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tinyBuild's CEO reiterates company's devotion to DRM-free releases on GOG
Posted by Alm888, 7 July 2019 at 10:26 am UTC | Views: 3,872
It is always good when bad things settle down peacefully.
Recently, one of the tinyBuild's community managers said in a Discord chat some rather dumb things regarding the company's stance on DRM-free, piracy and their corporate policy on the matter, trying to justify the lack of updates on GOG (for "Punch Club" and "Party Hard" for example, which were neglected for years, both being Linux releases) as an anti-pirate measures, after which some of the community have become riled-up.
To calm the userbase, none other than Alex Nichiporchik, CEO of tinyBuild, has given an explanation, stating that all of this does not represent the company's policy and is simply a matter of a lack of proper training for its community managers. Not only that, but the CEO promised to swiftly fix all the issues with outdated versions and work out with GOG a proper solution to prevent any further issues like this one, stating that from now on they will be working with GOG more closely.
This is really a good news for our community as tinyBuild is one of the smaller, but viable indie game publishers, having a number of Linux releases.
25 Likes, Who?
stan 7 July 2019 at 11:17 am UTC
It's unfortunate game updates on GOG are often delayed, sometimes lack DLCs, have no multiplayer, that there's no email notifications when an update or a Linux version is released, no notifications for forum posts or threads either, no way to update a game review… CD Projekt has a lot of things to improve on GOG but they don't seem to care :-/.
Brisse 7 July 2019 at 12:55 pm UTC
stan CD Projekt has a lot of things to improve on GOG but they don't seem to care :-/.
Yea, I love the philosophy behind GOG but I pretty much gave up on them the moment I ditched Windows. Hopefully they will manage to sway me back some day.
Sir_Diealot 7 July 2019 at 2:20 pm UTC
Yeah, if the community manager had proper training he wouldn't have said this. Doesn't mean it's not true.
Party Hard is a great game with absolutely broken Twitch integration and you can't get a sensible response from the devs or publisher regarding that.
Desum 7 July 2019 at 2:56 pm UTC
Uh-huh. If people are just getting into inde game development, they're MUCH better off going with something like Godot than tinyBuild in any case.
liamdawe 7 July 2019 at 3:56 pm UTC
Desum Uh-huh. If people are just getting into inde game development, they're MUCH better off going with something like Godot than tinyBuild in any case.
What? You're comparing a game engine, to a game developer/publisher. That makes no sense.
Kimyrielle 7 July 2019 at 4:48 pm UTC
If the CEO says the community manager did NOT represent company policy, the question remains why ARE the GOG builds poorly updated and partially broken, and have been for a long time? Either it was indeed intent - or the company is grossly incompetent. It's one or the other and either would be a solid reason not to buy a game from them.
hagabaka 8 July 2019 at 6:21 pm UTC
Top Supporter
Kimyrielle If the CEO says the community manager did NOT represent company policy, the question remains why ARE the GOG builds poorly updated and partially broken, and have been for a long time? Either it was indeed intent - or the company is grossly incompetent. It's one or the other and either would be a solid reason not to buy a game from them.
It doesn't seem that different from how an update to a game might be released for Windows first and delayed for other platforms, or be complete in one language but have missing translations in other languages. None of this is ideal for affected gamers, but it's often the reality, and there is no reason to automatically assume bad intent. The fact that in this case the CEO provided an explanation and listed plans to solve the problem is actually a big plus in my opinion.
Last edited by hagabaka at 8 July 2019 at 6:25 pm UTC
Cyril 9 July 2019 at 2:57 am UTC
The Imgur conversation... Same bullshit as usual. facepalm
It was like "We accept the GOG users's money but sorry you'll not have our respect."
Snolus is a good guy, and I agree with Kimyrielle.
Also this link speaks for itself.
I don't have Punch Club or Party Hard (but I have Graveyard Keeper), but I count on Linux users to inform the community if they will really update them.
These issues around GOG publishers, missing things, huge delays etc... I'm thinking of just boycotting them now and they won't have my money. Simple as that.
Sir_Diealot 12 July 2019 at 9:25 am UTC
Cyril The Imgur conversation... Same bullshit as usual. facepalm
Graveyard keeper was a mess at release but has been updated for Linux pretty much in sync on GOG.
Party Hard I got only a while after release and I think they had EOL'd it by then. As far as I know they had significantly scaled back Twitch integration by that time and whatever was left never worked for me.