Strategy First acquires Malfador Machinations

[Hunpecked]

Atrocities: "However, as a caveat, if they screw Aaron, and by extension the fans, I swear to God, I will resurrect this thread and give SFI the *** whipping beating of all time. That I promise! (Even if I have to do it from the grave!)"

Be afraid, SFI. Be very afraid. For Atrocities, death is only the beginning. And in cyberspace, no one can hear you scream...

Any other movie taglines I left out?

[Thermodyne]

David E. Gervais said:
The history of SFI as I know it,..

1) Small group of 6 people that wanted to make strategy games.
2) Same small group made a Hockey Game instead (due to it being easier to sell) That bombed.. Game Name "Solid Ice".
3) They than managed to secure a deal to develope an Indianna Jones game for Lucasarts. SFI spent allot of money in the dev and in the end Lucasarts decided to cancel the project due to not wanting it released when the 'Last Crusade' came out. Lucasarts made an adventure game based on the movie instead.
4) In order to try and generate income SFI used the talent of it's artists to do artwork for games. Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Jagged Alliance, etc. Things were looking better.
5) Work began on Deciples,.. they also turned to 'publishing' to help generate more money.. Things were looking good for several years..
6) IMHO they grew too fast in the development dept.(having close to 100 employees at their peak) Making the payroll was a high priority at that point because the government had been pulling all the strings and forced them to pay employees before contracts,.. As I understand it all of the money recieved from the government was conditional on creating employment.
6) BAM! as a publisher they made the mistake of investing close to 800k$$ in an external development house. They virtually lost that and this happend when things were just starting to look good.
7) This caused a massive leak in the HMS SFI and drastic measures needed to be taken.. How drastic? The company was forced (by the government comiteee that was overseeing SFI) to file for "Bankruptcy Protection" the result,.. the entire in-house dev team(s) were laid off. (100 good people lost their jobs) And the amounts due to external developers was put on hold. Afecting not just Stardock,.. Mind you they have been the most 'Verbal' in spreading the news that they felt they got the shaft.
8) No one said the developers were never going to get their due, No one said that SFI is 'Still' Working to make things right. (SFI seems to be a bit 'classier' in the sense they do not spread bad news just to vent. That is called slander.) And when the storm passes, All Stardock will need to say is "Finally we got what they owed us" But can they undo the 'Badmouthing' they perpertrated over the net? SFI gets a bad rep because thay didn't want to play the crybaby game? I know the people at SFI. They have always tried to do the right thing.

Tim, as a businessman you of all people should know that sometimes things happen beyond your control. All anyone can do is try to make things right. It happens to be a slow process. Stardock got 'wounded' but A Lot of my friends got 'Killed' when SFI was forced to shut down it's in-house dev. I have no doubt Stardock has and will recover from this event,.. but they are not making it easier for SFI to makes things right.

Nuf said,.. Cheers!

Hey David, you seem to have a line on this. IIRC, SF was getting tax dollars in return for creating jobs and never really had the income stream to replace the government money. And the cash ran short, they were prohibited from using monies that came from the government to pay outside debt (especially for debt outside of Canada)

Now, I also seem to recall that there were actions and judgments against them here in the states. Do you know if these were cleared by the bankruptcy? I have my doubts, Canadian courts having no jurisdiction in US state courts and such.

[Tim Brooks]

The point is, despite the past transgressions, yes mistakes were obviously made and people lost more than they should have, it�s the future that matters now. To that end, I wish SFI and Aaron the best. However, as a caveat, if they screw Aaron, and by extension the fans, I swear to God, I will resurrect this thread and give SFI the *** whipping beating of all time.

Too bad for Stardock you aren't a Galactic Civilizations fan. Or to put it another way, good for Strategy First that you aren't a Galactic Civilizations fan!

Really guys. I apologize for even posting here. However, I was a developer for over 5 years and released 5 games into retail. Was treated fairly on only one, although not screwed like the Strategy First developers. It is the reason I started Shrapnel Games. So this is a subject that I have real feelings about.

[Caduceus]

We all respect both of you, Tim and David.

I'm interested in your discourse in such a public forum (and would understand if you took it out of our purview and carried on in private).

[Atrocities]

Caduceus said:
We all respect both of you, Tim and David.

.

Well said.

[Renegade 13]

Atrocities said:
From the sounds of it, Canada is too blame. Blame it all on Canada!

You'd better watch it!

[Tim Brooks]

We all respect both of you, Tim and David.

Thanks Caduceas and Atrocities!

I'm interested in your discourse in such a public forum (and would understand if you took it out of our purview and carried on in private).

I have no desire to carry it on in private. I think what happened should be screamed to the world, less we forget. Unlike David, I don't believe it is Stardock's or my resposibility to do PR for Strategy First. The 'Badmouthing' is nothing but telling what happened. If one uninformed developer reads this and makes an informed decision when choosing a publisher, then I will be happy.

You know, the interesting thing is that the companies that treated me unfairly are now no more, except one. There is probably a lesson in there, huh?

Now, having said all that, I don't believe this is the place for me to carry on this discussion. These forums are for the Space Empires fateful, whom I consider my friends, to come and be merry. So cheers to all!

Oh, and drop by the Gamers Front and order a Shrapnel game!

[David E. Gervais]

My mother is dying,.. what do I know,.. or care..

One fact I do know 100% true.. SFI has not disclosed or badmouthed 'ANY' of their developers and have not posted 'ANY' comments on the 'Bad press' being generated by some of their developers (some with good reason).

It seems to me, bad press like that can only hurt everyone involved. If you want/need/deserve money back from someone, using a hydrolic nail gun with 'bad press' nails to seal the said publisher's coffin is like biting off the hand that feeds you, (or in this case falied to feed you) then complaining the still havent fed you and yet they have no more hands in which to feed you. (you just bit them off remember)

With only the opinions of the 'jilted' developers being posted in what can only be called 'venting due to frustration' We are getting only one half of the story. Yes it does appear to be mass agreement that SFI did a bad thing, but I'm just saying there are 2 sides to every story, in this case the publisher cannot comment on what happened and obviously will not comment.

Let me say this,.. "Yes some developers obviously lost revenue form SFI's fiasco,.. but people seem to forget that SFI itself took a MASSIVE Hit. Compare the current situation of the 'affected developers' and SFI.. It seems to me the 'affected developers' have managed to survive in spite of this 'Ugly History' so why continue to badmouth SFI?

Like I said before the 'affected developers' were wounded.. SFI was crippled and had a major Amputation of talented people. What good can come from continuing to say SFI is a bad company, SFI did this,.. SFI had a bankruptcy.. (BTW SFI never went bankrupt, they filed for 'Bankruptcy Protection' which allowed them to do some major restructuring and save what little they could.) This whole "Let's kick the cripple" attacks on SFI are IMHO very unprofessional.

Ok, I hear it.. "What SFI did was unprofessional... blah blah blah.." But I can guarantee you there was never any 'malicious intent' on the part of SFI. All these dev's posting SFI is bad, they screwed me, etc, sure sounds malicious to me. and that my friend is very unprofessional.

Anyways, I really don't like one sided arguements with no comments from the 'opposition' so this whole discussion is 100% pointless.

But hey, My mom is dying,.. I could not care less.

Cheers!

[President_Elect_Shang]

No offensive but on the limited info I have I would place my money on Mr. Brooks opinion. That is with the guy that has game design and publishing experience.

My interest in this discussion (before anyone asks) is obvious. The outcome of this move by MM will affect the future of a game I enjoy so much! I certainly wish MM and Aaron the best of luck, and I hope that he has taken steps to prevent the demise of his company or the commercialization of the SE line.

[Fyron]

David has a lot of game development experience, being an industry artist and all. Made artwork for Starfury, Dungeon Odyssey, and SE5 lately. Plenty of work before that. I don't know if he has personal experience with publishing games, but he is certianly not lacking in game industry experience.