I wish I could get a refund..

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woawrly
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Aug 03, 2021 7:23 am

I wish I could get a refund..

This game was great initially. As a developer/modder of many other games, I loved the ability to sandbox with this, and explore the content created by others. As with written literature, I immediately latched onto the concept that anyone with a bit of know how could create whatever experience they wanted out of this game!

Sadly, after finding myself with a bit of free time, I went digging into the forums and found this is no longer the case. Once again, a game that was sold under the paradigm of encouraging a sandbox of free speech, has become a hot-bed of censorship. Not only can you no longer acquire certain community created content from the in-game add-on browser, but they've began scrubbing content they deem unfitting from the forums as well.

By the time I was able to get around to really having a go at the more interesting parts of this game, everything I loved about its acceptance of community created narratives, was entirely abolished.

The original content was entertaining, but shallow beyond just a few hours of play. That used to be no issue, as you could visit the forums and download additional content from other creators. One was able to explore the minds of many, often light and whimsical, and at other times dark and demented. Yet, it was still the players choice! And with the announcement of Office Party on the horizon, Eek Llc. was quickly becoming my favorite publisher.

Sadly, they yielded to whatever pressures that be, and decided censored content is the way to go. I would have paid 5x the games value initially, as the community was creating content to boost replay value. Now, I don't know that I'd consider the sale price, as the core game-play is shallow with minimal updates, despite the hype they post on the news feeds.

If a divergence in development mentality from the product that was initially presented was enough to get a refund, I would do so without hesitation. I'm quite sorrowed to have found myself crossing sides from a massive fan and advocate of this indie game, to the side of users whom I constantly see posting about how the developers ran the game into the ground just before public launch.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: I wish I could get a refund..

Hey there, thanks for the heartfelt feedback. This is a lot to process, so I hope you don't mind if I try to clarify or gather some context. I will highlight what I'd like to hear more about... just in case you feel like I'm feeding you corporate bullshit and want to skip it :P
woawrly wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 7:50 am Not only can you no longer acquire certain community created content from the in-game add-on browser, but they've began scrubbing content they deem unfitting from the forums as well.

By the time I was able to get around to really having a go at the more interesting parts of this game, everything I loved about its acceptance of community created narratives, was entirely abolished.
While our custom story submission policy may look imposing, we've only temporarily disabled one, and only one custom story for reasons other than: 1) story cannot be started 2) once started, story cannot be completed, 3) duplicate of another story. This was "A deal with the Dark One", and it was removed because it fell under our review score threshold (currently it sits at 1.87 / 5), for some of the content it contained, and more. We also removed a small amount of content from our forums related to that one custom story, yes, but not the entire post dedicated to it. Any other stories that were disabled had less than 100 downloads, and were disabled because they failed to meet the stability/playability rules we've had in place for years. As for all other forum posts, we only delete spam, blatantly abusive posts, and duplicate posts. Don't forget that users can delete their own custom stories and forum posts.

We're okay with "morally gray", and hell, even misdemeanors and certain felonies being portrayed in our game and its engine, but there has to be a line. Once a disabled story no longer crosses that line, it's 100% eligible for distribution on the Custom Story Browser again. As for the forum content, we have to be careful that we comply with various US and international laws, as many companies do.

It sounds like you think more content than that pertaining to one story was abolished for content reasons, or was unfairly removed by us in general. Do you have examples of this? It is always possible something was done in error (or again, done by the story/post author), but being vague about the content in question and volume of content does not help us better understand your desires. Is it the removal of this one story that is the foundation of your feelings on this matter? What content in that story (or its forum posts), specifically, do you feel we (and other players in the community) should be embracing again?
woawrly wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 7:50 am Sadly, they yielded to whatever pressures that be, and decided censored content is the way to go. I would have paid 5x the games value initially, as the community was creating content to boost replay value. Now, I don't know that I'd consider the sale price, as the core game-play is shallow with minimal updates, despite the hype they post on the news feeds.
Our updates are quite large in terms of scope. They may not be as fast as some would like or contain the exact content that every single person would ask for, but we feel that compared to most other indie games they are quite sizable. It would help our perspective if you were to provide examples of indie games that provide more meaningful updates over a similar time period (3-6 mo.) than we do.
woawrly wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 7:50 am I'm quite sorrowed to have found myself crossing sides from a massive fan and advocate of this indie game, to the side of users whom I constantly see posting about how the developers ran the game into the ground just before public launch.
Can you provide a link to a location where we could see users "constantly" saying this? We are not seeing this on any of the forums that we look at daily. That includes forums with users that did not pay for the game, foreign language communities, etc. Our visibility to user feedback is very broad, but if there is a community/site we missed, it would help to be steered in the right direction.

To be honest, even if further clarification or introduction of new information/sources of community feedback gives us additional perspective or encourages us to change our mind, we may not be able to take action on such outcomes. We have entire countries that cannot obtain our game or even its free DLC because we lack a rating. We need to take steps, albeit as few steps as possible, to obtain that rating and remove that obstacle. We have an obligation to build on the product that many users seem to enjoy very much, and deliver on our promises to them. We want to be able to move onto our next title, DLC for House Party, and hopefully grow a bit so that we can do those things more effectively and quickly. While we pursue those goals, we will avoid censorship and impacting the free speech of our players and community as often as humanly (and legally) possible.
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