Possible death of Vendetta/Guild Software Inc.

PseudoKrazy

From the news page at vendetta.guildsoftware.com:

" 2003-12-23 21:04:34 The Uncertain Future of the Vendetta Test and Guild Software, Inc.
As many of you have noticed, we haven't been terribly forthcoming with our plans for the future, of late. This has been, in large part, because we haven't been sure if there was going to *be* much of a future for our company or our game. Some of you are aware that I personally have funded the company from its inception. I didn't have a huge amount of money to begin with, so we've learned to stretch our finances pretty far. We've survived for several years, building the game you've seen and looking for a publisher to fund us to completion. As of the beginning of this month, however, I am beyond broke. Ray and Waylon ceased to be paid their minimal-survival salaries at the beginning of the month. Ray has been looking for jobs, Waylon moved his computer home to save on gas and food costs. We've scrounged enough to keep the office for a short period of time, but our outlook is somewhat grim. There have been hopeful possibilities with publishers and the like, but none have panned out, and things have gotten to a pretty bad state for us.

Anyway, it was time to give you, our userbase, a heads-up about this. We aren't dead yet, but we may be soon. The game servers will not be going down immediately, but I'm not going to comment further on the post-demise possibilities for the game at the moment. That eventuality is still a little.. painful, at present.

Our thanks to everyone. OEMs have been very supportive. Matrox, ATI, Nvidia and Apple have all been wonderful to us. Websites like GameSpy, Penny Arcade, Inside Mac Games, Happy Penguin, FreshMeat and Linux Games have all helped us get the word out. Without them we would not have the great base of users that has evolved.

And as for our users, we thank you all for your encouragement and good will over the period of the Vendetta Test. Some of you even asked that we make donations possible, and have since made generous monetary contributions. People have offered to help us host the game, send us hardware, given us their time and ideas, all in the interest that our game might succeed. We are eternally grateful. It has been wonderful to experience so many people being so excited about our project. It's not been easy for any of us here, living on faith and laboring towards an uncertain future. But having a base of people so genuinely thrilled about our creation-in-progress has really made things a lot more positive. I.. wish we could have more fully delivered on all your hopes, as well as our own.

We will be talking with our families, considering our options, and meeting next monday to further decide the fate of our company. Until then, I remain,

John "Incarnate" Bergman
Managing Director
Guild Software, Inc."
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:cry:

Thats ashame, because i really enjoyed playing Vendetta (although i havent been playing that long).

shm · Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2003 9:06 am Post subject:

sad to hear..
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charlieg · Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2003 1:31 pm Post subject:

Well, that's what happens when you spend years developing a good game for free.

Really, they needed to get it published and released a long time ago - at least they could have had it in the shops making a bit of cash.
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PseudoKrazy · Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2003 1:55 pm Post subject:

Well, they were trying to get it published, but not released (as it was only a testbed for what their real product will be). The problem was that the publisers didnt see a market for the game... However, I wouldnt mind paying 5 to 10 bucks a month to play the vendetta-test.

Draco · n00b Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Posts: 69 Location: Atlanta, GA

Read my Sig and you understand....you proally do the same action as me after you played Vendetta... one of the best space-shooter/space-trading game there is

.... and why did they not make money out of it, becuase its a beta version... Vendetta just need sponsors
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AgenT · Apprentice Joined: 18 May 2003 Posts: 280

I never played the game, but if so many people love it, you guys might want to send them an email or two. How else will they know their game is appreciated? Also maybe mention that you would be willing to pay for the game, etc. I also do not see why they need a real publisher. I mean, if their beta already has a pretty big following, they just need to find out how much people are willing to pay (maybe instead of paying a one-time fee, they can do it montly) and release their non-beta game through their own website. Heck if you guys are lazy, just copy/paste what I just said and send it to them

PseudoKrazy · Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2003 11:07 pm Post subject:

yeah, but if the game is to be popularized they really should get a publisher. But until then, I dont see why they arent charging us to play. Its certainly decent enough. Well, tommarow they (Guild Software) are supposed to tell everyone what they decided to do. We;ll just have to wait

neuron · Advocate Joined: 28 May 2002 Posts: 2371

considering they are having an open beta with linux support, getting someone to run game servers shouldn't be a problem either.

PseudoKrazy · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 12:19 am Post subject:

Yeah, a few of the players on the vendetta forums offered to host a server/servers, or at least mentioned the idea. Maybe they will make the game Open Source so everyone can help develope it.

Roguelazer · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 2:03 am Post subject:

Game servers is a problem. It's a persistant universe that can't be fragmented. As for a publisher, they've been trying. Everyone turns them down, the game's not finished enough or some ****. Open Source would kinda wreck it. I mean, I love open source. But they have a storyline planned, and lots of major features half-implimented. This isn't exactly VegaStrike, it's already several orders of magnitude more advanced, both graphically and featurally. If they Open Sourced it, it'd stay alive but it'd end up Quake In Space. Eww. What they need is money, because Incarnate's been funding it solo for waaay too long.
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PseudoKrazy · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 2:36 am Post subject:

Hmm.. quake in space :lol:

Sounds fun too me.

charlieg · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 10:11 am Post subject:

Glenn · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 10:47 pm Post subject:

It would be a good idea to either write to pc-gaming magazines about vendetta or perhaps encourage someone from a pc-gaming magazine to write an artical about them. Free publicity.

revertex_dot_net · n00b Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 39

It's really sad, this is the only game i know with Transformation&Ilumination, if someone had played this whith a G-Force TI knows what i'm talk about, TI is really impressive.

PseudoKrazy · Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2004 3:01 am Post subject:

hmm... heres a headsup on what the developor(incarnate) proposed as far as money is concerned:

"2003-12-29 01:08:28 incarnate
Thanks everyone for all your good wishes and supportive thoughts. We do really appreciate it.

Some people have suggested creating some sort of monthly payment system, by which people can contribute a monthly fee and receive an added benefit. We have given some thought to this. It's more an issue of whether we could generate enough money to keep us afloat, even minimally.

In any event, seeing as how the game is unfinished, we frequently break things, and there's a great deal of gameplay missing.. we've obviously been kind of reluctant to ask people to pay for it. But here's a slightly different idea:

What do you guys think of the concept of having a separate class of accounts (those who paid a monthly fee), which, rather than having an in-game benefit, would instead give access to making suggestions about the game or debating game direction. Potentially we could put some things up to a vote, among those users, periodically. In the short term this could amount to basically moving the Suggestions forum to a "paid only" location. But, there are a lot of other possibilities.

Some games (like A Tale In The Desert) have large parts of their game design based on the users making proposals, gaining support amongst themselves for their ideas, and then submitting them to the developers for final approval and implementation. They have a whole in-game system for this. I think it's a concept with great possibilities, since the people who play the game are often the ones most acutely aware of its flaws and untapped potential. We've seen the basics of this with the Petitions on our existing Suggestions forum.

Of course, there has to be some structure and oversight to keep the signal-to-noise ratio from being completely insane. We wouldn't be required to implement suggestions, of course, and would have the final say on anything. But it might make for a cool way to get people more involved in the game they play, a way for us to get good ideas, and for everyone to get some.. value for their contribution.

Anyway. The final question would be really whether we could interest enough people to maintain sufficient income to keep the company alive. I appreciate the people who have said they would support us, in the "Whales" thread. Many thanks to those who have donated, as well."

Sounds good to me, although i'm too cheap for p2p. After wasteing enough money on Everquest a few years ago, I try to refrien from games like that. However, I'd be more then happy to pay for the actual game, whether its a test or not. I like to actually own my games. Not temporarily on a monthly basis...