Management Issues

I opened a discussion thread on the public forums of game developer Keen Software House. Rather than address my concerns, they simply asserted that Early Access somehow grants them license to release to paying customers any bug-ridden tripe they wish, and then forcibly closed the thread, stating that my problems with the game are my fault for having bought it. I have moved this discussion to my blog in order to continue in an independent forum.

Keen's current game is called Space Engineers and its condition is a deplorable mess due to:

1. Grids that get deleted for no reason 
2. Planets that get deleted for no reason 
3. Connector attraction that explodes ships like fragmentation bombs and destroys bases 
4. Connectors that separate for no reason 
5. Landing gear that separates for no reason 
6. Pistons that separate for no reason 
7. Rotors that separate for no reason 
8. Planets that randomly eat ships, and especially wheeled vehicles rendering them useless 
9. Grids that eat resources such as ice and uranium for no reason 
10. A recurring battery regression that pops up every few releases 
11. Random mining crashes 
12. Random ship explosions while welding due to inherently flawed client-server "sync" code (I had to repair a ship three times in order to build another ship and I am still not done) 
13. The need to reconnect in order to spawn unsynced welds which were not replicated to the client (and which can explode your ship if you wander near them) 
14. Station welders which do not work at all and exacerbate the myriad other bugs which can destroy your ship by making it even more difficult to replace it 
15. Invisible phantom desynced ships which you cannot see, but which will instantly explode your ship if you should wander near them 
16. Invisible phantom voxels which you cannot mine, but block your movement and can probably destroy your ship

Good graphics are not easy to do. However, I find it very telling that Keen possesses the resources to render an elegant and beautiful planetary sunrise at thirty frames per second, and yet lacks the resources to discern whether two objects are near each other. The difference here is that one of these things shows up in marketing material, and the other is only witnessed by people who have already turned over their money. Some people argue that this is because the game is Early Access. I pose that this is no excuse for the game's present unusable condition because it is a paid product, and this fact carries the implication that it should be a usable product. Furthermore, when Keen announces features, in order for those statements to be truthful, those features must be in a working condition. Otherwise, those features are false, and so are the statements announcing them. Furthermore, Keen explicitly advertises their product as a working product ("The game can be played either in single or multiplayer modes"). Moreover, though, my issue is not only a matter of product dissatisfaction owing to poor policies and practices, but rather the observation that these, in turn, are the result of the company's inherent character.


Keen has a history of publicity stunts and unfulfilled promises

Miner Wars 2081 was one of the first games to be greenlit on Steam, and it's easy to see why; it was selling everything that space sim fans were looking for. But every single one of those sales pitches has fallen short, and what we're left with is something that only resembles its initial promise in passing — Eurogamer

The source code for Space Engineers is derived from Miner Wars. According to Eurogamer, Minerwars was never finished. Keen left its Minerwars customers out in the cold, and then they recycled the development effort to sell it again under a new name, as a different Early Access product called Space Engineers, to make more money on a whole new set of promises which they have yet to fulfill. So at this point, the question will come up as to whether they are the victims of circumstances, acting in good faith. I would pose, instead, that their failures are a direct consequence of their motives. Let us take into consideration Marek's announcement of "full source code access" for Space Engineers. If you look near the bottom of this grandiose and impressive-looking announcement, you will see this disclaimer:

In the worst case scenario, we will revert back to obfuscating the source code and with our frequent update routine the non-obfuscated source code will soon become old and obsolete.

What did, in fact, happen is that Keen honored his source commitment for approximately seven months and then promptly abandoned it, rendering their source repository old and obsolete, It is evident from Marek's own disclaimer that this is what they intended to do in the first place. This has very much in common with many of the features in the game, which is that they are included as a token effort, for show, but serve little practical (usable) purpose. When you do something which is superficially impressive, but empty of practical merit, then you have engaged in a publicity stunt.

Keen's decision cannot be explained away as the result of unforeseen circumstances. Their official line is that source code publication is too expensive. However, the cost of source code publication does not fluctuate like the price of oil. It is not a variable, and it cannot have caught them by surprise. Not only does the cost of source publication not increase, the free code contributions that it implies are an asset, but this is only if you value such things as free bugfixes, which Keen clearly does not, and which now leads directly to my final point.


Keen is demonstrably not in the business of completing games

Not only is it apparent that this reversal was planned from its inception as part of a publicity stunt, the explanation for this reversal given by Keen is cost. As I have demonstrated, bugs are a major hurdle to the completion of the game, and they are going unaddressed. However, Keen is here stating that they have stopped accepting free bugfixes submitted by the public on the basis of integration cost alone! If Keen will not exert the effort to integrate bugfixes handed to them for free, then how can we expect them to develop bugfixes in-house, which is even more costly? The only conclusion that one can reach from this point is that they have no intention of ever finishing Space Engineers either. Its non-existent future can be extrapolated directly from the fate of its predecessor, Minerwars.

If Keen's sales numbers are to be believed, at 1.6 million units sold (~$25 each), then they are making money hand over fist to the tune of $41.6 million, and yet they have the nerve to claim that their development progress is in any way hampered by financial bottlenecks. They are not struggling paupers working out of a garage and faltering in their first steps. What it sounds like they are doing, is exploiting the public's trust in Early Access in order to collect vast sums by peddling junk without any accountability.