, a new phone, is a one-off deal for the game as it already stands; there's no on-going development overhead.
None of this leads to some kind of weird conspiracy in which we abandon or intentionally delay development of Vendetta Online.
The game "Is What It Is", and always has been.
While we definitely try to listen to player feedback, we also have to do the best we can with what we have. Some people like the game and want to play, others don't and move on. That is as it should be.
No game is ideal for "everyone", and certainly not a quirky space-MMORPG. There are lots of other cool games, and we wish everyone well.
If people have genuine feedback and want to improve the game: create a Suggestions Forum thread.
But, if the game, for whatever reason, is not for you: Please don't make-up stories about us, and don't spread rumors. We end up seeing these rumors crop up all over the place, including dozens of Play Store reviews written by confused newbies. It's false and corrosive to the game.
Similarly, it is incredibly demoralizing to hear from players about how "this game is your side-project" when you're committing most of your waking hours to that project, and have been doing so for over half of your life.