Ark Ascended Questions

[wildbill]

44 minutes ago, darkradeon said:

snail just killed ASA game hosting services with nitrado exclusive agreement XD

and it's unclear if this will start apply to ASE too

Generally, this is not good, although apparently WC is nearly out of money and used this agreement to get a loan from Nitrado. So better than having no money and no game in a few months I think. I prefer G-Portal myself, although I've used Nitrado before and it went OK.

A bigger question here is how will this affect all those ARK clusters that don't use a hosting service, but have their own systems that they run ARK servers on. Most of these ask for donations or a subscription with some kind of in game item given for the cost of the subscription. The new exclusive agreement only applies to commercial hosting services. So are these community servers that are user funded considered to be commercial servers? Will they have to get more creative in how they ask for money to offset their costs? Some people think they are making money off this and some probably are. I would guess the majority are just breaking even on their costs. Even more are run by someone that can afford the cost out of their own pocket, but accept donations.

[Pipinghot]

3 hours ago, wildbill said:

It is a new game, similar to how Atlas was a new game.

Changing the cover on a book doesn't make it a new book.

ASA is going to be 95%+ the exact same game. Atlas was significantly more different from ASE than ASA is going to be.

3 hours ago, wildbill said:

Atlas was just the ARK code copied over to a new game with some new resources.

Atlas has entirely different lore, background and story, not to mention it's all one great big world with every player in the game being in the same world/map with every other player. That makes it far more more different than ASA is going to be.

3 hours ago, wildbill said:

Not a new game engine though, so maybe more a new game than Atlas was.

Copy/pasting the code for a game into a different game engine doesn't make it a new game, having a game that plays differently and feels different from the previous game is what makes it a new game.

A game (from the point of view of players) is made of game mechanics and game play, the underlying engine is meaningless. Porting the code from UE4 to UE5 and calling it a new game is dishonest.

3 hours ago, wildbill said:

Really, you buy it or don't. Up to each person. Sounds kind of stupid to even have to say that. It should be obvious that if you don't want to pay for something and feel you shouldn't be charged for it and it should be free instead, well then, you just don't buy it.

That's true, but the ability of individuals to choose doesn't change the underlying truth about whether WC is trying to perpetrate a scam. If lots of people fall for a scam it's still a scam, that's something scammers depend on.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Pipinghot

[wildbill]

59 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

Copy/pasting the code for a game into a different game engine doesn't make it a new game, having a game that plays differently and feels different from the previous game is what makes it a new game.

Well that is from the perspective of someone not in the software business. Since you don't know how it works, that is a fair assumption, but wrong.

At work, we had a tool that all they did was move the interface from in a web browser using flash to a new web paradyne. The functionality was exactly the same. They only charged us $10,000 for the one copy to be updated so it would work again. We had already bought this device, but the user interface had stopped working when flash was removed from browsers for security reasons. 

This was apparently expensive for the company to update, so they passed the cost onto the customer. Typical I think for products with software. This new ARK version is very much like that, although the customer base is millions, not maybe 1000 or so. Pretty sure this is typical, but maybe you think something that costs a company millions to update should be free. You can think that, but that doesn't make it true.

This has nothing to do with whether you are getting something new and very different. This is just a company passing the cost on to the customer. That is how businesses work in the real world (hopefully we are both in this real world).

[Frack]

in as short as 41 days  (Oct 1), as long as 72 days (Oct 31), we may get to see how much is new, old, different, same, broken, fixed, missing in the migrated ASE to ASA

Edited August 16, 2023 by Frack

[jakebaker]

In the latest community crunch it was said that "As previously stated, we’ll add an additional real-world creature for each expansion pack map release on ARK: Survival Ascended."

I think this statement needs clarification. Is that statement in reference to the creature vote that is happening for each map or is it that Wild Card is adding an additional creature for each map in addition to the creature vote?

[DirkInSA]

12 hours ago, Frack said:

in as short as 41 days  (Oct 1), as long as 72 days (Oct 31), we may to get to see how much is new, old, different, same, broken, fixed, missing in the migrated ASE to ASA

Ha Ha - I you still believe the October release date, I have a bridge in San Francisco to sell you: Hardly used, and even then only ever used by old peeps driving slowly to the shop.

[Frack]

3 hours ago, DirkInSA said:

Ha Ha - I you still believe the October release date, I have a bridge in San Francisco to sell you: Hardly used, and even then only ever used by old peeps driving slowly to the shop.

key words in my post is "we may get" 

 

may¹

verb

 

1. 1.

   expressing possibility.

   "that may be true"

    

[Batza]

I don't understand why there's no steam page for ASA yet. Ark 2 has a page for over a year now.

[wildbill]

1 hour ago, Batza said:

I don't understand why there's no steam page for ASA yet. Ark 2 has a page for over a year now.

Your assuming ASA will be on steam. I am too, but no reason it has to be. The Steam Workshop is no longer going to be used for mods for ASA. It could get moved to some other platform or even a website. The lack of information for something coming out in a few months seems a little odd. I've just resigned to trying to wait patiently. We will know when we need to I suppose.

I just want to clarify that as far as I know, the new mod platform, Overwolf does work with Steam, so no reason why we shouldn't be seeing ASA on steam soon. I did read an article:

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/08/15/2725808/0/en/ARK-Survival-Ascended-Will-Exclusively-Use-Nitrado-Technology-for-Game-Servers-to-Enhance-the-Multiplayer-Experience.html

It doesn't have much information. Just that Overwolf will be used for mods, we will have new DDOS protection (SteelShield). Also that for commercial servers, Nitrado has an exclusive contract to provide hosting. I've heard else where that that deal was secured in exchange for loaning money to WC to finish work on ASA. Non-commercial private servers can still be used too.

I did read that ASA has passed testing (not sure exactly what testing), but that sounds like good news. Also that as part of the Nitrado deal, there is a deadline that must be met. Really starting to sound like we are going to see the early access release of ASA in October.

Edited August 16, 2023 by wildbill
typo

[invincibleqc]

51 minutes ago, wildbill said:

Your assuming ASA will be on steam. I am too, but no reason it has to be.

  From the original announcement:

On 3/31/2023 at 5:38 PM, StudioWildcard said:

It will be released on Xbox Series S/X, PC (Windows/Steam), and PlayStation 5

 

[Pipinghot]

On 8/15/2023 at 9:05 PM, wildbill said:

Well that is from the perspective of someone not in the software business. Since you don't know how it works, that is a fair assumption, but wrong.

On the contrary, it's your assumption about my experience that's wrong.

On 8/15/2023 at 9:05 PM, wildbill said:

At work, we had a tool that all they did was move the interface from in a web browser using flash to a new web paradyne. The functionality was exactly the same. They only charged us $10,000 for the one copy to be updated so it would work again. We had already bought this device, but the user interface had stopped working when flash was removed from browsers for security reasons.

Based on what you've written, it is you who lacks the pertinent experience in doing conversions and migrations. From what you've written you come across as someone who knows just a little about what was done and thinks that your indirect knowledge means you understand what it takes to do conversions/ports/migrations. You're using your second hand knowledge of one single, small migration project and trying to intuitively make the leap to understanding other migration projects despite not having direct, relevant experience.

Just because you worked for a company that paid to have it done doesn't mean that you understand how to do it. It's an understandable mistake, we all try to intuit things that we don't have experience of, but it's a mistake nonetheless.

On 8/15/2023 at 9:05 PM, wildbill said:

This was apparently expensive for the company to update, so they passed the cost onto the customer. Typical I think for products with software. This new ARK version is very much like that, although the customer base is millions, not maybe 1000 or so. Pretty sure this is typical, but maybe you think something that costs a company millions to update should be free. You can think that, but that doesn't make it true.

Having said that allow me to say that when I talk about "copy/pasting" ARK into UE5 that's an over-simplification. I was deliberately over-simplifying because no on one the forums wants to do a deep dive into the weeds of a software migration project. I will stipulate that describing is as copy/pasting their code into UE5 is an over-simplification, because of course it it.

But, it was a deliberate over-simplification to make a point, and the point is that it's not as hard as WC wants people to believe.

Is the amount of work trivial? No. It takes real work, serious work by people who have knowledge of both the application and the migration process, and the more customization that has been done on that application under UE4 the more work will be required to migrate to UE5. But still not as much work as they want you to believe.

So it's not truly copy/pasting, but it's also far, far from being a new product. The whole point of using an environment framework to build an application is that the environment framework, the game engine, does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. This is the main reason that developers use UE (or Unity, Godot, GDevelop, Cryengine, or other alternatives) specifically because the engine makes the processes of building a game and migrating it to future technologies easier than doing everything from scratch. That is exactly what the game developer is paying for when they use a game engine to build their game on, making their own job easier and requiring much less work than if they did it all themselves from scratch.

This would be a somewhat different conversation if we were talking about migrating from UE to Unity, that would take more work and be more expensive than the project that's actually happening. Migrating from UE4 to UE5 is the easiest, lowest effort, lowest cost migration possible when compared to migrating from UE4 to any other game engine. And that difference matters, they're not migrating from UE to Unity, or from UE to Cryengine, they're migrating from UE4 to UE5, which is highly important to keep in mind.

On 8/15/2023 at 9:05 PM, wildbill said:

This was apparently expensive for the company to update, so they passed the cost onto the customer. Typical I think for products with software. This new ARK version is very much like that, although the customer base is millions, not maybe 1000 or so.

What this shows is that you don't truly understand software scaling, nor the underlying costs of doing software migrations.

Doing a migration, any migration, even for one user or machine, has a fixed cost based on the size and complexity of the application being migrated. A small application is going to take (roughly) the same amount of time & work regardless of whether it's for one person/computer or 1,000 people/computers. It's not the number of installs that matters, it's the size & complexity of the application being migrated. Naturally there will be a small increase in the total work/cost per install but it's very small on a per-install basis compared to the base cost of the migration.

In the case of your company (based on your description) they did a migration of server software so it was basically one conversion. The fact that the server was serving up content for 10,000 users was rather unimportant to the migration project because they had a singular focus, convert the server application from one technology to a new one.

But even if your company's project had been an application that got installed 10,000 times on every individual desktop it still would not have cost much more than $10,000. It might have doubled or even triples to $20,000 or $30,000 but it would not have cost some crazy number like $100,000,000 (10,000*10,000) because that's not how software scaling works. Instead, it it was an application, your company would have used whatever software distribution method they currently use to distribute that new version to the desks of all 10,00 users. The method is unimportant, whether that method was automated ESD (electronic software distribution) or an e-mail to every person in the company telling them to click on a link and install the new version to their computer really doesn't matters, either way that distribution to 10,000 users would not have pumped up the cost of the project by a lot because the project to migrate the software and the activity required to distribute the new software are decoupled from each other.

On 8/15/2023 at 9:05 PM, wildbill said:

Pretty sure this is typical, but maybe you think something that costs a company millions to update should be free.

This is another misinformed assumption on your part.

According to one of the founding partners of WildCard, Jesse Rapczak, the total cost for the original development of ARK, when they were building the game from nothing into a viable product, was $1.5M.

"It's too early to talk about profit since we still have a game to make and there are plenty of costs associated with all of that, but the revenue from sales has already paid for the $1.5 million cost of development over the past seven months," Jesse Rapczak, co-founder, co-creative director, Studio Wildcard explained to GamesIndustry.biz.

I also remember seeing different quote from a different interview in which he said it was $2M. Take your pick, either $1.5M or $2M is close enough for this conversation.

Not "millions", just $1.5-$2M. And that was the cost of building ARK from nothing.

It's been a few years since then, and ARK is a bigger, more complicated game than when it was first developed, also we've seen the results of inflation in the last couple of years. But even with all of that being said, it costs significantly less to migrate a developed product than to develop a new product from scratch.

If this was still 2015 then the migration of ARK would cost somewhere in the range of $250k-$750k, but since this is 2023 I'd estimate that the migration cost will be somewhere from $1M-$3M. That's definitely a lot of money, perhaps even more money than the original cost to develop the game, but by no stretch of the imagination will it cost "millions" of dollars.

You certainly have the choice to allow WildCard to convince you that migrating ARK from UE4 to UE5 is harder and more expensive than it really is, but in your own words...

On 8/15/2023 at 9:05 PM, wildbill said:

You can think that, but that doesn't make it true.

 

 

On 8/15/2023 at 9:05 PM, wildbill said:

This has nothing to do with whether you are getting something new and very different. This is just a company passing the cost on to the customer.

No, it's really not. It's nothing like that. It's a company attempting a cash grab, trying to pull a grift and hoping that players will be a bunch of suckers who will pay them much more than the value of what they're providing to the players.

This would be a good time to remind you that they've change their story multiple times, which is not something one expects from an honest company.

 

1) January - Conversion from UE4 to UE5 will be free.

2) March - Conversion from UE4 to UE5 will cost $50.00, but it will include ARK2 (a game that so far is vaporware) and you'll have to pay $20.00 each for ASA Explorers' Pass and ASA Genesis Pass.

Total price = $90.00

3) April - Conversion from UE4 to UE5 will cost $60.00, but will include Explorers' and Genesis, but not ARK2 anymore, but we don't know how much ARK2 is going to cost.

Total price = $60.00 + whatever-ARK2-will-cost.

4) June - Conversion from UE4 to UE5 will cost $45.00, but will not include Explorers' and Genesis at first (and if you believe they won't change things and try to charge something for Explorers' & Genesis later on then I have a lovely vacation getaway in the Sahara Desert I'd like to sell you). No further discussion of ARK2, it's disappeared from the conversation.

Total Price = $45.00 + whatever-they-will-try-to-charge-later-for-DLC's + whatever-ARK2-will-cost.

 

No matter how you slice it, all of those "offers" add up to $90.00 or more by the time you've factored in all of the prices. Even worse, they tried to pretend that their "offers" are getting better each time when they're really not.

None of this is "just a company passing the cost on to the customer", they are implying (and allowing other people to say without correction) that the costs are much much higher than they really are, and they're compounding that dishonesty by juggling marketing campaigns designed to create the illusion that they're listening and lowering the prices when in reality the total cost of everything (ASA + Explorers' + Genesis + Mods + ARK2) has been $90.00 (or more) in every single pricing scheme they've concocted.

 

On top of all that, other games have completed the migration from UE4 to UE5 for free - because it's simply not as difficult or expensive as you think it is.

On 8/15/2023 at 9:05 PM, wildbill said:

That is how businesses work in the real world (hopefully we are both in this real world).

It's how some businesses try to work and it's up to us, the consumers, the players, to not fall for it. If we go along with it and let them get away with it, then it's as much our fault as theirs. Every person who allows themselves to pay a sucker's price for ASA is teaching dishonest game companies that they're going to be just fine being dishonest.

When you pay a grifter, they just keep on grifting.

Edited August 17, 2023 by Pipinghot

[CervantesMor]

On 8/15/2023 at 10:54 PM, darkradeon said:

snail just killed ASA game hosting services with nitrado exclusive agreement XD

and it's unclear if this will start apply to ASE too

 

Meaning what? What happened?

[Pipinghot]

7 hours ago, CervantesMor said:

Meaning what? What happened?

WC announced that they will have an exclusive agreement with Nitrado for hosting their official server network and for renting unofficial servers to people. No other server providers will be able to rent servers for ARK.

p.s. As far as we know, privately owned servers will continue to work as-is, but as far as I know WC has not specifically committed to this or answered this question yet.

[CervantesMor]

2 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

WC announced that they will have an exclusive agreement with Nitrado for hosting their official server network and for renting unofficial servers to people. No other server providers will be able to rent servers for ARK.

p.s. As far as we know, privately owned servers will continue to work as-is, but as far as I know WC has not specifically committed to this or answered this question yet.

Thanks for the clarification, can I "fantasize" that with this they are also finding a solution to the "ASE Save-Data transfer for Console"?

[wildbill]

13 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

On the contrary, it's your assumption about my experience that's wrong.

Its clear you have a lot of experience writing a ton of bullpoop. About the rest, not clear at all. 

I gave you one example. But in house, we actually ported a very large application from 32-bit, to 64-bit. So Linux 32-bit application, simply converted to a 64-bit application. So you would think easy, just recompile it with the 64-bit option, done I suppose? That was started about 3 years ago. We are still shipping the 32-bit to 99% of the customers, the 64-bit port is still not complete. Yes, there is a lot more to software releases than anyone not in the business can imagine or understand.

And yes, quantity of customers is a key factor. If it cost $5,00,000 to update a piece of software (I'm talking today's dollars, not the cost almost 10 years ago, which would be much less), and you have 500 customers. To completely cover the cost (never mind profit that all companies need to make), you would charge $10,000 each. Now if you have 1,000,000 customers, which ARK certainly has more than that for ASA, you would charge $5. The number of customers does matter and it is a huge consideration. If developing a new product, you first determine the market size and other factors before spending anything on development costs. BTW, actual development costs are not even 50% of what it costs to bring a product to market and sell it. I'm not on the financial side of things, but I think typically more like 10%. So to include all that other overhead of running a company, just multiply the development cost by 10. That is around what a company would normally charge for it.

BTW, I never said I'm an expert, I'm just saying you clearly don't know what you are talking about no matter how much you say you do.

Edited August 17, 2023 by wildbill

[darkradeon]

would be loverly if just to switch to 64 bit from 32 bit on x86 would be just a matter to recompile.. unfortunately bad programmers had the bad habit to store pointers into integers (I am talking to you cast to long guys) :V

And excluding there aren't assembly and intrinsics in the middle to break more the code :v

[wildbill]

23 minutes ago, darkradeon said:

would be loverly if just to switch to 64 bit from 32 bit on x86 would be just a matter to recompile.. unfortunately bad programmers had the bad habit to store pointers into integers (I am talking to you cast to long guys) :V

And excluding there aren't assembly and intrinsics in the middle to break more the code :v

Yes, seen this in our code too. 

We are porting from the Linux 4 kernel (32-bit) to Linux 5 kernel (64-bit). Coincidentally that is the versions of the unreal engine that ARK is being ported between (although it is more than just a straight port).

My company charges a yearly support subscription (this costs in the range of thousands of dollars) to customers. One of the benefits besides "free" technical support is "free" upgrades. So any customer that wants the newer 64-bit version of our software will get that included in their support subscription. If they don't have a subscription (and some of our customers don't), they will need to buy a whole new copy of our product to get the newest version (or add a support subscription).

I've seen it argued that ARK should have used a subscription model like many other games do (for instance World of Warcraft). If they had, ASA would mostly likely be "free" as you would be paying a monthly subscription to cover its cost. I'd rather pay as I go (the ARK model). 

[johnm81]

On 8/15/2023 at 12:13 PM, wildbill said:

Just consider ASA to be a new game. No progress occurs in a new game until you play it. There will be no character (or anything else) transfer from the current ARK to ASA.

Many of us enjoy the early game of each fresh start, but if you don't, then ASA may not be for you.

Please re-read my post you didn't understand it.

[ancojo]

Are there going to be any PVE servers when ASA lauches?

Thanks

[wildbill]

On 8/18/2023 at 8:49 PM, johnm81 said:

Please re-read my post you didn't understand it.

Oh, weird and unexpected question you had. Who knows. Personally I don't care, as I don't play on official servers.

[Pipinghot]

On 8/16/2023 at 1:45 AM, jakebaker said:

In the latest community crunch it was said that "As previously stated, we’ll add an additional real-world creature for each expansion pack map release on ARK: Survival Ascended."

I think this statement needs clarification. Is that statement in reference to the creature vote that is happening for each map or is it that Wild Card is adding an additional creature for each map in addition to the creature vote?

They are one-and-the-same, which WildCard explained right from the beginning. The creature votes for each map are limited to real-world creatures, and the winner of each vote will get added to that map.

[Pipinghot]

19 hours ago, ancojo said:

Are there going to be any PVE servers when ASA lauches?

Yes, there will be new ASA PvE servers.

The game will be almost exactly like it is today, it will just be rebranded as ASA. Everything that you love about ARK and that you hate about ARK will still be there, it will just have a different name and a some minor changes.

[Pipinghot]

On 8/12/2023 at 2:48 PM, johnm81 said:

Has there been any comment on if characters in early release of asa will be wiped or will their progress remain?

AFAIK WildCard has not commented on this question.

[Pipinghot]

On 8/17/2023 at 1:28 PM, wildbill said:

Its clear you have a lot of experience writing a ton of bullpoop. About the rest, not clear at all.

One can't help but wonder which part of that post confused you so much, maybe all the big words or possibly the math was too complicated for you.

Is that better? Is that what you're looking for? If you'd rather trade cheap shots than have a serious discussion I suppose we can go that route, but it doesn't say good things about the integrity of your intentions. There's nothing wrong with arguing, and there's nothing that says we have to agree in the end, but if you want to have an honest conversation it will require taking a different approach.

On 8/17/2023 at 1:28 PM, wildbill said:

I gave you one example. But in house, we actually ported a very large application from 32-bit, to 64-bit. So Linux 32-bit application, simply converted to a 64-bit application. So you would think easy, just recompile it with the 64-bit option, done I suppose? That was started about 3 years ago. We are still shipping the 32-bit to 99% of the customers, the 64-bit port is still not complete.

What that tells me is you're working for a company that's not very good at this aspect of their business. And before you think I'm trying to insult you, read my example below for comparison. Not saying that's the fault of your developers, it could be an executive/business decision maker that refuses to provide proper funding, or someone who fails to understand the importance of hiring people with the right skill set do this work, or whoever is leading the migration project isn't good at managing development projects, or... something else, who knows what.

But really the reason why doesn't matter, the point is that one way or another your employer doesn't know how to do it properly.

For your comparison, in my last job we migrated our entire data center, 30+ applications, large, multi-server applications, spread across 200+ servers, while at the same time migrating them to new technologies (most of them migrated from physical, bare metal, Solaris servers to Red Hat virtual servers). As part of this process we migrated from a single data center using backups to two brand new data centers while reconfiguring all of our applications to an entirely different paradigm having 24/7 live failover capabilities between data centers. In addition to all of the changes each of the development, operations & server teams had to make, this involved a completely new network architecture, the new networks at the new data centers were built from the ground up. We had almost 100% successful first-attempt migrations. Only 1 application out of 30 had to do a fall-back to the original data center on the first attempt, then succeeded on the 2nd attempt.

This entire project (really multiple projects nested into one) was completed in 2 1/2 years with 99.9% success vs. SLA's to our customers.

So if your company can't migrate a single application from 32-bit to 64-bit after 3 years then somebody, or plural somebody's, doesn't know what they're doing. I hope it's obvious that's not an attack on you, I'm not suggesting that  you're responsible for this failure. The point here to give you a sense of perspective on the difference between people attempting migrations without the right skills in place vs. people who are good at it. If you are using your employer as the baseline for how easy-or-hard it is to do migrations, they're giving you the wrong perspective on how it can be done by teams with the proper skill sets and good project management.

On 8/17/2023 at 1:28 PM, wildbill said:

Yes, there is a lot more to software releases than anyone not in the business can imagine or understand.

 

True, which I've already agreed with.

And, again, I am in the business so you can drop the "anyone not in the business" arguments because they don't apply here.

On 8/17/2023 at 1:28 PM, wildbill said:

And yes, quantity of customers is a key factor.

Yes, for distribution only, not for the technical requirements of migrating the application to a new environment.

WildCard already pays for data storage and distribution for ASE, this isn't suddenly going to be a new thing for ASA. There will be a temporary uptick in the bandwidth they have to pay for, as ASA gets distributed to their customers, but that uptick will be brief and will not be a significant portion of the overall cost of the project. The bulk of the cost for the migration, both in terms of work/time/hours and in terms of dollars, will be spend on the process of porting ARK from UE4 to UE5.

On 8/17/2023 at 1:28 PM, wildbill said:

If it cost $5,00,000 to update a piece of software (I'm talking today's dollars, not the cost almost 10 years ago, which would be much less), and you have 500 customers. To completely cover the cost (never mind profit that all companies need to make), you would charge $10,000 each. Now if you have 1,000,000 customers, which ARK certainly has more than that for ASA, you would charge $5.

So you agree that ASA should only cost $10-$15 at most. In that case, what are you arguing about?

On 8/17/2023 at 1:28 PM, wildbill said:

The number of customers does matter and it is a huge consideration. If developing a new product, you first determine the market size and other factors before spending anything on development costs.

They're not developing a new product. They're porting their existing product from one application environment to another, which is significantly less work than developing a new product would be. The version of UE is new, the version of ARK will be fundamentally the same, regardless of any marketing lies that they're trying to tell.

On 8/17/2023 at 1:28 PM, wildbill said:

BTW, actual development costs are not even 50% of what it costs to bring a product to market and sell it.

Debating portions and percentages is a moot point because they're not developing a new product to bring to market. They're porting an existing product which already has an established market and trying to pretend that it's new when it's really the same thing with just a few changes.

They are making an incremental change to an existing product and trying to rebrand it as new. As always, changing the cover of a book doesn't make it a new book. It barely qualifies as a new version, or a DLC, it's certainly not a new product by any stretch of the imagination.

On 8/17/2023 at 1:28 PM, wildbill said:

I'm not on the financial side of things

So you're not technical and you're not financial, but that hasn't stopped you from arguing that you know more about the technical and financial aspects of migration projects than someone who has experience with both.

On 8/17/2023 at 1:28 PM, wildbill said:

BTW, I never said I'm an expert, I'm just saying you clearly don't know what you are talking about no matter how much you say you do.

I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it drink. Stay thirsty if you want to, it's your choice.

[ancojo]

I've seen a video on YT regarding the Snail Games loan that was agreed recently, it mentions some clauses regarding repayment and the rules under how those could change, whats mentioned is that if the "PC version" of ASA is not released by end of October a different repayment schedule kicks in so my question is simply does this mean that console versions will not be released at the same time as the PC version?

Thanks