Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal
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Outside of couple (edit for @spoletta ->) very nice people that suspiciously joined at the peak of Gamigo deal rumours and immedietally started supporting Gamigo during every conversation ( <- edit end) week ago, the best reaction this deal got was roughly "I dont trust Gamigo, but I trust Prom" (this type of reaction used to be the worst when for example big changes to Syndesia PvP were happening..now its the "best" you got).
People dont trust Gamigo. Best they can do is offer refunds to the unhappy people and prove this isnt a quick cashgrab for them. If people see Gamigo is willing to take a small hit early on and is serious about the game, theyll buy back into it later on.
All of us bought into the vision of Fractured, because we liked it, only reason of the anger and distrust is Gamigo and its very real
reputation. If Gamigo proves their good intentions are real, people will come back and buy back into it. Just like they bought into it months or years ago. We like Fractured. None of us are angry because Fractured changed direction, because it didnt. If Gamigo shows they mean well, none of the people have a reason to not come back. On the other hand, if Gamigo gets stubborn, they risk "evangelist alienation" (think of it as reversed word of mouth PR), where their biggest loyal supporters, the lifeblood of the game for last several years, will turn on them. MMOs live and die by their communities and public image. And the biggest supporters tend to have the passion and time to both support...or the opposite.Gamigo exists for about 20years (2000 founded, says google). They had plenty of times to take their "second chance" people offered them...and failed them over and over. After 20years, you dont get second chances. After 20years, you must show youre worthy of another second chance.
Nothing says "We mean well/are the good guys" or alternatively disproves the "You just want a quick cashgrab" claim like offering to take a small initial hit with refunds. Fractured isnt a game with massive following (yet), the refunds are dozens or low hundreds of people at most, that doesnt even translate into 100k €.
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Calling "shills" persons with different opinion than yours isn't very nice, and this thread should probably be flagged for deletion.
The point you make though can be a valuable discussion, so I'd suggest that you just edit that part.
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Is refund even possible ?
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Technically no, the refund is allowed within 14 days of the purchase.
That doesn't mean that you can't request an exception.
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@Fortie don"t think so
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I don't need a refund, but can I have the KS cape of one of those who wants/gets a refund puppy eyes
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This post is deleted!
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@Jacenson said in Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal:
@Fortie don"t think so
Definitely in Germany because they haven't delivered everything yet.
Take a look at the Developer Forum access ... That alone is not legally justifiable in Germany.
And now it is even becoming unreasonable.
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Money already spent/earmarked can't be expected to be refunded, and a game developer has the right to go with any publisher they can contract with.
As for Gamigo paying the refunds, that's insane. A publisher isn't going n g to fund refunds from prior to their contract signing, especially outside of the refund window established.
Make a reasonable ask. This isn't one.
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@GamerSeuss said in Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal:
Money already spent/earmarked can't be expected to be refunded, and a game developer has the right to go with any publisher they can contract with.
As for Gamigo paying the refunds, that's insane. A publisher isn't going n g to fund refunds from prior to their contract signing, especially outside of the refund window established.
Make a reasonable ask. This isn't one.
As @Selfish said above, thanks to EU law (applies to non-EU companies too since its entirely dependent on customer residency/citizenship), preorder can be cancelled anytime before full product delivery and without question, in case of videogames, full release (and/or in moment of delivery of last pack benefit). In fact, its applicable even on "third party merchants" like Xsolla if people were to go through their banks.
Anyway, the post was about Gamigo showing goodwill and offering the refunds, not if "refunds can or cannot be done" thats not the topic
, because just their reputation is enough to kill the playerbase and noone is going to buy into their empty promises they broke many times before. If they are serious about not using Fractured as a quick cashgrab, "show, dont tell"...barely anyone is buying into their lies these days.Edit: KS tends to be unrefundable as those count as donations.
Edit2: Based on my previous experience with refunds, preorders are fully refundable even if the dev studio closes down.
Tho, it does require your bank to step in as they are the needed "convincing" heavy weight
Edit3: I am asking for Gamigo/DS to offer refunds for people that want nothing to do with Gamigo. If people go through their banks or Xsolla, thats unnecessary drain on DS resources as that cant be brushed of with a simple "no".
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@GamerSeuss said in Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal:
(...)Make a reasonable ask. This isn't one.
It's a perfectly reasonable suggestion.
Gamigo has a reputation, regardless if that reputation is deserved or not, it exists and it's going to influence sales. This would be a rather cheap (there shouldn't be more than say 100-200k in refunds, that's 'peanuts') PR stunt and I know companies that'd kiss your behind if they could improve brand loyalty for such a bargain.
The content creators that have reported rather negatively on this deal would instead report slightly optimistic. Sales and profit would increase long term, that is, if and only if Gamigo has a long term investment planned.
If they are simply in for the quick cash grab, you're correct, this would be a completely unreasonable request.
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I understand where you are coming from, but you are being quite careless on 2 points:
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Both you and cookie have no kind of metric or method to claim those "100-200k". Yours is just a very wild and baseless guess.
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200k are not peanuts by any possible definition. They are 4 months of development funds under the current team or 8 months under the old one.
Are you really saying that 4 months make no difference in the development of a game?
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@spoletta said in Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal:
I understand where you are coming from, but you are being quite careless on 2 points:
- Both you and cookie have no kind of metric or method to claim those "100-200k". Yours is just a very wild and baseless guess.
Its not really that baseless. Activity in between tests is dozens of players at best, if we include word of mouth between the unhappy, you would get hundreds, most likely low hundreds.
All of them would need to have Eternal pack for 300€ to break 100k barrier, based on what I know about purchases in my own guild (sample of about 100people), most common purchase is the 45€/50€ one followed by the cheapest and 90€ packs. Champion mostly ignored and Eternal owned by only few individuals. Based on that, we are probably not even talking about 100k but less.
All Gamigo and DS need to do with the "PR stunt" as @Logain called it, is time it right (not during or around announced test phase) and make it a time limited offer (which is completely reasonable thing to do), minimum costs and maximum positive effect as every content creator and news site will be blasting variations of "Did Gamigo change into good guys?!" with their current and future playerbase being much more trusting.
PS: It is peanuts, Gamigo yearly revenue was around 60 million with 30% YoY growth in 2019
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@spoletta said in Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal:
(...)no kind of metric or method to claim those "100-200k"(...)
Fractured has sold roughly 4-5k pledge packages so far, right? I'm basing that number both on the accounts that joined the recent tests (~4k) and on the funding page.
If mood was to be that all of these were to issue refunds after such an offer, the game would be doomed to begin with, since that would leave virtually no chance that others would buy the game. I trust Gamigo to have a business plan for Fractured and that means they have analyzed that more people are going to purchase packages, so I'm ruling out that possibility.
Assuming that roughly one in three or one in four people would take the offer and issue a refund seems a reasonable (worst case) prediction under these circumstances (Gamigo's own prediction on the games future success). That's where you get 100-200k (and a fixed maximum of 739119 €).@spoletta said in Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal:
(...)200k are not peanuts by any possible definition(...)
200k are a big deal for DS, but it's peanuts for Gamigo. DS can't afford this, but Gamigo... considering this was announced as one of the biggest deals by the MGI financial report, you're telling me that they can't spend 200k on the best possible marketing and PR when they just spent (supposedly) millions in acquiring the IP rights and have millions more available?
DS has/had a good reputation, the PR hit for Fractured is through Gamigo. Gamigo would have to improve it's reputation, not Fractured, so Gamigo would have to invest the money. That is, if they are serious.Thanks for asking for details on the figures, I'd be happy to elaborate if there's questions.
Edit: Gah! @LonelyCookie is too fast for me. While I was still preparing my response, he had already answered. I'm going to leave my response though, since it contains a link to the funding page
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Your scenario honestly seems a bit far fetched, and I'm also quite sure that the Gamigo detractors would find a way to give a negative spin to it.
But again, I'm not 100% opposed to the idea. Phoenix Project did something similar with Epic and it did work quite well.
Edit: I would see better a different version of it. Sign up now for a refund, and 6 months from now you can confirm it and receive your money back. In the mean time you maintain access to the game.
This way you get the same result but avoid the knee jerk reactions giving everyone 6 months to test the new state of things.
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@spoletta said in Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal:
Your scenario honestly seems a bit far fetched(...)
Which scenario and why is it far fetched?
We provided numbers and reasons (sources), so you should do the same
@spoletta said in Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal:
(...)Sign up now for a refund, and 6 months from now you can confirm it and receive your money back. In the mean time you maintain access to the game(...)
That's certainly a good suggestion. It adds a bit of overhead and won't really save you plenty of money, but it does convey the idea well enough to give a convincing PR hit.
We're not asking you to blindly trust us with your money, we're convinced that we can show you we're more than worth it! You have the opportunity to test us with no risk or strings attached, the new and better Gamigo!
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I'm not referring to the economic scenario, which after your explanation has a basis.
I was referring to this:
All Gamigo and DS need to do with the "PR stunt" as @Logain called it, is time it right (not during or around announced test phase) and make it a time limited offer (which is completely reasonable thing to do), minimum costs and maximum positive effect as every content creator and news site will be blasting variations of "Did Gamigo change into good guys?!" with their current and future playerbase being much more trusting."
This looks like a very optimistic outcome.
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@Logain said in Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal:
That's where you get 100-200k (and a fixed maximum of 739119 €).Think it includes raised money through KS so its less than that.
@spoletta said in Refunds, negative reactions to Gamigo deal:
I'm not referring to the economic scenario, which after your explanation has a basis.I was referring to this: (deleted for the sake of shorter quote)
This looks like a very optimistic outcome.Well...what can I say, any outcome is better than the darkest timeline we have now with variations on "Gamigo claims another victim", with that public image, you might as well write off Fractured as dead on arrival if they dont change their image. Few refunds are definitely cheaper than a failed publishing deal
Have you seen comments under KiraTV and Fractureds own video? Even the absolutely inactive Steam page has about 20comments (none of which seemed exactly positive). Forums and discord server are always "bastions of the blind believers", no matter what game, even for scams (CoE, Earth2 etc.), yet looking at the QnA channel/thread we are seeing mostly an exact opposite.Problem I could imagine with the 6month wait period is that it could cause legal issues, like discrimination of group of people maybe (new customers having to pay while others are getting money back and can play) but to be fair, its extremely unlikely anyone would care to push it to make it a problem. Another issue (this depends on where you live, not sure if its EU laws but ill guess it is) but companies(and government) where I live are legally required to resolve requests/issues/repairs/warranties within 30days or prove they are actively trying to resolve it (for example my bank had to call me every 3-4weeks, for over half a year. to tell me they have no new info on my refund for CoE and are working on it). Not sure if sitting on refund requests for 6months would be legally ok
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not happy, spent $53 dollars only to find i cant log into the game in any way. seems this game is a ripoff
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@malkavien There is actual no active test running. The next one will be likely in early spring.
If you think it wasn't clear enough mentioned in the descriptions that you surely was reading, then you should maybe contact Arcahem, so that missing ones can get added.
