I mean i kinda get if they signed a contract that says they are not allowed to do any work for Boundless Or any Side projects.
Sure I agree there is no metric or way to prove they do or don’t care. But there is NO COMMUNICATION… I literally stick up for this game daily … I play the hell out of the game and love every bit of it. I don’t want the devs to come on the forums and cry about the player base or that the game didn’t live up to their expectations, I simply just want the community that wants some communication to get some communication. It’s communication they deserve. Many of which still play the game. I can’t prove they don’t care about us, but the opposite can be said as you can’t prove they do.
Simply put, saying “we aren’t developing any more, but the servers will remain. Sorry!” is enough for me but we don’t even get that. Leah was in a hunt months ago, but I wasn’t going to ask her about the game I was just glad she was on and it made me smile to know she was active in the game for a bit.
This community just deserves something…
No worries on this as I stated I’m ok with whatever helps the game. I sadly know that given the many sales and the minor uptick in players is going to have the same affect on a sub service. We’ll get some players keep a narrow percentage and then watch the game get dropped off the subscription service. All those builds will go to ash and we’ll be back where we are now. I do hope for the opposite… but pushing a “niche” game into a smaller niche by only focusing efforts on a single console is a setup for failure on the sub service which will likely squash any hope left.
A wider net should be cast …
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Although we probably won’t keep a huge number of them, I believe it would have greater success with drawing attention and getting tries on the sub than with Steam sales or even the free weekend for a few reasons. Tied mostly to how the service presents offerings vs Steam. On the PS store, though they show a star rating, you can’t see reviews, and there is no forum like with Steam. Yeah, they can find those easily enough, but if looking at stuff on a sub service, most probably won’t go that far. For most potential subscribers it will come down to, “Does this look cool, like something I might want to try?” and not go into a lot of research on any one offering. Heck, even buying Boundless full price on release myself, I went in blind, and did it simply because it looked cool from what Sony showed on it’s page. Had I not seen it when browsing new releases, I might never have discovered it at all. Being with the sub offerings will keep it in a spot where potentially a lot more will see it.
It won’t take too much revamping of marketing shots, plus the help of us here in the community to get it extra attention on social media (point people to it in reply to major outlet’s posts about the service) to make that potential even better. And knowing the bean counter corporate exec mentality, if they can just see stats showing that people who subscribed looked at Boundless while browsing the listing before subbing, that could be enough to justify them keeping it. Even if a bunch of players drop it, if it continues to draw attention among those browsing who haven’t yet subbed, that could be enough, and would be a LOT more doable right now than redoing parts of the game before they have the time. And if it worked out, then there would be the money to work on casting that wider net.
And could get them money up front here - the only other option I could see to get a revenue influx now, not requiring putting in labor hours that might not pay off, would be to sell it to another team. Although yes, it could fail, get removed… I don’t think we’re at a point where that risk could cause a worse outcome than what looks to be the case now if it stands as is. They’d at least get some money off it before it goes off, and bad publicity couldn’t lower the base much more than now… any publicity at all even if bad might even serve to get the attention of people who’d decide it looks cool and will buy regardless.
Also on them keeping it - I wasn’t going to do this since I don’t like to bash games too much (though I had rant about it on Twitter) and I know their devs are nice from all accounts and I’d rather stick to positive stuff, but it sticks out at me that MS has kept Astroneer on GP for some time now. You want to talk about a bad NPE? I didn’t just rage quit that game, I rage uninstalled it! I NEVER encountered such an obtuse opening in any game, with complete lack of direction… even looking stuff up online it was hard to figure out. From all I’ve read too, it doesn’t have nearly the content/options as Boundless. Yeah, some do like it from reviews, but others had the same experience as I did also, that game made me legit angry. But it DOES look really cool/intriguing at a glance. I suspect greater exposure overall is why it’s held well on Steam too, it got enough to keep it’s niche of players who love it viable, which is what Boundless needs. That’s why I don’t think Boundless would be set up to fail here if it went on even if they made no improvements at all. It looks at least as cool as it and I’m sure could keep as many with enough exposure over time, a goal like it’s base is doable - and since MS owns Minecraft doubt they’ll ever have that on their sub, so will get the attention of those looking for similar.
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I’ll remain hopeful … but have major doubts at this point. Fallout 4 on Game Pass is a prime example.
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In all likelihood, they never even had the money needed to finish the game as they originally envisioned it. Their earliest Early Access roadmap was a checklist of features that they wanted to include, and boxes would be checked off when they declared that they’d accumulated enough money to complete them.
Like, “We’re building this commercial jet, and we’ve already got the wings and the engines paid for! Next up is… flight controls!” Except everyone who paid into it had already bought a seat on the plane, even if the seats never got installed.
Now, this next part is all speculation AND I KNOW THAT TRIGGERS SOME PEOPLE ON THIS FORUM, so please don’t accept anything after this next ellipsis as pure fact…
But I’d wager that their devil’s bargain with Squenix had a lot to do with them not hitting their targets for Early Access sales.
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Interesting that the Wonderstruck Games Twitter account hasn’t tweeted anything since December 2020, which is about the last time the game was updated.
Do Wonderstruck even exist anymore? If not, that might explain why there is no communication. The individual developers may have moved on to BG3 or whatever but are forbidden to discuss Boundless since they are no longer commercially responsible for it.
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I think Wonderstruck is just a name owned by Turbulenz. Turbulenz is still a companyaccording to uk companieshouse.gov.uk
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I love looking at companies house stuff, mostly because I acknowledge that I don’t know quite enough about it make sound assumptions, so any thoughts I come up with that are much more fun. Like:
In the 2019-2020 financial year, Turbulenz stated a profit of ~73k… I guess people bought way more sovereigns than I gave them credit for.
I am guessing (almost know) that Turbulenz is not making all that profit with 
Boundless 
Oh, almost certainly. But I do like the idea that people here are crazy and devoted enough to done it through planets and gleam club alone.
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While that profit number is… Weird due to how debts are shown on those documents - meaning that there is less profit if you look at several years in a row - yeah, that profit almost certainly is almost exclusively from 3rd party contracts, which isn’t happening anymore since they sold that part to Larian.
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Personally i started playing last week and already bought gleam club and planing on buying my sovereign world (:
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Oh yeah, I always throught Gleam club is 100% worth it.
Sovereigns are more than I’d be happy to pay for, but I’m glad other people feel that they have enough money for it.
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