Hello Everyone,
As many of you know, this latest patch has obvious and unfortunate issues that stem into many different areas with the same quantity of consequences. My funding limit is nearing, and I'm going to have to put us into hibernation until I can do one of the following:
1.) Raise funding for continuation.
2.) Open-source the game, acquiring interns and/or mainly profit sharing.
3.) Find a publisher.
The last two to three weeks, the same reoccurring bugs have been present and no matter how hard I try, they aren't addressed. There are a hundred thousand things to do, and I don't blame Jack for doing what he has been doing, but fundamental gameplay including movement enables the remaining functions of the game; which ultimately was severely broken and has remained broken for this duration. This has sparked a war-of-words with some very nasty people here on Steam, whom are questioning the validity of our dedication to the project. So to show some of the guts, to quash the nay-sayers, I'll give you a glimpse at the payroll.
Jack is signed on a contract requiring him to work no more than 40 hours per week, as to extend budgeting for the project. Jack usually works an excess of 10-12 hours per day, often times going into the very early hours of the morning. So when people get in here and spew verbal diarrhea about how we don't care, I'd like to challenge that with a swift response. Boris, who gets paid a lot less than Jack, often times does the entire weekend and for half of the project went mostly unpaid. I've compensated him for this time, but it doesn't do that quantity of work justice. I've been funding the development of this game with my personal savings, and going back to April I've spent around $55,000 with a loss of $32,000 from former employees who stole/sabotaged project files. So Boris and Jack have been the best performers by far, and I have nothing but good things to say about them and their work.
As far as sales are concerned, we've sold about 160 copies over the span of six months. Give or take with sales and promotions, that's $3,400 gross. Take home, that equals $2,278 before taxes. So technically, one week of the 24 weeks of development have been paid for. My wife and I couldn't get each other Christmas Presents this year so I could pay Boris and Jack, we've also had to forgo repairs to the car and fixes around the house in hopes that it would pick up. To date, I haven't received a single paycheck of any quantity after the cost of business expenses, yet I'm being tiraded by the community for mongering cash and exploiting early access.
If you've seen the Year in Review video, you can see the aesthetic transformation that unfolded over the demonstrated timeframe. We've come a really, really long way, and we are very close to delivering; hence - Early Access. Boris and I persevered in the face of extreme injustice from Launch, picked up the pieces and moved forward with Jack. The absolute lack of sales has done detrimental damage to the project, giving me little to no choice other than to put us into hibernation until I can figure something out. Whether or not Jack and Boris stay on to help me with figuring something out, bug fixes, etc, I have no idea.
Needless to say after reading all of that, it is remarkably impossible for me to continue burning away the last of my savings on something that both isn't selling and cannot get stabilized on a fundamental level for users to enjoy a minimalist gameplay experience. As such, we will be entering a hibernation period while I try to figure out what the next step is. After all of the negativity spewed at us from every corner of the globe, I have no idea if crowd funding will even work again. We have some players who are out to see the world burn, defaming us and doing actual damage to the business by hitting our reputation.
While I figure this out, I'd appreciate suggestions or ideas in the comments section.