some snippets of replies i gave to various people yesterday concerning the matter:

DleatherusYesterday at 3:56 PM

bunch of the same bulklksit

reason they are not opening the forums is so he can control the dialogue and to be honest he can go fuck his transparency - in the march 5th or thereabouts 10k Q&A when asked about how they were financially he stated that they had enough to make it through the next six months without getting any further funding - less than 3 weeks later he shuttered the studio

DleatherusToday at 4:28 AM

re CoE it's like:

oh hey guys, we fully intend to make good on our promises we couldn't deliver on them with a staff of 25 and a studio and $8 million, but now there's just me, and "about" 6 volunteers (apparently i can't count above 3) and nobody is going to touch us with a 10 foot pole for funding after our collapse, I think i can make this work

i closed the forums because i no longer have volunteer moderators (the fact i fired them is irrelevant) and although it would be easier for me to address things in threads there with just one post, i can't do that because it is too time intensive - however if you have any concerns please send them to me at contact@soulbound studios because whereas i don't have the time to address things en masse to the community, i'm genius enough to be able to warp time and address the far more time consuming method of addressing things individually

i hope you realize what a good guy i am for writing this and that all is well, that you have been very cruel towards me with false accusations and all that is happening is we are going through a rough patch - in fact the bad publicity the community is generating, along with their toxic attitude might mean we don't secure funding, so if CoE fails YOU are the ones to blame, but that is just another one of the many crosses you have put on my back that i am willing to bear

btw all refunds must be approved by me, and i'm not approving so you guys are shit out of luck in that regard - i put up $500,000 of my own money for this project, paid myself $250,000 a year, which is normal for this industry in this area, and so came out of this a cool half million ahead (not to mention paying my wife a cool salary also) - you have no idea of the sacrifices living on that pittance is expect to hear from me in the near future saying how i have figured out all my mistakes, how to get the game out in 18 months, and all it takes is you guys trusting me with another $10 million - what do you say?

I simply dont understand how he thought it was something he can do to pay these people competative rates for salaries? Like sure okay, have a team of 5-6 people... cool. Youre a new studio... stay small... your literal job is to produce something that is going to attract investors. End goal... Whats so complicated about that? Idiot....

DleatherusToday at 8:19 AM

i think it's quite feasible (and normal) for startups like that to work on small salaries in return for a slice of the profits of the studio was successful if he had paid himself a salary of $120k/year instead of $240k/year he could have still lived comfortably - the studio could have paid an average of 70-80k/year in salaries instad of 140k/year and they would have had another 3 years of wages covered

DleatherusToday at 8:24 AM

as well as 'i can put out something playable within 18 months for 900k' and yet couldn't put out anything in 4 years with 8 million (i am NOT counting that shit parkour solo player course than can be cobbled together in a weekend by a team)

DleatherusToday at 8:31 AM

and let's not even get into the whole 'we didn't make as much money on settlers of elyria as expected (ie. if the community had spent lots of money we would have been fine)' - reason they didn't make money as expected is because yet again, despite us BEGGING them to let us test the thing first to make sure it ran ok and then ignoring us, they launch it and it's offline within a fucking hour and then takes MONTHS to fix what initially were reported to us as minor bugs that wiull take an hour or two to fix

the studio could have paid an average of 70-80k/year in salaries instead of 140k/year and they would have had another 3 years of wages covered

I stopped following the thread for lack of general interest, but this one comment is tough. In Seattle, a lot of out of college grads made 60-70k in games. When you have to be competitive to Bungie and want real talent, you have to pay those guys.

i think it's quite feasible (and normal) for startups like that to work on small salaries in return for a slice of the profits of the studio

This is actually terrible. I was told this once before going to an interview and told them I wasn't interested. I'm not going to work extra hard so that we can split profits and be rich. For this literal exact reason: projects die. Companies die. The company I'm talking about was an ex EA guy doing mobile games. Right.. like I'm banking on profit sharing from that!

Imagine taking a paycut to work on some stupid Kickstarter MMO for 5 years when you could have worked at Bungie making money, getting career development, learning from an established studio.

Depends on financial status, and cost of living. Working on soul crushing projects you hate… might not be the best choice. When your making games for 5 year olds, like extreme fairy princess super castle. As opposed to working on a project your passionate about. Obviously can substitute in your own idea for what would be torture to develop.

i will put it another way

if i was the owner of a company where i had a choice of paying myself 120k/ year and there being a greater chance of the passion project of my life seeing fruition because i could work on it longer,or i could live high on the hog at 240k/ year from money that people had crowd funded the project, NOT my "competitive 240k salary with, and in taking that $240k/year there was considerably less chance of the passion project of my life seeing the light of day, i know which i would choose

but hey, that's just me ?

dpadam450 said:

i think it's quite feasible (and normal) for startups like that to work on small salaries in return for a slice of the profits of the studio

This is actually terrible. I was told this once before going to an interview and told them I wasn't interested. I'm not going to work extra hard so that we can split profits and be rich. For this literal exact reason: projects die. Companies die. The company I'm talking about was an ex EA guy doing mobile games. Right.. like I'm banking on profit sharing from that!

Imagine taking a paycut to work on some stupid Kickstarter MMO for 5 years when you could have worked at Bungie making money, getting career development, learning from an established studio.

the original employees at Facebook might have a different opinion - many became multi millionaires

i will agree it is far riskier because as you said you might end up on a lower salary and shafted if the project goes under

boils down to individual passion (or lack thereof) for any given startup project and aversion or tolerance for risk vs. reward

so whilst it might actually be terrible for you it might be great for others

I agree, if it was my kickstarter then I can slowly pay myself longer and try to do something good. But I wouldn't work on someone else's kickstarter project for hopes. Kickstarter + Games = double risk. As stated, even 30 bazillion dollars and star citizen has gone nowhere.

Facebook was something new. I could maybe see (maybe) for something like VR when it was starting, but games are a dime for 4 dozen. They are everywhere. Everyone is always claiming to “have the best game idea, revolutionary”.

@dpadam450 Saying SC has gone nowhere is more than a shortcut but factually false. It came from a project with 12 (seniors) guys with no pipelines, no studios and 6M$ to 5 studios, +500 devs, two triple-A, one entering beta this year and the other delivering quarterly content with SC alpha packing more unique features than any other single triple-A released by multi-billions $ companies.

If there is one example of project falling down in flame it is exactly SQ42+SC Lol

^ Probably more accurate than me as I don't follow that project. You are right in that SC has gone far, employed a lot of people, but I'm speaking in terms of if you were joining that project for revenue share hopes. I don't think it has really profited much to even pay out revenue shares if they have them. Maybe I'm wrong but it sounds like SC has only received a lot of money, but not really made revenue or broke even. Just constantly spending dev costs still at this point right?

Bottom line, got a passion? Build something yourself. Never take a job in hopes of some amazing bonus, get a good salary upfront. I think anyone else saying different is inexperienced unless a job says “200K but work 80 hours a week”. That isn't reality though. And you don't have to work on mindless Dora the Explorer. You can get paid to work at good companies and make good money.

@dpadam450 You are correct. SC is not making revenues and for a good reason: they did not released SQ42 or SC as polished, ready to be sold commercial product. On principle and being a crowdfunded project, pledges (not revenues) are used to make the final product. True for any kickstarter project, whatever the development duration.

Still it is successful as not only they are heading to beta for half of the project (SQ42) but have ten thousands of backers (among the +2.5 registered account) playing/testing every week SC (MMO). Not only that but the overall company value as per Private Investor is worth +460M$ back in 2018, twice the amount of total pledges over years. Three very good signs (Beta + growing numbers of backers+ company valuation) which make this project more than healthy. For sure not all kickstarter born equal…