Whack-a-Vote is going FREE with a FULL REFUND to anyone that has already bought the game.
Hello ladies and gents, We are the developers behind the newly released game called “Whack-a-Vote: Hammering the Polls”. Initially we charged $0.99 for it but quickly realized that that was a mistake. We are finding this out the hard way, but we wanted to address this with transp
Hello ladies and gents,
We are the developers behind the newly released game called “Whack-a-Vote: Hammering the Polls”. Initially we charged $0.99 for it but quickly realized that that was a mistake. We are finding this out the hard way, but we wanted to address this with transparency. In short, the community has spoken and we decided to issue a full refund and make the game free.
We are just a bunch of VR gamers, like yourselves, that came together back in September through a simple post here on r/Vive. Our intent was to make amazing VR experiences to further support this community. By no means did we intend to make a quick buck, but rather support the community we love. Many of us are newbie game developers, learning as we go, and this was the first time that we had worked together as a group. We decided it was important to start with a game that had a small scope - something achievable in a short timeframe to evaluate how well we could work together.
When we initially planned the game we wanted to release it for free but over the course of its development we decided to try and raise at least a portion of the money required to establish a company. We found that it is extremely difficult to release games as an international group without a company behind us due to a whole bunch of legal reasons. This means we would have to rely on publishers or we would not be able to release the games we make on Steam. So we decided to charge a very small amount in order to help with the cost of establishing a fully VR focused company. We didn't expect much, but even a little bit would have helped.
After release we saw mixed comments towards the game, but ultimately a large portion of the community saw the game as a quick cash grab. By no means did we want our name to stand for “cash grab games,” but instead we want to be a company that listens to it’s community. After a team discussion, we decided that it would be best for the community and best for the company to make the game free for all comers.
We understand it’s a silly and quirky game and we just made the mistake of comparing it to some of the other titles on steam in a similar price range. Anyways from this point forward Whack-a-Vote is free and we hope that this will bring in more feedback, as thus far we have received almost none. We really hope that this does not cast a dark shadow over our company's name and our future projects. We accept our mistake and are learning from it. Moving forward we will make smarter decisions and involve the community more.
In an effort to make it up to you all, on top of being refunded for the game, we would like to invite anybody that has purchased Whack-a-Vote the option of participating in early testing of our next project. We will hopefully have some information to share about this game in the coming weeks.
Again, we would like to apologize to you from gamer to gamer and hope you can forgive us our error; we are still figuring things out as we go. If you do end up playing the game please leave some constructive criticism in order for us to improve.
Thank you all for being a great community, it is a pleasure being part of this.
Respectfully,
The Subreality Studios Team