Hey everyone, as I write this it is 1am and I am the last of the team to go to bed. We have been fighting a losing battle with a number of bugs that have dogged us ever since we updated to 0.2.32.
In the spirit of transparency we want to give you a fair warning, the current version of the game may have game breaking bugs. I want to share what happened and the decisions that we made so you understand how things went wrong.
June 22 : Summer Sale starts. We keep it cool, working on a fix for the "Broken Roads" bug and adding some new content. We give it to our QA freelancers for testing. So far, so good.
June 28 : After a lot of testing, we decide that build 0.2.32 is ready to push out to you guys. We celebrate, job well done!
June 29 : We hear reports of workers acting funny and games crashing. We look at the bug reports, isolate the issues, and issue a hotfix. We celebrate, job well done!
June 30 : Celebrated too soon. More bugs. We are concerned. We have to make a choice. Should we roll back to 0.2.27? Looking at bug reports, it seems that there were still crash bugs, and that was the build with the broken roads. It's the summer sale. Our goal is to make sure all of the people buying the game have an enjoyable experience. We decide the best decision is to fix the reported bugs and hope that's the last of. We celebrate, job well done!
July 1 : Things seem ok, could it be true? I take a nap. It's my wife's birthday, we have a nice lunch. When we get back, there are more bug reports... And we're still working on them now.
What could we have done better?
We already have a couple of freelancers helping us with QA, but apparently that isn't enough. Every single one of you plays the game differently so it's impossible for a couple of QA testers to figure out all the different ways you might break the game.
We will take the following week to resolve the issue.
Then we'll do what we should have been doing from the start, load a build of the game to another branch where people who are willing to help playtest the most recent builds can help us find the bugs before we release it to a wider audience.
To everyone who bought the game and had a bad experience, please accept my most sincere apologies. If you want to get the game during the summer sale, I would advise you to be prepared for the possibility of bugs. And if you'd rather say away for now, I would totally understand.
Thanks again to everyone who's given us a chance, we will do our best not to mess things up again.