We said last Saturday that Dungeons of Dredmor was still gold, and that we were working on getting our game into your hands as soon as possible. Unfortunately, both of these things are still true.
We are still trying to finalize things with our distributor, and we are working very, VERY hard on getting everything set up so that we can finally make announcements about how you can buy Dredmor, and about a release date, as soon as possible. Regrettably, a lot of these things are out of our control, and getting everything sorted out is taking much longer than we have hoped. Compounding the nature of the frustration is the fact that we can’t even, legally, explain what the delay is. Consequently, we apologize for the delay, and we want you to know that we are working as hard as we can. Unfortunately, as I said before, not everything at this point is in our hands; until we get in a better position to make some announcements, and we’re sure everything is settled down, we’re going to be quietly working on advancing things on the sales front, and on making a few “secret improvements” to Dredmor. Please, do not let the flame of Dredmor burn out in your hearts. Have faith and bear with us.
Since we can’t really talk about what’s going on, and since other entities are involved, it is hard to speak with our usual candor and frankness about development issues. That said, we are as heartbroken that we cannot sell you the game as you are that you can’t buy it yet. Having something stuck in development – and stuck in such a way that you cannot do anything about it – is one of the worst feelings in the world. One of our biggest takeaways from this experience is that we need to learn, as a company, that not everybody can move at the same speed as we can. Gaslamp, by virtue of its small size, can work through issues rapidly. If we want something in Dredmor, we can usually get it done in a couple of days; I can say to David, “Hey, we need to shrink the size of the Horadric Lutefisk Cube”, and he just goes off and does it, lickety-split. We have been running the business end of development like this as well, making important decisions rapidly and enjoying the flexibility that we have as a small company. We need to learn that we cannot do this when our affairs intertwine with those of larger corporate entities, who have too much on their plate to work at the same speed we do… and we need to plan accordingly. Doubly so when lawyers are involved.
Again, our apologies. We will let you know what’s going on as soon as we can; on our end, we will be learning from this and will be making sure that it doesn’t happen again.
This makes me think about the advantage of the Minecraft model, not to mention the higher profit per sale because of directly selling to your customers?
This is, of course, always a temptation. It’s worth noting that this doesn’t always work well for all parties concerned. For instance, one only has to look at the cautionary tale of Project Zomboid:
http://indiegames.com/2011/06/updates_on_project_zomboid_pai.html
Needless to say, we are rethinking it for our next title. This is our first title, and we’re still figuring out what works for us as a company… but in terms of putting ourselves out there, as a new business it makes sense to have an established distributor.
I was an early adapter on the Zomboid Pre-Order, and I think it was just Pay Pal had an issue with the way they were taking pre-orders as donations, which could be stepping into complicated tax issues….
Anyways there are plenty of other indie developers out there taking pre-orders with no problems…
But that is all moot now, I can see the advantage of going with a well recognized platform…
So as others have said, good luck.
Even though we hate to say it, but we all have no choice but to wait. =)
The bottom line is the quality of the product is above what you are selling it for, so I will be here till hell freezes over..
Should have just released it on your site then released it with others later.
We thought about it but the time involved distributing it ourselves at this point would have been huge compared to working with a distributor. Possible future products will probably be handled by us but just not this one.
best of luck guys!
What a pain, but for a first release it’s understandable.
Let’s hope for the best for you and the impatient buyers.
If it’s still just $5, I’ll buy four copies. Don’t worry about the delay, it’ll still be awesome when it’s ready.
No problem. Thanks for the update and good luck with the lawyers from Steam (I’m guessing that these guys are the ones causing the delay).
These last minute delays are often the way with projects, especially when there’s multiple companies, and legislature involved. I don’t think you’re actually delaying that badly, and I will remain desperate to play your game.
Good luck getting it sorted!
Good luck!
Oh well, I’m patient. Few weeks are nothing compared to the development length.
If you want to keep ‘the flame burning’, just post some more teasing details about the game (or even its development).
Totally agreed! Teaser shots/videos would be awesome. I haven’t been this passionate about an unreleased game since the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004.
It’ll all get sorted—I foresee a future where Dredmor lives in the heart of many a digital distro platform, an impressive feat indeed given that, really, there are only some. The game has that kind of power I’m certain!
Hey guys, good luck with it.
If they keep bothering you, just pm me their adress, I’ll shove a turd in a paper through their mailbox, no problem! 😉
We can assume you are talking about Valve’s approval process or something similar with another distributor. I really hope Steam isn’t the only channel through which to purchase Dredmor, though.
Shouldn’t the game come out for Linux, too? If so, Steam wouldn’t work there (natively).
Good luck,been looking forward to dredmor for months.i really hope steam is not the only option for purchase as i will not be playing the game 🙁
Is there a reason Steam wouldn’t work for you? Are you using Linux?
no it would work for me,i just do not like the idea of steam bothering my game play,i know it can be played offline..just would prefer to have dredmor downloaded to my system and be left alone.missed out on a lot of games because of steam…i do it to myself i do
Lawyers? Lawyers are involved? NOooooooOoOOoo…
Just kidding; I am sure it will sort itself out shortly. When there’s money just waiting to be raked in at almost no cost to these individuals, I can’t imagine they’re going to drag their feet on this.
Lawyers strike for 10k
I don’t know if all the delay is tied to Steam or not, but… Any idea of what you’ll use when the Linux version comes out? I’m one of the luddites who don’t want clients, activations and other funny looking stuff between me and my gaming, so I’d appreciate a choice. Since on Linux there aren’t many of those “services” I was hoping in a free-er distribution method, even for the Windows version. If not at launch, at least later.
For me good games are like good books, I want to get them out for a spin without having to rely on third parties. And this one is looking particularly good, so… Fingers crossed!
Good luck with the game!
i agree,straight download for windows would make me happy…do not want to open a steam account 🙁
I’m one of those that strongly hopes for Steam or another service like it. If a game has not been on steam it has impacted my purchasing decision. I don’t want to deal with the hassle of remembering everything I’ve ever gotten, dealing with serials and different accounts.
last post on this matter as i am starting to get on my own nerves….D2D and gamersgate i am fine with,but steam is a pain.but whatever, i wish you guys the best of luck with this damn fine game.
Have to agree that the big advantage of Steam (and some other services like Impulse) is the convenience of having it all in one place. Recently my computer died and when I got the new one up and running, all my games were still waiting for me to play on Steam. It would have been a major hassle if I had needed to track them all down one by one from all the different game companies, or dug up CDs that I may no longer even be readable.
You make a fair point. Still, I for one don’t buy many games nowadays. Many of the offerings on most services don’t attract me anymore (either messy design, flawed AI, not replayable, way too easy and so on), and the few games I like are often buyable directly from the developers or aren’t even there. In some cases they just upload the installers to one or two servers and a choice of other services, like FileFront. You just keep your email with the serial and you’re good to go. Then again I could end up with 3 or 4 different subscriptions just to get the 3 or 4 games I play, installing multiple clients which I don’t really use (or like). Also, I largely prefer having a simple installer or zip file that I can put on USB drives, DVDs, etc. and use it when, where and how I want.
In the end, there are different kinds of users. There should be different kinds of services. Shame that sometimes this is not the case. And I hope this is not one of those, because I’m fiendishly waiting for this game.
I generally hate to play around with lot’s of passwords or different sites to DL my games and if a small company launches something on their own site it would be a mess if the site was closed for one reason or another.
Steam has it’s place in gaming and provides brilliant marketing for indie companies (I don’t know if “behind the scenes looks as promising) just by placing an add to the frontpage of the Steam-store.
I’ve never had anything negative to say about Steam so I don’t know why not to launch this on it but it’s always better to have several publishers as mentioned before. The thing is that PC-gaming is the moneymaker and Linux & Mac come far behind. Nevertheless it’s brilliant that those platforms are also supported.