Hello Players, it's me, Dex.
Sirius turns 1 Year on Steam in nine days, and it is time to recap what was, what is and what's going to come.
But, let me start with a few statistics:
In its first year of operations, Sirius had
- 808.119 player logins
- A total of 191.043 pvp kills
- The whopping amount of 8.099.658m³ of Ore Mined
- A Cumulative discovery of 17.998 Belts Discovered
- 167.843.229 Credits Earned
- 1.112.097 NPCs Killed
- 1 Tournament Held (GamesAndCoffee won)
- 95% Server Availability
What was...
Sirius started out as a small fan Project towards Freelancer and X - Beyond the Frontier/X2 - The Threat in 2001. Back then I was an absolute Noob at programming and slowly improved my skillset. The Dream of my Own MMO never left me, even today I'm working on pet peeve projects achieving this.
Sirius had gone through many, many names before Steam, "Black Space", "Neocracy Online" and "Starlancer" just being a few of them. I met Dan a bit more than a year ago, a serious, honest and awesome guy, willing to bring Sirius to Steam, seeing the same potential in it as I saw and am still seeing in it. I was poor, I couldn't afford that greenlight fee, and there it was, my stepping stone into the celebrated circle of Steam Devs.
From that point, we launched Sirius into the Groupees Bundle in a Box IV to get past Greenlight, where I was sure the game would get many views. I was an Optimist. People kept throwing their overdue credit cards at a certain other three-figure-million crowdfunder with a name, and totally disregarded my game.
I made it clear that I'm not going to exploit my own life experiences and downfalls for this game, and just let my work speak for me. But my work, according to the Steam Community, was about what a 4 year old with crayons could do. They didn't grasp the concept of being bottom-level poor. Working with nothing but the measly welfare to keep the lights on. I had no parents to chuck a few thousand into my business, nor relatives (neither known nor unknown) who had anything to spare, also it made me feel uncomfortable, asking for money without providing something in return. I wanted the game to finance itself, to pay for servers, upkeep and its development. Surely that would be possible, right?
Sadly, it wasn't. It was reviewed into oblivion. I fell back into a depression. doing stuff, being nice to the community, trying to fix everything people pointed out to fix. I skipped a few meals to buy better ship models, to get better connection servers, to make stuff happen. People do remember me streaming countless hours working with input directly from twitch chat.
I struck friendships with quite a few people, both here and on youtube, namely GamesAndCoffee, TheHolyApple, 3.14Man and Hatetank. Avid players, incredibly valueable to new players and rewarded with in game ranks and colors for that. I was happy for each and everyone of you that decided to pop online and have a few minutes of fun.
But then, I fudged up. In desperation to fund the game, I tried to dip the Price. The game got Bundled quite a few times and a ton of keys got lost and surfaced on third party sites. Devastation ensued and I actually felt like quitting. Not normal quitting, but Ragequitting, or, as you internet-people call it: "causing drama".
I worked very hard for this. Over 15 Years of Labor went into making Sirius a reality and where we are...
...what is...
...here, in 2016, nearly one year after the initial release. People have liked the game, and I tried to finance it with a Kickstarter. Calculating only Expenses for a year to keep the game developed and running, I asked for a 26.000€ minimum. Only keeping the Servers alive would've been around 2.000€ of that; the rest estimated investing in artists, composers and people alike to refine the game and keep me living in my 20m² appartment with enough food and water to last a year and do my job: making this game work towards your likings.
The Kickstarter tanked. I got insulted by fellow devs that I should've gotten family members to chuck a few thousand into it so it wouldn't look like a total failure. As mentioned before, there is no thousands to chuck at from the family. As of this moment, I wished it would have been a GoFundMe rather than a kickstarter, I could have worked with the 600€ the Kickstarter had in it before it failed.
As side effect, people seemed to see me as greedy, surely the 5€ for the game must be enough to pay game and development, seriously underestimating Steam cuts, taxes and all that. Per sale of the game, I was making aroung 1,85€ in operative budget. Not earnings, but budget to work with. It culminated in a catastrophic month of 60€ income at the end of last month. The general consensus reflected in Reviews.
Slowly, but steadily, Blitz3D, the Engine Sirius uses, nears the end of its life time and we decided to upgrade to a more modern Engine, but step back in development speed, as we were now two and have to get finances straight. Sirius isn't doing Jack for our wallets or itself at all. We went with UE4 and have recently ended the sale for our Game, Sirius Online.
Sirius Online is, as of a few days ago, for an undisclosed time, unavailable to buy. All outstanding (unredeemed) game keys on third party platforms are on its way to get banned from there and I myself am working very closely with one of these sites to make sure this never happens again.
This will mean I take full responsibility for your complaints. You have been buying bundles for the games, not to resell the Steam Keys. In new Versions the Sirius TOS and EULA will explicitely void any kind of support for keys bought/sold on these platforms. I've been way too lenient long enough. Hateful comments, unconstructive criticism and other pure crap is going to be removed and multiple offender will get permanentely banned.
This sounds extremely harsh, but it's time we change. If you're nice and play nice, you will get the exact same treatment than before. We can brawl on the servers, discuss game ideas and so on. If you decide to be a dick to me, Xaymar or any community MVP, I will decide that you're out. Simple as that. No more tolerance.
...whats going to be.
After Successfully attending the German Dev Days in Frankfurt, the plans for the future was clearer than ever before. We are working on Super Space Pug at the moment and two more, soon to be announced games to finance the Development of Sirius and keep the Company alive.
This might sound odd for those who expected an UE4 Client within a week, but it is our only way to survive as a studio - Making Games to sell. Sirius will return soon to Steam with significant changes to its concept and execution, but for now - We gotta stay alive.
I got a lot more things resulting from the Dev Days I hopefully can reveal soon, but for now, I can only say I've gotten into contact with some higher-ups at G2A to resolve the "Sirius for 14ct"-Issues.
This concludes my longest post-mortem, birthday-related post ever. Happy Birthday, Sirius.
I'll see you on the other side of the Tradelane,
Dex, Lead Creative Developer, Sirius Online