And 542 more posts would be bad because???
Those of you defending his silence absolutely blow my mind. It’s completely inexcusable for him to remain silent.
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I agree to an extent.
542 posts the first of which shows elation, and the second half shows disappointment. Pretty straight forward this lack of communication approach is obviously failing to get more players and is not helping player retention either.
I play a number of games still that are technically dead, but I still play them, and they have active forums, so is it dead when people still play it but devs have already moved on? 
I play this game EVERY day like a good number of others, and I still enjoy it, but this communication approach is pure ■■■■.
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curious where you see this statement? I assumed it was Sony pulling it seeing as we didn’t get any notice from the Devs except for reactive. Where do you see the info on who pulled from who?
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I’m half with you on this. I haven’t seen more than speculation about who made the decision, but Squeenix has been pulling out of these a lot due to their change in direction from publishing small games over to… NFTs…
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Interesting note, that building appears to have… thousands of companies using it as their office address?
In any case, it does indicate some change in the company, which is probably a good thing.
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This meant to be funny. Try not to get upset, please.
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6weeks alrdy.
I suspect the answer is more complicated than “here’s a planned update”.
I’m optimistic and predict interesting news and a great future for the Boundless.
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Indeed.
All I can officially find is that it was mutually agreed upon, but nothing states who initiated the move. Although, indeed, knowing the recent news regarding Square Enix, it makes sense that they decided to give up on Boundless to keep focusing on their other… < cough > … awesome plans.
I believe the same thing happened with the owners of the Deus Ex IP who apparently are now wanting to make a huge RPG set in that universe, like Cyberpunk 2077, but not as buggy.
The least we can say is that 2021 is a year marked by notable events in the video-game industry, like Square Enix selling so many IPs to Embracer Group (including Tomb Raider, Deus Ex… which aren’t nothing), or Activision-Blizzard-King being bought by Microsoft, or Ubisoft currently being rumored to be acquired by Tencent (which, as a French, sounds pretty nightmare-ish).
To me, the fact that we got the news about Boundless’ publishing rights reverting to Wonderstruck less than 2 months after Square Enix did that move with Embracer Group is not a coincidence. Much like Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Square Enix has likely decided Boundless wasn’t good enough to keep.
The semi-official rumor mill has suggested that Sony expressed an interest in buying out Squenix after already having such good long-standing ties with them, and that Squenix is cleaning house in an effort to make themselves more appealing.
Not just failed/failing IP’s (like this one…), but anything that doesn’t have a distinctive direction to it that would be perceived as suited for the Japanese market.
That’s the sad part. I’m sure some of those IPs have only failed because they were mis-managed. Under other hands, they might thrive. I hope Tomb Raider can get better. Used to freaking love Anniversary and Underworld, and TR1 was one of my first PC games ever when I was a kid… hurts to now see them labelled as “failed IPs”, especially by people at Square Enix who are greedily jumping on the NFT band-wagon.
I mean, I got to watch in real time as Electronic Arts drove SimCity 2013 into the ground, destroying a beloved IP and the studio (Maxis) they bought along the way. But then Cities: Skylines rose from those ashes and scratched everyone’s city-building itch.
The circle of life.
exactly my point, however look at the timeline. Sony partnered up with multiple smaller companies within a 2-3 year span. Right around the mid period between release of PS4 and PS5. 90% of those same smaller companies are now losing there publishing from that company. Really coincidental that all of them within a 3 month window, this has happened, Boundless being one of them. So it’s only logical to assume that Sony brought them on originally as a mid year profit boost to maintain there target yearly numbers, till the newer console came out. PS5 has now been out for a year in a half, giving these same smaller companies the opportunity to expand there games to “promote” there nice new shiny console. Boundless (along with other smaller companies they dropped) conveniently also didn’t have anything new to promote there product so … what benefit do they have for keeping them around? It’s all speculation… but the timeline matches and wouldn’t doubt for a sec that they would justify that type of movement.
Good morning I didn’t really want to write anything here but it’s about time to write something here James and the whole team you make me very sad you have created such a good game and you have such a good community behind you but you don’t give a ■■■■ about them community you don’t care I ask you to be more active in the forum if nothing comes from you by the end of the year I’ll be gone and won’t come back and then dear James I will never buy a game from you again because for me you are then died
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I don’t agree with Miner’s use of out-of-context personal informations like Twitter banner and stuff, but you’re not putting out an example to follow either with your 7+ remark, answering personal attacks with more personal attacks.
Just gotta accept the truth that some people around here are angry/hurt, and I think they’re 100% right to vent their frustration. James can defend himself (and chooses not to), he doesn’t need you to attack others in his name. Neither does he give us much reasons to rejoice and have trust in him.
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Nothing special here.
Businesses are designed to make a profit which will not be reinvested into the game and/or business, and that profit being used on a fancy dinner is the least of my worries. There are far worse things I have seen businesses do with their profits.
Oh and furthermore you have no proof which money was used on that dinner.
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People are free to critique the product and be annoyed that they don’t like the lack of communication, but personally attacking the developer and attributing motivations to them without any shred of evidence is ridiculous.
Also, if you’re actually angry about a game you’ve spent several thousand hours playing then you really need to revisit your priorities in life and seek counseling for anger management.
James is a human and you’re right he doesn’t need me to speak up for him, but it’s getting to the point that watching someone being victimised and bullied on the forum for not communicating their latest bowel movements to petulant children every five minutes is becoming tiresome.
Could there be better communication? Of course. Would we all like to hear some positive news regarding the future of the game. Absolutely. Will personally attacking James with infantile rants accusing him of enjoying a nice meal once help any of that. No.
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That tends to happen when you’re head of a studio managing a live-service game so poorly that it hasn’t gotten any meaningful content added in 2 years, and you decide to avoid taking responsabilities by adressing the issues with your community, before announcing imminent news only to once again let your playerbase dry off for longer than acceptable.
It has also been said many times that NOBODY (and I can’t stress that enough : NOBODY) is asking James to make a statement every 5 minutes. But people are asking him to make meaningful statements. None of that “in the coming weeks” BS that turns into months.
So your comment on people being angry over the state of Boundless, what with the anger management thing, you can keep that for yourself, otherwise I’d say that on the flip-side, there are people who are also too easy-going around here and let others like James use them.
What people like James get to walk away with is simply incredible to me. And yes, I do say “people like James” because the entire video-game industry is in a dire state (if you’ve been following the news related to it, that is).
James should not be personally attacked, but after the last 2 years, I’d argue he doesn’t deserve thanks, rewards or to be defended.
Let’s not forget the state of things, how Boundless is a game that can barely hold itself together, missing so many promised features, that we’ll likely never see (like all the alternate races, the titans, protectors, hunter, ground-basher, and the list goes on). Boundless is one of many schemes where someone over-promised, and people ate it up and threw far too much money at it.
And PLEASE, let’s ask @ardele how happy she is about the perks she paid for as a backer and never got, and I dare you to say she’s just a petulant child who needs anger management.
It’s because of things like this that we’ve seen the rise of outrageous monetization schemes in video-games, and people eat it up and ask for more!
Agreed. That remark was out of line.
But your clap-backs were too. 
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On this, there is something that really jumps out at me from the past, and what I’m about to say is in no way a good/bad value judgement of any sort on any side, it is meant to be constructive as far as doing a dissection of what has gone wrong and might be helpful for them in their future endeavors.
I remember clearly James making a post where he admitted he wasn’t a good person to be moderating these forums, since he never takes anything personally or takes personal offense at anything himself (forget the exact wording but that was the gist of it). In a lot of ways, that is a wonderful trait to have and can be a HUGE benefit in certain areas of work.
But when it comes to handling a community like this, it can cause issues. You have to deal with people all over the emotional and personality spectrums. OTOH, in fairness, you don’t want somebody who is the polar opposite of his personality type like me handling it either, ideally. My end of the spectrum is too prone to taking offense and too scared of giving it to enforce order effectively. In a perfect world, someone like Leah or more than one like her should have been handling the communication from the start and be continuing to do so - strong on the feeling/emotional skills but also able to communicate effectively with and not be walked over by the stronger and more abrasive types.
I’ve learned from experience that people on the opposite end of the personality spectrum from me like that find dealing with my type frustrating, that communicating often goes wrong. The type of feelings some of us are expressing, the way some of us react, it all might be literally beyond what he’s able to really get except maybe on an abstract intellectual level. He founded a tech-based company that really should have taken off as such, he did anticipate the market, but wound up trying to take on himself the handling of an MMO community. So I honestly feel bad for him… I’ve tried to use wording in my griping posts emphasizing how the communication can be read by us, as I know I can never know his or anybody’s ACTUAL thoughts. I’ve tried to communicate that it can be read by the sensitive types like me as being over it all and completely indifferent - but of course I don’t know for sure how he feels, it could be anything. But being a polar opposite of his type I do think it is important that he hears from people like me here how these things can be read, since he genuinely might not understand. I certainly don’t think he’s a bad person, I know he was very kind to Aenea for example. Just a matter of mismatch in personality communications… I’ve found ideally communication between the extremes best avoided to head off misunderstandings, and frankly I felt bad about ever bothering him myself, I’d always go to Leah once she was on board when I had something to privately bring to their attention. But now, given the staff situation, that might be impossible at the moment and it’s on him… so, loving this community as I do and watching it wither away and people I truly care about here feeling hurt, I feel forced to gripe now almost. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t do so, I hate saying things that might hurt others… I’d just be gone. But I love this community too much, the game means perhaps too much to me. 
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