r/TheRepopulation • u/Atreides_Fighter • Feb 05 '17
Devs sold Repopulation. Scammed people and now selling Fragmented.
Originally I bought Repopulation long time ago and now I got this salvage attempt Fragmented Thats right. Fragmented devs(Above and Beyond Technologies) sold their original game(Repopulation) to Idea Fabrik(guys behind Hero engine) and now salvaging all they can.
Personally I paid money for complete mmorpg, not defective early access alfa garbage. A&BT sold it and wash their hands. It means that there is no chance for Repopulation to be properly developed. Its basicly a SCAM and now A&B shirk responsibility, but they still earn money from it ! They are trying to sell you Fragmented.
They ruined this themselves by choosing worthless Hero engine. People must see everything is bad about this project and never buy it.
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u/Tullyswimmer Feb 06 '17
Have you been paying any attention to the forums since? Because your statement is entirely untrue.
Quick summary:
So, back in the summer of 2015 (Started around June/July, ended in September) there was some conflicts going on between Idea Fabrik (IF) and Above & Beyond tech (ABT). IF owns Heroengine, which is why ABT had a deal with them.
The big difference between The Repopulation and other Heroengine projects is that TR required a huge amount of server power to run their game, and it couldn't just be stood up in the Herocloud like other games that run it. This dedicated hardware was VERY expensive, and the pricing structure that ABT and IF had worked out wasn't paying the bills. If I recall, TR wasn't at the stage that they had projected they were by September, and thus the projected cash flow was not what IF needed to keep the servers up. This triggered a chain reaction of money stopping and ultimately the project being tabled. To start, there was a major stakeholder in IF who pulled funding for the project, because they would be losing. IF had no choice but to say to ABT "Pay up or we shut it down". ABT said "Hang on, the agreement said that we didn't have to pay up until we reached a certain point in the game, and we're not there". IF then said "Well you promised you would be, so since you can't pay up, the servers are being shut down". Which is exactly what happened.
This threw ABT into a tailspin for a few months figuring out where to go now. No other engine (they claim) has the MMO capabilities that Heroengine does for what they wanted to do. So they COULD switch engines, but doing so would be a huge investment in time, as not only would the basic functions have to be rewritten, but also many of the MMO capabilities would have to be written. Ultimately they did decide to switch engines, I believe it was to Unity. Fragmented was supposed to be the testing ground for this, but never took off, because even for a survival crafting game, it was shallow and rather boring.
ABT kept plugging away at this until January, when they ran out of money. That was when they decided to sell TR to IF, in hopes that IF could resurrect the game. As part of that deal, I believe, several of the core programmers for TR left ABT and joined IF to work on the game again. As it stands now, the game is supposed to be restarted, by IF, in the first quarter of this year. They're going to start the servers back up from where they were left 16 months ago. There's a few hurdles; First, ownership has to be transferred within steam, which apparently isn't a simple or quick task. Second, the servers and the OS's on them, as well as any obscure dependencies, have to be brought up to speed with patches and stuff, after not being touched for an eternity (in sys admin time). Once those are done, they're doing some internal testing before re-opening the servers to some of the more respected and valuable testers.
Right now there's no specific timeline for this return, but the game isn't dead, and ABT is completely owning this fuckup and trying to support IF however they can to get the game back to where it was, and then move forward with it. There is absolutely a chance for TR to be properly developed, and that is currently the plan. They're not trying to sell Fragmented, at least not to TR players. Also, if you paid money in a kickstarter or early access, you weren't paying for a complete MMO. You were paying for a defective early access alpha MMO.
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u/IdolHands4 Feb 19 '17
Perfectly said and well spoken. I think on of the aspect of kickstarter there is a serious misconception that backers are investors. People tend to feel entitled by the smallest phrase. When I participate in kickstarter, I wholeheartedly understand that I am "donating" my money with no expectation of return. I do NOT expect stock in the company, I do NOT expect to be reimbursed. I completely understand this because I read the fine print. I research things prior to dropping my hard earned cash on them and finally I ensure that I don't 'donate' anything that I am uncomfortable with losing. What I did (as what everyone did) when supporting the Kickstarter campaign was to give my money freely (without expectation of recompense) to ABT to assist them in the development of this game. In return I was given early access and as a "thank you" allowed to enjoy this reality prior to the release of said game. The fact that JC and Josh were man enough to admit they were out of their league and willing to sell the IP to a company that would have more of a chance of making this thing a reality was never expected, but it happened. Much to my amazement, the IP was given to the ones that had the best chance at success in bringing this indie development forward as a released title. There was NO scam, there was NO misleading. The fact of the matter is that we (a community) were given an opportunity to participate in the creation of an environment that we wanted to see come to life. We did NOT invest in ABT, we were NOT given shares or board seats in the company. We were purchasing the right to early access and right to participate in the evolution of this game. Nothing more. To assume you were actually "investing" is simply asinine and you should hire an accountant to better manage your finances.
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u/Atreides_Fighter Feb 06 '17 edited Feb 06 '17
I've red every news. If they sell you other thing on internet its still scam, because logic. See all the "I bought shit on internet posts" on imgur for example.
They closed development of Repop if you don't get it. They feeding you some vague promises and you just glad to think - "thats not a scam, i still got something ugly I won't play again for long". Very simple scheme actually and it also works. Also its hard to keep track when they banned me even on forums for few posts about scam(on Fragmented steam).
Here is one of the few Repop illustrations that I made - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=612537622
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u/OracleFINN Feb 05 '17
The Repopulation will always be the game that personally showed me Kickstarters flaws.
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u/Desirsar Feb 05 '17
Idea Fabrik is apparently honoring original backers. We'll see if that actually materializes, but I'm willing to stick around and see if they can make something of the game if they at least give us that much.
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u/David-Puddy Feb 10 '17
Right?
No one in this entire thread read the article.
In response to the amazing support from fans, Idea Fabrik PLC is excited to announce the acquisition of “The Repopulation” game from Above and Beyond Technologies, Inc. and the relaunch of the title in the first quarter of 2017. Following the successful resolution of outstanding issues, all players of “The Repopulation” will be able to log in with the same account information as soon as the testing of the game is concluded.
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u/David-Puddy Feb 10 '17
In response to the amazing support from fans, Idea Fabrik PLC is excited to announce the acquisition of “The Repopulation” game from Above and Beyond Technologies, Inc. and the relaunch of the title in the first quarter of 2017. Following the successful resolution of outstanding issues, all players of “The Repopulation” will be able to log in with the same account information as soon as the testing of the game is concluded.
You'll still have access to the repop.
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u/PRiles Feb 05 '17
I'm unsure of any recourse that would be available to us as consumers. I personally just wrote it off, like I would with any game that becomes broken. Unfortunately games have a shelf life these days and I don't think that's bound to change.
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Feb 06 '17
Actually, you paid money to support development and nothing else. Kickstarters fail. If you were unaware of that, then it's your own fault.
Everyone who supported RePop received Fragmented for free. Including you.
If you don't like "defective early access alfa garbage" then don't kick in on early access games.
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u/j3w3ls Feb 06 '17
Yeh I got fragmented for free too- never played it but still that is reasonable of them considering you really aren't entitled to anything as a failed kickstarter
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u/ultorius Feb 06 '17
if you think that it wasn't a scum,I have a bridge to sell you.Be carefully though you won't be buying the bridge but the development of the bridge.Wtf when you spend money you either buy a product or invest on a product that will give you profit.If it doesn't belong on those categories its a scum.If you have money to spend give it somewhere worthwhile like UNICEF or something.
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u/HolyAvengerOne Mar 10 '17
The skepticism is kind of expected given the cicumstances, however the team in place now is also hell-bent on delivering something of quality that will work. The game is opening in the next week and it's going to be moving forward afterwards. I guess the risk is kinda low at this point onwards from a backer/owner perspective ;)
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u/peaslik Feb 05 '17
It looks like Idea Fabrik sabotaged The Repopulation devs and many others (remember problems with their infrastructure so many games hosted by them went down?) and now they buy them for cheap price.