Back in 2015 we decided to honor the backers with a failed crowdfunding and granted them rewards despite not receiving their funds. This sort of reflected the cycle that enveloped Guardians of Orion not only then but for years to come. While we wanted to add so much more and were willing to learn the knowledge or skills to deliver the opportunity never came.
Shortly after the release of 1.0 we knew things weren't in a good place for the product. We opened up with a transparent update to make the Community aware of this. We continued adding vast amounts of content based on the original Stretch Goals we wanted to deliver and piece by piece we started to get the infrastructure in there and this included things like Third Person, First Person, Gear, Loot, Inventory, New Guardians, Spaceships, New Modes.
It eventually came down to the point where we put up a Patreon to simply cover server costs, a campaign that also didn't succeed. In the end we tried as many things as we possibly could:
1. Crowdfunding (four total)
2. Steam Sales (Summer, Winter)
3. Orion Sales (multiple a year)
4. Steam Events (freeplay w/ discounts)
5. Daily Streams
6. Giveaway Streams (weekly)
7. SteamGifts Giveaways (multiple)
8. Transparency w/ Community
9. Epic Platform Grants
10. Steam Page Promotionals
11. 3rd Party support
12. Partner promotional support
For all the people that keep asking or wanting more GOO1 stuff, so did and do we. There are only a few methods at this point and the largest ones are unfortunately nulled by the community around the game with things like the review bombs. I literally just had a huge deal break down simply over the reviews/comments. It's fine if they all genuinely feel that way but to expect me to be able to work a deal with that is not likely.
If GOO1 ever becomes self-sustaining we'd look at putting one or two developers on it to do some small things but otherwise key talent is now on other projects and the focus is keeping GOO1 around for all existing fans.
We appreciate all Orion fans who came out to support. We always will honor that support and this doesn't change going forward. There will be loyalty tier-based Discounts associated on future titles which DANKIE will be developing internally.
Moving forward:
THE SEQUEL THAT NOBODY WANTED
We are going to deliver what we initially wanted before the drama, the BS and before the bloated industry-related ambitions. I had made some bad hiring choices and some bad design choices and this product will hopefully help rectify that for me and also for fans of the first game. Owners of the first game will be eligible for a significant launch discount. Join the Discord for more information:
https://discord.gg/RykWMpC
It is being built on brand new technology and will better support hardware and other platforms.
Mechanically, fundamentally and ethically GOO2 will be a night and day difference compared to GOO1. No loot crates, no micro transactions, no double currencies, no Early Access, no Crowdfunding and no online-focused infrastructure. It'll be a premium game that is privately produced and extremely polished at release.
We want to deliver this for fans of Guardians as we want something that lasts through time as we cannot control player counts and this is something we learned, understand and have factored into future projects. There will be a significant focus on Community Tools, SDK and fully offline-ready.
We expect to have Guardians of Orion 2 available for sale as early as summer 2019."
The ORION DANKIE DISCORD features Chat Progression XP which allows you to earn free in-game gear and rewards for Guardians of Orion. Otherwise feel free to organize games with hundreds of other fans or ask game development questions.
https://discord.gg/RykWMpC