Or, you know, it's a two-person studio (ok, Nuclear Throne was six people) and they only have so much bandwidth. Supporting two marginally successful, four year old mobile games presents a huge opportunity cost for a tiny indie studio when they are dealing with an active player community for Nuclear Throne (over 6000 reviews on Steam last I checked).
I'd typically tend to agree with this train of thought as it's a real struggle being an indie studio and gamers can be pretty demanding, but these guys lost my sympathy long ago. If you can't deliver something, then just say so. Be upfront about it. They continually made promise after promise after promise, and when they wouldn't materialize, you'd either hear complete silence or some lame excuse. They have totally and completely run out of goodwill from me, and I'm a very forgiving person when it comes to things like that. Case in point: As of this post in January 2015, the Super Crate Box update was finished. Completed. Literally just waiting to be shipped off to Apple. Halfbot had even been paid for it already! So what happened? Are you really telling me that Rami has time to tweet incessantly, travel all over the world to do paid conference talks, and doesn't have 15 damn minutes to upload a build to iTunes? The fact that the update was DONE but no one ever bothered to upload it just smacks as a big EFF YOU to the mobile audience. And I certainly wouldn't characterize their games as "marginally successful." There was a system built into SCB that would see updates released as a certain number of crates were collected worldwide. Players freaking BLEW through that first threshold, enough to where they weren't even finished with that first update by the time the goal was met. To their credit they did eventually release the update, and then they set the new threshold for the next update to something insanely high, something they must have imagined would give them more than enough time to finish the next update and release it in time for the goal being met. And players BLEW through that one too! And that's the never-been-released update we've been waiting for for over 5 years. Yeah, it's a 99¢ game and how much can you really expect for a dollar, but if that was the case then why NOT say anything? Why just go completely silent and completely ignore that their game even exists? WHY NOT UPLOAD AN UPDATE THAT'S BEEN FINISHED FOR ALMOST 3 YEARS!?!? As for Ridiculous Fishing, well, not only was it the TA Game of the Year, but it was freaking APPLE'S Game of the Year AND won an Apple Design Award. That game has had more promotion than practically any other game (it is featured again right now in fact), and although I don't know the actual numbers I'm positive it sold in the tens of millions. The fact that they promised this huge content update and then, upon not delivering said update for over two years, suddenly decided that it wasn't part of their "creative vision" or whatever is just bullshit. It's the exact sort of lame ass excuse they deliver for all of their unfulfilled promises. Not just on mobile but they are notorious for doing this across all platforms. Sorry for massive rant, this has been eating at me for literally years. It has destroyed my ability to enjoy two of my favorite mobile games, whether they are updated or not. Rami is a completely excellent dude, and he was so humble and gracious during GDC after Ridiculous Fishing launched and so appreciative of our coverage and that we loved the game so much. Seriously, I LOVE that guy, but there really comes a time when stuff like this needs to be called as it is. Maybe the SCB update comes out someday, maybe it doesn't. Either way I've lost the ability to care anymore. And even with the RF update that just landed, I'd literally been waiting years for that and now that it's here I can only stare at the icon on my phone with absolutely no desire to launch the game, which is a real shame. There are so many struggling indie devs putting out amazing games, and MAINTAINING them. Fulfilling all their promises. Studios that are far less successful and without the same sort of clout as Vlambeer. I'd much rather spend my limited time on this earth giving THOSE games my time, attention, and money rather than put up with this abusive relationship.
This may be one of the most spot on an accurate posts i have never read on T/A! Wish the f'ing devs would read and understand it.
True passion in your post. I like it, and I agree. The only numbers I have read was that it sold 300,000 copies (around $900,000 sales) by August 2013, five months after the March 2013 release date. Not quite in the tens of millions, at that point, but it has been on sale for more than four additional years. I don't know if newer numbers have been released. [Source]
Good job!! Not sure if the issues were fixed but this was updated probably not to long after this. . Which is pretty cool, btw. No extra content but there was a compatibility issue fix, I think. Better than nada!!
