I know this may sound offensive, and it's totally not meant to be, but.....
It amazes me, sometimes, that good folks will sign up for recurring charges to support
a game (dev) which is less than a half-assed attempt (when compared to AAA releases).
New fully developed, complete, fancy games that are supported by the company, hopefully, can
cost around $50ish. Some higher, some lower but still.... some devs take the money and may or may
not update anything...Might abandon it like this one.
But you can go buy a AAA game for less(ish) than supporting 'vaporware' like this.
Makes it really difficult on the good developers that are really trying their best around here when
you have others that keep taking money and not producing anything.
That's more akin to stealing money from people
..............................
In other news.... I hope you all have a great day, lol.....
As others, including myself, have wondered.... If someone were to just copy and continue this
game, could they be sued? I'm not sure most of the games on here would be protected by any licensing laws??
Cheers
Can't fault people for optimism. Game development is a complex process and requires a variety of knowledge, skill, and resources. The thing about bigger game companies is that having enough budget to fill all those roles with people specifically good at those roles means that progress is faster and more consistent. With indie game development, anyone getting sick, stuck in a rut, or lacking the skills to progress the story or more efficiently code means frequent hangups. The more complex the game, the more complex the setbacks. For the beloved games like this that suddenly stop development, I'm fairly certain that "stealing" wasn't the initial intention, and I'd wager that it's not the current intention either. Shit happens, and (especially small trickles of money,) money doesn't solve all problems.
I'm not a fan of the idea of 1:1 copying games that are on hold. Consider this, if some hero had the skill and commitment needed to finish the game, why not just make their own? If they had skills to make something as good as this game, logic stands to reason that their own game should be equally good. You'd have a brand new game and a dev with a well deserved reputation.
But also consider this, what is easier, making a new game, or remaking a game that already has mechanics and writing that's already tried and true? I have no doubt that many people can remake this game in another engine or whatever, but the only skill they would need is coding to bring the game current. There's no guarantee that content that comes after the original game will be any good. Plus, if they collected money while remaking the game from scratch, they could stand to profit enough that it doesn't matter if that person decided to expand on the game or not.
Between the honest, talented prospective dev and a dishonest scammer, which is more likely to appear? Say that the honest, talented dev appears, but everyone's so worried about them being a potential scammer as to not support them, they may waste a few weeks or months before giving up and decide not to bother making anything new either. Better to make something new than encourage people to sieze the fruit of someone else's efforts.