A new letter from Kerberos CEO

[Khalan]

Sorry if this has been posted already; here it is for those who are still having trouble getting into Kerberos' forums.

Hey folks! Helluva weekend eh?

Welcome to the perfect storm of ♥♥♥♥ up made up of 40% Murphy's Law, 30% Chaos, 20% Overambition and 10% wishful thinking. And you have our deepest regrets for what it is worth as none of this was part of the plan.

I am tempted to go into full blown explanations but a) that starts to smack of making excuses and b) in reality I think the biggest things on people's minds right now judging from your posts is "Who's responsible?!!" and "What's going to be done?!!" And even when its time for explanations I am sure you would all rather hear about it in the context of "How this won't happen again".

That latter question is an easy one and best gotten out of the way quickly. "Who is responsible?"...I am. Half my job at Kerberos is to be the one that makes the hard call. What gets prioritized. What gets pulled. What gets released. What get accepted. And in many ways, what gets said. When push comes to shove, I am the one who makes the deal with the devil. When something is supposed to be watched, its me who has to know the answer. When the switch got thrown on the wrong build, costing many of you an extra big download and letting loose an extra buggy code base, I was in traffic instead of giving the yay or nay myself. That should not have been...hell I should have insisted nothing moved until the right code had been there and confirmed multiple times. Instead I blew it and bad things happened.

So lets set this straight here. When you are dealing with SotS2 this weekend and wondering quite rightly "Who is to blame for this?!!" The answer is me. NOT Paradox...NOT Steam and certainly NOT my team. All of those forces have been exemplary in helping deal with a bad situation. When it comes to who should be at the end of anyone's fingerpoint, it's just plain ol' me.


Ok...so now onto the real important thing...The Future of SotS2 and what you can count on.


First of all the bad news...Thanks to various factors we are now sitting on top of a pile of blown apart code and unstable features. The first thing you can expect though is stability. There will be an update tomorrow which will set right much of the chaos created friday in terms of crashing and keeping you from playing that game. What it WON'T do is magically add back in every piece of functionality. Gods know I wish that I had that magic wand but the reality is that path leads to more chaos and more broken gameplay sessions. Remember that part where I mentioned making the hard calls? This is another one of those. As much as the team wants to throw themselves at this like crazy people, I am not going to ok that. Instead we will go about this in a relatively sane and orderly fashion with regular updates that make sure everything that goes back in is as stable as possible before you see it. Oh I am sure some stuff will leak through, but at least that will be dealt with quickly and cleanly. Sorry to just put the hard facts to you straight without flowers but I think we are somewhat past the flowers make it all better stage of this relationship

What this means to you...

This plan means that you folks can expect at least 2 or 3 updates a week over the next month or so that will gradually make this game into what it should have been when the switch was pulled on friday. Soon after that you can expect personel in black suits to arrive at your house to flash a red light in your eyes. After that you will find yourself happy and enjoying the best release day ever and none of this will ever have happened.
Ok fine...I am a lil shakey on the last half of the plan but what I can tell you is that by the end of this period you WILL have more additional content than you would have under more ideal circumstances. Every update will go out with some thank you for your patience...some badges, extra maps, new nose art, more background entries. Basically whatever can be done alongside the priority path will be put in as well. The people out there who know Kerberos know that we support our games not just for weeks or months but for years. For all of you people new to us, please let me assure you that despite how your purchase may look at the moment, you can look forward to years of support. I would ask that you consider not giving up on us because it will literally take the end of the world for Kerberos and Paradox to give up on SotS2.


What I would like to ask of you...


Oh I know that is hardly what you expected to hear right now, but before your temperature rises, please hear me out becuase this portion is in reaction to ALL the posts I have read which seem to subdivide into certain clear groups.


If you are a Kerberos and/or a SotS fan then please just enjoy the game as you can over the next few weeks. I know you want to help as much as possible but to be honest you should NOT be rewarded for your support with more work. Your feedback is appreciated but in no means are you expected to act as testers or hunt bugs. Literally your patience and continued support is more than enough.

If you truely feel like you have been dumped into an unannounced beta test on this game, then please, I ask you to put the game away and not look at it till someone fires off the "all done" flag. I am not going to tell you that you should not feel this way. What I am going to say is that if you feel this way then you should not feel victimized any more than if you had made a pre-order and then been informed of a delay. I know this does not make it all right but at least it should make it clear that no one wants to use you as a beta tester nor was that ever the intent.

And finally, if you are in the camp that still feels robbed by the time you have reached this point of my post I can only offer what I can. We are fixing it and we need folks to either cheer, step aside or get out of the way cause vitriol is not going to help right now. If you demand a refund then I completely understand and you can be assured, the cost of that will make it directly to us. We will feel your "voting with your dollars", you can be sure about that and we accept that as fair play. On the other hand, if a free copy of the orginal SotS will help tide you over while we get this game shined from turnip to jewel, then please write to "contact@kerberos-productions.com" and we will set you up. If nothing else, if you are not familiar with how we support our products, you can play it and then ask the old-timers how much it changed over the years and that may reassure you.



So if you are still with me after this long post...let me summarize.

a) ♥♥♥♥ up
b) my fault
c) will be Completely fixed
d) fun stuff in many updates
e) Understanding of your position
f) Apology again and underserved request for faith and patience from people who don't know us.


That's about it folks. I hope this helps in some way or another. If enough people care, I will try and post a "Ways I can think of to prevent this from happening ever again". But otherwise its sunday and I got a whole lot of work to get done for tomorrow's update.

Once again, Regrets and our deepest thanks for whatever patience each one of you can offer.
--Martin Cirulis
CEO/Creative Director
Kerberos Productions

http://www.kerberos-productions.com/...p?f=37&t=22033

[YarickZan]

I was actually just about to start a topic about this myself. Let me put my reaction like this. First off this is what should have been said day one. One thing that really in my mind inflamed a lot of the anger was saying that it was the correct version and all was well, and then the equivalent of "I'm going to bunk off for a few hours and get back to sleep instead of putting out this giant conflagration." I think it takes a bit of courage to say that the entire fiasco is solely his fault, and I think he is truly trying to make amends for it.

Long story short: I'm not as angry as I was earlier. I'm going to keep my game and wait it out. It was also a nice touch for him to offer free copies of SOTS 1 as well.

Bump-Someone should sticky this, perhaps since KP site is being a-f'd again.

[timco35]

I agree. Would have been appreciated sooner but where I was once on fence about getting a rebate, I suppose I'll just weather the storm and play something else for a little while.

[AtomicConnor]

wow a free copy of the original SoTS AND additional content with each update. Hell of a way to say sorry

[YarickZan]

Well SOTS1 is still on sale on steam right now for $5, but I don't know how long it will be until it goes back up to $20. Regardless though it's better than most companies would do.

[AlpsStranger]

I'm placated for now. I'll pretend the game was delayed to Jan 1.

[T_K]

I am about 90% happy with this letter. I also completely understand what happened. I also do product design (not games but product design is product design) in a small company which is constantly biting more than it can chew so I've seen stuff like this happen over and over again.

"This letter should have come at day one" - well no, it can't have come out on day one as day one was total chaos for them and I bet there were all kinds of raging emotions flying around at Kerberos not to mention unhealthy exhaustion. A level-headed letter like this one cannot have been produced in such conditions.

[armyfreak221]

Second Yarick, while it may not be all flower pedals and roses i did feel like he was "typing" the truth.

only thing i really have left to ask is if this isnt the final version why cant they just upload it.....im still kind of boggled how he doesn't address this, he obviously admitted there were other builds.

[NovaStalker]

Well I already own SotS complete so onto the shelf this goes. I pray they make fleet movement less pants-on-head-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ at some point.

And I hope someone makes Mecron less of an arrogant jerk but that isn't likely to happen.

[Khalan]

Seems to me he was referencing the first incorrect build that was uploaded to Steam, not that there's a newer final version other than the one we already have. Which of course is not in an acceptable release state either though.

[Fdzzaigl]

I don't believe the "various factors = blown up code bit" as I think "various factors = being too ambitious and running out of money".

But at least I do believe him in regards to the updates seeing the history of this company, so I hope the crashing at least is fixed tomorrow, after that we'll see.

[methos32]

Originally Posted by armyfreak221

Second Yarick, while it may not be all flower pedals and roses i did feel like he was "typing" the truth.

only thing i really have left to ask is if this isnt the final version why cant they just upload it.....im still kind of boggled how he doesn't address this, he obviously admitted there were other builds.

he did. he said they were going to fix stability first and the rest would come along once they stoped it de-stabalising the whole thing again

[AlpsStranger]

Originally Posted by Fdzzaigl

I don't believe the "various factors = blown up code bit" as I think "various factors = being too ambitious and running out of money".

But at least I do believe him in regards to the updates seeing the history of this company, so I hope the crashing at least is fixed tomorrow, after that we'll see.

I'm not going to try and divine what really happened. All that matters now is fixing it.

If enough people care, I will try and post a "Ways I can think of to prevent this from happening ever again". But otherwise its sunday and I got a whole lot of work to get done for tomorrow's update.

Don't say its everything is all good when its raining ♥♥♥♥.

There done with your ways to prevent it....