This is one sad day.I was a giant fan of Galaxy on Fire.I played the first game on my first ever smartphone-an Iphone and it got me to love mobile gaming in general.I spent so much time with the first game that I am almost ashamed to admit it. Then came the second game-a masterpiece.The open world,the amazing story to go with it,the variety of equipment for the ship,the variety of ships,mining asteroid,all of it was such fun and provided so many hours of enjoyment.I was so happy with the game that I wanted to help the developers out with as much as I could so I bought it both for my Ipad and my android smartphone. I was following Fishlabs for a long time and waiting for the announcement of GOF3 but before that they had this stupid Alliance game.I remember I talked to them back then,via twitter if I remember correctly and they told me if Alliance doesn't perform well,they would have to shut down the studio. And today-it is a truly sad day.GOF3 turned out to be what I feared most-freemium.They put so many timers in that game that they should have just called it "Waiting Simulator 2016".How could you do this to your fans?This isn't GOF,this is a joke with your loyal fanbase who hasn't forgotten you company after all this time. How many more developers will DeepSilver ruin before they finally figure out they should give up on the gaming industry?This isn't even made by the same people who made GOF 1 and 2,they are out there making Everspace,I think.I will go support them but this new GOF game is an insult to say the least.A insult that should have never been spoken(or made in this case).
Thank you so much, i know this GoF3 is not developed by the sam team with 2 previous game, but dunno they were dispatch and making an new game Thank you so much for the info, the GoF is strong in that one
Today is a sad day as it represents the death of Fishlabs and the death of GOF. I can't believe they didn't see this coming, how could try be so naive and ignorant to ignore what they were doing just to be "surprised" with the backlash there receiving. They new this was the end, and this is the "last hurrah"??? Are you kidding?....#RIPGOF2010
It's sad to read a lot of reviews... GoF and mostly GoF2 HD was one of the MOST AMAZING games on mobile. GoF2 was just so perfectly developed with storyline, missions, rpgish upgrades on ships, weapons... It was so freaking amazing.... Almost impossible to put down... When I saw GoF3 I almost passed out from excitement thinking I was in for a super HD treat(being on 6sPlus) lasting for well over 12-14 hours.... That seems to be very very far from the truth. God I'm so tired of 4 different currencies, timers, base building/raiding, match three games...
Please, I'll take anything at this point. This game makes Stellar Wander the best game in the world lol
Whilst this may be true... there are a whole bunch of other reasons for permanent internet requirements in games too. Eg: player data collection (very important in F2P games), offloading background compute to the servers, dynamic missions/enemy stats/encounters/etc etc in a 'living' world and so on.
Hey there, everybody. Sorry for the silence over the weekend. Although the feedback we got in this thread has indeed been pretty harsh, I did of course not go into hiding. I just had two (hopefully) well deserved days off on Saturday and Sunday. I said this before, but I'm gonna rephrase it, because there's a good chance it got buried under all the comments that followed: Back in 2010, when GOF2 was originally released, the premium model worked fine for a game like this. But in 2016, the market has changed completely and you cannot release a game of this size, scope and ambition on the App Store anymore for a fixed price of 10 bucks. As much as you and us would love for this to happen, it is simply not possible anymore. Also the monetization model we added to GOF2 with hindsight, namely to offer the main game for free and charge people for the add-ons, does not perform well at all. Making Supernova took almost as much time and resources as making an all-new game. Yet, to this day only a TINY fraction of the people who downloaded GOF2 also bought Supernova. We cannot ground the biggest game in our studios history on such a brittle foundation. Sorry. I know that many of you have a really hard time to warm to this idea, but chances are extremely dim (if not to say non-existent) that you will see a game as big as GOF3 on the App Store or Google Play as a premium title in the foreseeable future -- neither by us nor by another studio. So you basically have two options. Either you balk at it or you open up to it. If you choose the latter, you will find that GOF3 is by far not a "Farmville in space", but an intense sci-fi shooter with superb 3D graphics, high-enegery space action gameplay, tons of spectacular content, a rich game world and a fascinating narrative told in an alternate, non-linear way. And you will also see the timers in the game, influence your gaming experience a lot less than you might think. Yes, it takes time to finish a blueprint for a new ship or upgrade a weapon to the next level. But while the timer runs in the background, you can keep playing like you did before. And sure, your ship needs to be repaired after a couple of missions. But you don't have to do so until the entire stamina bar is drowned. And even then you can continue flying, albeit with reduced stats. Once you have more two or three ships in your possession, you can even "juggle" them. Play with ship A until it needs to be repaired and then continue with ship B and C until ship A is available again. And of course, the core gameplay of GOF3 is still skill-based. A good pilot who pays little (or nothing) will clear the boss trees quicker and unlock new ships faster than an average pilot who pays a lot. Personally, I find this system quite fair.
That's a misunderstanding many people have. Don't know where it comes from though. The decision to make GOF3 as a free app with in-app purchases has nothing to do with us joining the Deep Silver family. In fact, before we became part of DS and got rebranded as Deep Silver FISHLABS, the "old" studio had already turned GOF2 from premium to F2P and added in-app purchases and banner ads. Sure, even in its current state GOF2 isn't a full-fledged free-to-play game, but that is only due to the fact that the free-to-play monetization got added with hindsight. And we didn't do so because we were greedy. We did so because premium simply didn't work for us anymore... you cannot run a 90-strong studio on goodwill and make-belief alone. You gotta have products that have a chance at surviving on the market. Also, our first full-fledged free-to-play game Galaxy on Fire - Alliances was designed and released BEFORE we joined Deep Silver, not after. By the time our studio got bought, Galaxy on Fire - Alliances was already out globally! So us going free-to-play had nothing at all to do with us joining Deep Silver. We did so, because in this day and age a mobile studio of Fishlabs' size cannot survive on revenues brought in by paid titles anymore. We held onto the premium model longer than anyone else. And we paid the highest price for it, namely filing for insolvency and almost going out of business. If it wasn't for Deep Silver buying our studio, the lights would have gone out for good. Oh, and for the record: If you do some research, you will see that GOF3 had already been in production BEFORE we joined Deep Silver, too. So even if the Fishlabs Entertainment GmbH had managed to beat the odds and "survive on their own", GOF3 would still have been released as a free app with in-app purchases. You have to understand that this has nothing to with greed or not caring about our fans' wishes and desires. This is simply a result of how the app market developed in the past couple of years. If you make the games we make, you either go F2P or you go out of business. There is no third option.
Just wanted to say that it is certainly still possible to make premium games on iOS. Granted, it is much harder these days and most of the ones with $10 price tags are ports, but it is possible. I understand not wanting to take the risk, especially, at the time having such a large studio. I guess I just still think the Galaxy on Fire brand is still one of the better known IPs on the App Store and think a lot of people would have been willing to pay a premium price for a new game. I know that's probably pie in the sky thinking. But it also is why you're getting such a negative reaction. The first two games were legendary and so fans of those games are of course going to be extremely disappointed with the changes and stripped down nature of the game. So it's like trying to please two crowds -- the mass F2P audience and long time fans. Unfortunately, I don't see much hope in pleasing the latter with this game. I still think, like others, it may be best to drop the "3" from the title. It may seem like a small thing but I think it would go a long way to say to fans this isn't really a true sequel to the first games. You may think it is. But for us, it just doesn't have the same spirit.
Toby@Fishlabs, thanks for being so respectful despite the harshness of the comments here. I hope you know most of us have really deep respect for you guys and the work that you do. We are just deeply disappointed that you had to adapt to the changing market of the platform and change some of the things we loved about the other games in the series. Obviously that isn't the fault of your development team. I think it is a little too easy for us on this forum to forget that iOS isn't really a gaming platform, and that you need to make your games appeal to the average iOS customer, not just the comparitively small group of hardcore gamers here.
It might be a bad thing but I do believe after GOF3,there won't be another GOF game.The facts are here-16 pages of comments and most of them are negative and it isn't just here where you can feel people not liking the game or it's IAP.I call this game dead on arrival even though I was a huge fan of Fishlabs and never wished anything bad upon them.To be honest though-saying that it is only F2P or nothing seems way to drastic.I do realize that the Appstore has changed a lot over the years and that android users pirate games easily but there are still developers who produce premium titles with price tag of up to 10 euro and such.For instance Foursaken Media I think was the company who makes Heroes and Castles-both their first and their second game(I think it was released last year) were premium and I haven't seen them deciding to cry so much over the changes in the appstore.I do believe this is about how ambitious you want your studio and development of games to be.Will you be able to make 10 million dollars when putting GOF3 on the Appstore?No?Then perhaps you should have made the game smaller with less money needed for production.If however you want to make it only F2P-then do so,but why not make the IAP only for cosmetic stuff to ships or something like that?Do you honestly believe that you will make more money if the game is F2P?Most people won't bother putting up any money into the game to begin with it-they will play it for as long as the timers allow them and leave-not every game is clash of clans and can make millions by using IAP. But in all honesty-this GOF is not the GOF we wanted not just because of IAP.This is one bad game that shouldn't have been made,I am sorry for being so harsh.
Personally, I can't think of a single mobile hardcore game that was released in the past two years and that made enough revenues from upfront sales to finance a project as big as GOF3. Maybe there's two or three titles out there that were indeed able to pull this off. But if so, they're the exceptions to confirm the rule. And this is also not about us playing it safe and not being willing to take a risk. In today's environment, the fact that we are making GOF3 at all is already damn risky in itself. A lot of you have turned the game down in their comments as "Farmville in space" or something like that. But that is simply not true. The game is huge! It has skill-based core gameplay, a vast hand-crafted game world, a ton of content and some of the highest production values ever seen in a mobile game to date. And it will not be released as a one-time affair, but as an on-going service that will constantly be expanded, improved and maintained during live operation. Also, I have no doubt that GOF2's hardcore crowd would be willing to pay five or even ten bucks upfront for a "premium" GOF3. But quite frankly, even if people would really surprise us and download the game like crazy, the sales would not be enough for us to break even, let alone make enough profit to release additional content updates during live operation. Sorry, guys. But we've been there. We released paid games. We held onto our premium positioning for as long as we could. And we had to file for insolvency as a direct consequence of this descision. Like it or not, but we're not going to make the same mistake twice. So what we can offer you is this: We make the biggest and best space shooter the mobile platform has ever seen. We put a ton of content in there and we keep adding more in the weeks, months and even years to come. We listen to our players and value their opinion regarding the direction our game will take. But one way or another, we will stick to our decision to release GOF3 as a free app with in-app purchases. Cause if we didn't, we could bury the game right here and now.
Cue folks calling for exactly that in 3...2... oh wait, already happened At this point, I have the utmost respect for you, that you still come here and defend your company's decision despite all the negative comments, especially from people who seem to be flat-out in denial on where the revenue on iOS is coming from these days. To my fellow TA'lers I say this: The "hardcore fans" are always a very vocal minority, and don't fill your wallet. Wait a few months and see how GoF3 is doing. If good enough to keep the lights on: Well, maybe admit that you were wrong? If not, you can always go around with a smug "told you so" then. For now, just dropping the subject seems rather prudent to me. Thanks for listening, we'll return you to your regular programme now. Our popular show "I don't like what you are doing, cater to MY whims" is still live on air on channel 12, tune in.
Ever wondered why they're called Foursaken Media? Because they're 4 guys. We are 90. If you have a good product and found your niche, you can still bring a paid game to the market. But you won't be able to make enough money from it to keep and support a 90-strong team... this being said, if you look at Foursaken Media's portfolio, you will notice that they have meanwhile moved on from paid to free-to-play as well.
It's sad that you keep arguing about F2P. While there are some wailing about the F2P, most are mad about the gameplay. Again, this is NOT a proper sequel. That's why you are getting treated harshly on this forum and in the App Store. You say that a big scale game can't be done. Will you say the same when/if Drifter gets released? I get that you guys need to make money. What I don't get is how you think this is going to save your company. If anything it will hasten your demise. Pull the game from soft launch. Please. Fix this before release.
I actually didn't know only 4 people made Heroes and Castles.That is amazing,that game is so polished,so much content in it,so fun and the graphics for both the first and the second version are great.These guys deserve a medal to be honest.Going to go on their twitter and congratulate them right now,great work their are doing. As far as I know only their last game War Turtle went F2P and you know what is funny about that.I played it yesterday for 3 hours straight without having to wait for a timer or having to pay even a buck yet the game has IAP too.That is why I like them-they know even how to make a F2P title good.You should hit them up and see how they are doing them.I was about to spend 5 bucks on that game but now will spend 10 cause if only four people make such great games they deserve the help. Also to the guy before me-yep I was about to make the joke just before you posted
