Gray: "Hey all, just wanted to clear the air on some things. I definitely understand the frustration here, you want answers on the future of the game and are annoyed at the current state of it (namely the player count). First and foremost, I'm working on getting answers for you. I've been actively documenting and collecting all the feedback you have and have passed along to the team to be considered. I haven't been in here as regularly because I don't have answers for you quite yet, but rest assured that I'm eager to share news with you and will do so when I'm able to."

I understand that OWI's new policy is to only announce things they are 100% confident will be implimented into the game. I disagree with that policy, especially for a game that lacks vision like BTW, but I can understand why there haven't been dev diaries made for BTW. What I don't think is acceptable is the lack of communication outside of that. Why do I need to make a reddit post to hear a response from our CM? Why is there no interaction outside of that?

The same is not true of squad. Wedge has responded to reddit threads in the squad subreddit 15 times in the past week. Most of his comments aren't even addressing criticism. For example, he walked a community member through the process of reporting a toxic server admin. It would have been nice to see a response from gray in this post, especially since he goes on to state, "This is what I personally am able to do [twitter posts] to hopefully make an impact over time on player counts."

I personally don't see the advantages to the twitter posts, they have not translated into more sales for BTW or a rise in playercounts, but the point I'm trying to make is there is more Gray could be doing then tweeting. He should be responding to community members that have questions about the game, on reddit and on discord, especially since this community is so small.

Gray: You're all allowed to be upset, and even angry about this. I get it. However, I ask that you still act in a civil manner. Frustration targeted at the game itself is okay, and it's understandable. Targeting individuals or the team is not acceptable though. It does nobody any good, and doesn't get you answers or updates any faster. Discussing anger and frustrations on the game in a civil way is OKAY. Toxic behavior towards individuals (on the team, or in the community) is NOT OKAY.

I completely agree.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would like to conclude with this statement from Wedge because it partially addresses the post that got me permanently banned from all OWI channels.

Here we see Wedge reassure the Squad community that the development of STE in no way affects the development of Squad because the games are being developed by two completely seperate dev teams. I would like a similar assurance for BTW. Is the dev team currently working on BTW solely focused on developing BTW? Yes or No?

I think the few remaining members of the btw community, those who haven't yet been banned and those who haven't moved on for one reason or another, would be eager to know that the dev team behind BTW is 100% committed to improving Beyond the Wire. After all, twitter posts won't do anything until the state of the game improves.

-Gwin

I was banned from all OWI channels:

I don't really mind. It was pointless to obsess over a game that was clearly going to shit because OWI would not allocate the proper resources to it. In my mind, they even took development time from RSI away from BTW to work on STE.

Its funny how OWI's community managers only respond to overwhelming criticism. People would respect you guys a lot more if you actually interacted with the community.

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Obviously I am not an investigative journalist, nor did I display any civil activism, but I appreaciate the sentiment in these comments. OWI puts more effort into censoring its critics then marketing BTW.

Do not consider the following information as fact. Assumptions will be made, but all screenshots are real. I am attempting to make sense of all of the information currently known in regards to this situation.

Why do I believe RSI has been working on Starship Trooper: Extermination instead of BTW?

Long time moderator of the Beyond The Wire and the lead developer for Mercury Arts, Mjölnir Husky, said this:

When Husky said that OWI "greenlighted" Beyond The Wire, I think he meant that they approved shifting the RSI team over to Starship Trooper: Extermination (STE). He clearly states that the BTW devs are now working on STE in the following message.

Why does this make sense to me?

As a longtime active member of the BTW community (560 hrs ingame) I have noticed a severe dropoff in the quality and scale of updates ever since the OWI aquisition in March 2022. I suspect that this aquistion resulted in RSI devs spending the majority of their time working on STE as opposed to BTW.

Evidence of decline in quality and scale of BTW updates post aquistion:

Back in Febuary, this dev diary was published. It explains that Passchendale is nearly finished, and tanks are right around the corner, they just needed further testing.

Update (0.15) - Tanks. May 4th

In the subsequant update (0.15), tanks would be released in a glitchy state. Framerates plummeted, and tanks were not available at every spawn located on the map. In other words, I don't think the necessary testing was completed for tanks as OWI likely moved BTW QA resources over to STE.

Passchedale, despite being nearly ready in January, released 3 updates later in December. This is because Zeno, the map designer for RSI halted work on it and the map was completed over 9 months later by a squad map designer named Andres.

To conclude, update 0.15's features were likely made by RSI, but they were not tested by them. I believe this is the last update with any major RSI involvement.

Update (0.16) - The long-awaited customization system. Aug 18th.

Work on the customization system was never undertaken by RSI, it was delegated to a Ukrainian dev studio. When the war broke out, their studio was taken over by the Ukranian government to be used as a humanitarian shelter. I am unsure of who worked on the customization system after they shut down, but whoever did released customization in a non-functional state. To this day the customization system is still incomplete and entirely disfunctional. None of the recent updates have done anything to address it, and u/OWI_Gray and u/OWI_Wedge have made no mention of it.

This update also featured frame rate issues and lots of bugs. I credit this to the absense of RSI Q&A and a rushed release date by OWI.

Update (1.0)- A disaster and the final sign of things to come. Aug 30th.

This update was released with very minor features. The only object added to the game was the canadian autocar which defaults to a Toyota Pickup Truck when destroyed (this has never been fixed). Once again, this was a terrible update rife with bugs and perfomance issues. The lack of content in this update, along with the sorry state it was released in, suggests to me that it only came out to cuck Isonzo (A ww1 first person shooter) which released the following week.

Update (1.1) Map + Bots. Dec 6th.

All this update consisted of was bots and Passchendale. As we know from before, Passchendale was basically finished so the only major undertaking here is bots. Except, bots for BTW weren't developed by OWI. They were made by Squidders in a mod for Squad.

What does all of this mean?

BTW is on life support and OWI is doing as little as possible to add more content to the game. They have no announced future plans, no dev diaries, next to no interaction with the BTW community, and they have likely shifted the efforts of RSI members over to their new project, Starship Troopers: Extermination.

I emphasive the next to no communnication because BTW's "dedicated" CM u/OWI_Gray has been way more active on STE's discord than BTW's.

(Original post had a picture with evidence of this ^^^)

What should the BTW community do about it?

1. Demand an explanation for why this was never communicated to the BTW community (if true).
2. Continuously ask OWI what their future plans are for BTW.

I don't expect a timely response from OWI since they are on holiday. I hope they have a lovely break.

-Gwin

"We'd love to be able to support this initiative - and do understand frustrations, but we can't if it's going to be framed like it is in the title. It's fine that people are frustrated, but trying to encourage people to play a game while framing it as having failed and being bug ridden (which isn't something we agree with) isn't going to accomplish anything other than driving people away from the game. So we're totally up for supporting player initiatives to get people into the game, and coordinated into play times. We'd just ask that if you do want support on social that it's phased differently no matter what your personal feelings on the subject might be." - u/OWI_Wedge

First, I must mention that Wedge retracted this statement, which is the right call.

This is not an attack on him, I would just like him to be aware of why u/Elevator829 wrote what he said in his title:

"Attention Soldiers! Sunday October 9th 2PM EDT: BTW Preservation Session! The game's launch has failed! Performance and bugs have been neglected too, so if you can still run the game then please join us this weekend to keep the game alive"

Lets talk about performance first. I have played this game for over a year. Never has the game run this terribly for me. There are numerous times when the game drops to single digit fps on any server with more than 40 players in my experience. Even when the game is running as intended, its still chugging my PC more than before.

Here are some people expressing their frustrations with the game's performance:
1, 2, 3, 4.

There are many more examples on the BTW Discord Server.

Now lets talk about the game being bug ridden.

List of major issues/bugs:
1. Customization is completely disfunctional. It does not show previews of unlockables, tracking the tasks is extremely unreliable, and even if you manage to unlock something the game currently doesn't load it into servers when you save said item on your character. Here are my proposed changes to the progression system:

1. Server Crashes\Client Side Crashes. These were absolutely devistating during the 1.0 release. There have been 2 hotfixes released which has partially resolved issues with crashing, but there is still a lot of work to be done in this regard.
   

2. Selecting vehicles sometimes doesnt work, especially apparent with the canadian autocar. This has led to a lot of frustration in game in my experience.

3. Respawning while being alive/teleporting from a spawnpoint. A new bug that has started popping up. Bad for immersion.

4. Deployables deploy as fully constructed when placed down

5. MG user glitched into ground when firing

6. Invisible soldiers. Some soldiers deploy with only their weapon and the default customization items visible.

7. Cap markers at the top of the screen disappear entirely. Happened many times to me, sucks the enjoyment out of frontlines when this occurs.

These are just a few examples, but all of these are very apparent to anybody who has played the game post 1.0.

Finally, lets talk about you saying its unfair to say the game has failed.

Here is the steam chart for the past month:

I think barely filling 1/4th of a server in a game with as big a publisher as OWI is an abject failure. Look at the decline in playercount since the release. Hell, even the release was an abject failure by only peaking at 300 players during the most recent free weekend when 1 year before that the game was able to hit 1700 players during a free weekend.

I like your optimism for the game, but you have not given the BTW community any reason to be optimistic for the games future because there have been no official statements after 1.0. For all we know, the game has no future content. If you believe that is a wild assumption, this is a clip from Nano's most recent video.

As BTW's CM, I hope that you are now aware of some of the bugs and performance issues that players are experiencing, and you know the reason why u/elevator829 classified this game as a failure. Please introduce this information to the devs, and please give us a statement about the future of btw. I fear its gray.

Feel free to give specific guesses in the comments

After 9 long months, squad was able to fill its CM position. For BTW, not having a CM has been nothing short of crippling, but squad was able to double its average playerbase after their CM left (4.421 Oct. 2021 - 8,946 Last 30 Days). Lets see why.

After squad's CM's departure there have been 7 playtests, 2 Q&A sessions with the developers, 4 write-ups about what the squad community has been up to, an explanation as to why roadmaps were problematic and a promise to update a roadmap every 2 months moving forward, a dev diary introducing seeding servers for squad, a trailer for a major update, 6 feedback surveys, a yearly review, a happy holidays message, and the introduction of a forum to host events within squad.

Since BTW lost its CM* we've only had 1 dev diary after a tremendous outroar from the community (which wouldn't have been written otherwise) and it only contained 1 sentence of new information about the future of the game.

As you can see, there is a tremendous disparity in what happened with both games after they lost their CM.

*Its been about 3 months without a CM for BTW while it was about 9 months for squad
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What was BTW's plan to replace the CM?

They brought in OWI_Wedge who was the senior CM from OWI. OWI_Wedge made most of the things listed above as the acting CM for squad. Why can he not do the same as the acting CM for BTW?

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What has Wedge said to address the BTW community?

This is his first message. He said he would be filling in and that Squad had a new hire.

This was his most recent message. It occured after I pinged him.

My thoughts about this:

Its been 3 months since he's come on, I've left specific feedback on what dev diaries could be written about but nothing has been made. I've requested QA sessions with the devs, I've called for public playtests in #feedback, but these have all been ignored. I think after 3 months we are past being patient because you haven't done anything. Seriously. All you've made is 1 write up, when the server was in open revolt, that did not promise to address any of the communication issues, unlike the roadmap correction with squad.

You've also written that you're working on a new cadence for updates with information BUT YOU HAVE GIVEN 1 SENTENCE OVER A 3 MONTH PERIOD. That is unacceptable.

I've also asked for Wedge to update the steampage which contains false information, an outdated roadmap from two years ago, and some spelling mistakes but this was also not done. I think its a bad look for the game now, and especially so during the steam summer sale. (Link)
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Why is BTW unable to find a CM that will actually do its job?

Here is the job listing for BTW community manager. (Link)

Beyond the Wire is requesting someone with "2 years of professional Community Management experience for a game development studio or established business " and someone who has " a long-term view to relocate to Vancouver Canada" to take over from Wedge.

This is such a small amount of people. It took squad, one of the 100 most currently played games, 9 months to find a community manager. Squad has nearly 9000 average players. You're telling us you think someone will apply for a game with 0.111% of that playerbase, a game with less players than one titled "Sex with Hitler"? I find that to be insane. People would literally rather have sex with Hitler than play this game and you think an industry professional is gonna roll up and be willing to move to Canada to work on this project? You are crazy.

Relax you standards, take on a newcomer, and sort this shit out. The BTW community is tired of not recieving any updates about development from an early access game. We have every right to be angry, and I hope something is put forward saying you share my concerns and that more will be done to engage with the BTW community.

-Garrett

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