This kinda backfired

You see that is where I think a lot of the issues come from- people look at Uber and come to the conclusion that they are making loads of money and finding new and innovative ways of extracting more from their consumer base (like most of the big publishers).

What I see is a small studio, looking for anyway it can to stay afloat in a difficult market, whilst *attempting* (note not always succeeding) in trying to be fair to people.

Some facts about Uber:
- The directors were keeping the company afloat out of their own pockets before the PA Kickstarter, and have maintained support for SMNC despite it loosing them money (as someone who also runs a small firm, I have been in the position of subsidising my own company so I can pay my staff wages and overheads at the expense of my own pay a few times so I'm very sympathetic to this, trust me running a business can be hard).

- PA was a very successful kickstarer, but it was also a *hugely* ambitious game and done on a shoestring budget. People are very quick to dismiss some of the highly complicated *from the ground up* technical work done to allow the game to work at all.

- The HR kickstarter failed, resulting in them loosing a large chunk of staff. I can tell you as a business owner the decision to make so many great people redundant must have been devastating. They wouldn't have done so if they had the money to keep them. This is pretty clear proof that 'greed' isn't the motivator for Uber but necessity. No money = no company.

- PA was finished if you compare it to it's original goals well before the Titans launch. Yes the community would like more, but more content also costs money. PA is the game they pitched.

At the end of the day, they need to find ways to monetize their IPs as best they can- that means being able to build on an existing product (like every other game developer does). This isn't an anti consumer thing. I mean PA is one of the first new RTS games to *so something unique* in a very long time. The alternative here is they go out of business and stop making games, which I think would be to the detriment of my favourite (and terribly under supported) genre of RTS. RTS fans seem to have got so demanding these days that no new game does any good (Etherium, panned on release, Grey Goo, panned on release, Ashes- not looking good for them either).

I mean if you don't want to support them again because you don't feel you got value for money from your purchase, that's fair enough. What I take some issue with is throwing accusations around of how 'greedy' they are though to want paying for a legitimate update.

i can play offline without having to log in no problem...
as for support ... this can only go for so long as the devs can afford it ..

PA is DRM-Free. Offline mode was added in the patch after launch.

The 'Uber' version of PA has a dedicated 'offline' button in the launcher. The steam version can be played offline by going to the install directory and running 'PA.exe'

Titans also works fully offline in the same manor.

Can we please just have a thread that doesn't delve deep off topic into this crap? This was a perfectly decent thread before it was drowned by argument.

Well, PA got about 3 millions during Kickstarter, about 12 during Early Access, and at release it was a disaster. And now after less than a year after release have been retired and we have to buy a new game. Now to funny.

However, I suppose we can agree that it's rather pointless arguing on data we don't have. And that's an other reason why I will not support in future Uber (and anyone else) on KS, or EA. The lack of transparency in a found raising campaign is a big issue for me. You might have a different opinion and that's fine.

As for PA being completed before they released Titan I'd argue that it was not. We've been promised a long term project, while PA has been one of the shortest release in history.

At this point I wonder if would have been even shorter might have Human Resources succeeded on Kickstarter. But this is mere speculation, so let's no go there.

Anyway, everyone is free to spend their own money where they like, so I'm not saying you guys should stop supporting Uber or PA:Titan. Do what if you feel like doing it, and I respect that. The game seems good, finally.

Just on my side it feels too much a money grabbing having to pay for it once again. So I won't. Especially now that I've discovered I have it already on my hard drive, DRM-free as promised on KS. How funny :-D

Wait what? Did you donate them a few extra millions?
They got 2 million out of the kickstarter after taxes. They certainly did not make 12 during early access either.

I think some of you are a bit too zealous. I'm not advocating complacency in any way, but I can think of far larger injustices you can face in real life, and most of them are far more objective than "Is PA unfinished and are we being charged for what we paid for again?". The end result is that we get a perfectly playable game with unique mechanics, and I am having a blast when playing PA:T as I did with PA itself.

I paid for PA:Titans before I knew I was entitled for a free copy, so you can't accuse me of having recieved it for free and then being a shill, Uber had to earn my trust and they did. And you know what? I don't regret that one bit, because the game is fun for me and in the end that is what matters.

Now some idealism is fine but it is leaning towards zeal here and I would advise you to make up your mind on whether you think Planetary Annihilation is worth it or not. You won't get a free copy, nobody will change their opinion over the entire books worth of text written over this, and it's all just a waste of time that could be used to stomp enemy commanders with Atlases or doing something else you like that doesn't make you feel like you have been cheated.

This part has been discussed before (many times), so I won't go there again. Beside, it's not the amount that I'd criticize in itself. It's the result and broken promises on PA and the denial about the real budget Uber had to foster PA. It's not about the quality of PA:Titan, it's more about the management and marketing at Uber.

I've been back simply to say that *having Titan DRM-free* on my hard drive was meant as a joke. If I'd like to play it in future I'll buy it. I'm a dev myself and beside having little time to play or discuss, I always try to respect the work of others, in any field.

Have fun with PA:Titan, I expect to see some quality tourneys some time soon. Missing the King of the Planet series very much.

According to someone the other day, the figure of 800,000 copies of pa have been sold on steam. If accurate 12million doesn't sound too bad for early access numbers. ( That is all the numbers before release?)

that's... interesting

That's a wild speculation. 800k is what steamspy says now. Steamspy doesn't even have to be accurate about that (looking at the history on some days magically the number of owners on steam went down. How is that supposed to be reliable?) and it does not have a longer history, so it is unknown how many of those 800k are cheap sales and how many are 90$.
We really simply do not know how much income it generated.

what projects have you worked on/are currently working on as a dev?

Oh look,

https://www.change.org/p/uber-enter...s-pay-for-what-we-already-paid-for/u/12372436

i cri

evritym

They requested no modders use the KS commander models in their mods because it's in bad taste. I doubt they'd feel different to this.

Not sure what KS Commanders is (I only came back recently to update my current mods), but Uber did respond to me to let me know they'd like me to take my multiplayer titans mod down, which I did. I'm not here asking for free titans, I was simply here asking if I could use my mod

EDIT: I'm dumb, lol. You probably mean the Kickstarter special commander units. Totally makes sense!~

I don't believe for a second you are a developer of anything. If you were, you wouldn't say Titans is a money grab, as you would fully understand the amount of work it takes to create, and would gladly hand over 13 dollars for it.

Why do the various people upset/whatever care what Uber said or didn't say, or how much money they have? I thought it made more sense to look at the game, look at the price, and do a quick (fun*playhours) - ($/playhours) and see if the result is comparable to the spare cash.

Can't help but notice bsergent is ignoring a genuine attempt to understand his position a little better. Because I literally can't rationalize why else someone would demand content for free that was never promised to them to begin with. Sorry they decided to charge for an expansion, but they still own all the copyrights to PA. Go play mods or something.

Who'da thought you could judge a product based on it's content and your own enjoyment of it, surely all purchasing decisions are made on a cursory assessment of the perceived ethics of the company responsible for said product? Crazy talk I tells you!