Final comments

Hi,

So Death Pirate has been released on Steam. It was a quite long and difficult road.

Porting the game for Steam was pretty complicated. The Steam system is overly confusing with its own terms and its set of softwares. Anyway, I'm not allowed to talk about it (it's written "Steam Confidential" all over it!) so let's close the chapter.

Things were going smoothly and the game was ready for release two months before. One day, a nice fellow sent me a message on Singe Studio's Facebook: "You should check the Death Pirate board on Steam. Things are going sour over there". I didn't even know Death Pirate had its own message board on Steam! I read a few messages and, yes, it was a mess.

Last september, I received a message from a guy from Desura asking me if I'd want to apply to a special campain to boost my greenlight votes. For one week, they would sell the game at a discount price and the buyers would greenlight the game on Steam (I only got 200 votes from it - it needs around 2500 votes to be greenlit). Then, when the game would be released on Steam, they would get the game for free. I answered "Ok, why not!". I didn't sign anything, I didn't fill any form.

In the meantime, I reworked the game completely for the Android platform and reworked it again for Steam. When I created the Steam page for Death Pirate in March, if I remember well, someone sent me a message saying that he brought the game on "IR" (???) and asked if he would get the game for free on Steam. I answered that he brought the game on "IR" (???) so he wasn't entitled to play the game on Steam again. It's quite logical, if you buy a game on PS3, you're not entitled to the same game on Xbox 360.

It appeared that "IR" meant "Indie Royal" and it was the special campain I applied to 7 months before. I didn't remember this at all (I applied through a messenger in not even 1 minute by a simple "yes, why not?" - easy to forget to kind of stuff). So yes, the guy was actually entitled to a free copy of Death Pirate on Steam. But I didn't know.

It was the reason for an amazing flame war on the Death Pirate board. Nearly 250 messages of pure hate were destroying the reputation of the game. I tried to calm things down by answering most messages but, you know, it's the internet. I was a thief, a crook, an idiot, a murderer, a rapist, anything that could come into their minds.

So I looked for the email of the guy who made me apply to Indie Royal. I told him that I would send him the Steam keys for those who bought the game. He answered me "Alright. I will need 1000 keys.". I checked again the number of buyers and told him I'd send him the 200 keys for 200 buyers. He said that I had to send more because Steam keys tend to be falty sometimes and just in case it doesn't work, blablabla. Alright, here goes 1000 steam keys (1000 free copies of Death Pirate). The guy tells me he would send them right away (but the buyers wouldn't be able to download the game before the release day).

I do the announcement on the Steam board that they would get their free games. The board which was so full of hate before became just plain dead - people are more motivated when it comes to hate than to actually communicate or simply talk about a game. Fun.

Here comes the release day of Death Pirate. I check if the buyers' keys are working. No. None of them actually received anything. Consequently, more hate ensues on the board. I contact the guy from Indie Royal who answers me coldly "Desura and Indie Royal are out of business. I have nothing to do with these matters anymore". Fear. I'm still dead meat for the board.

I sent many messages to the same guy telling him that he should have told me before I sent him the Steam keys and that he lied when he said he would send them right away. I also implied that if he didnt send them and asked for so many keys, it probably meant he was to re-sell them illegaly on some other website. He was therefore a thief and a crook! No answer.

A few days later, the board is happy. They got their free games. Then the board turns dead again. One or two thanks and that's it. And a few bad reviews too. The steam experience.

Well, you got the whole picute now, the long hard road to release a game. In the end, I found myself strangely fullfilled. I did it. No regrets.

But I won't do it again for a while.

Developer Diary #11: The release on GooglePlay

So it was with great joy that I finally could release the game on the PlayStore. But my hopes were quickly crushed.

The first disappointment came with the achievements. I programmed the trophies on GooglePlay and integrated them in the game. It worked. But the game became dangerously unstable. I tried different ways to get a bit more stability but to no avail. I had to do a lot of cuts to fit the game in a tablet and it seemed that trophies were the drop that made the cup overflow (I don't know if that's the right expression...). Anyway, I had to get rid of achievements.

Second huge disappointment: the promotion from Google. Death Pirate never appeared anywhere on the Playstore frontend. It didn't even appear in the new apps section. I've never seen this before. On Steam, Desura, the Xbox live, the PSN, you always have the newest games or apps appearing on the news page of the store. I checked it many times and it only featured big apps like candy Crush Saga or Clash of Clans. Even if you searched for the exact name of the game, it would only appear on the 5th or 6th spot in the search page. It's just like throwing a book in the middle of the ocean and waiting for it to become a best-seller...

Do I have to pay to be considered as a regular developper? My game is not big enough to be qualified as a viable app? Why would we promote apps that obviously don't need any promotion since they are already all over the place??? It's something I really don't understand. And it's the same everywhere. Big medias promote stuff that don't need advertisement. When you see the reviews of the last Assassin's Creed or the online game Destiny and you compare it with the press coverage and the indirect promotion it gets, you wonder if that system is not a bit corrupted... Now, everybody is OK to say that these games were not that good... some even says they were particularly buggy. So... Isn't it time to promote new stuff instead of cash cows?

Trailer for the Steam version and Play Store link.

Hi!

So Death Pirate SP is finally available on the Google PlayStore for android. Here's the link:

And a new trailer for the Steam version:

Official release: tomorrow!

Hi,

Just a little message to announce that Death Pirate SP will be release tomorrow, saturday april 4th 2015!

I hope you'll enjoy the game as much as I enjoyed crafting it!

The Steam version is going well and will be available very soon.

Developper Diary #10: My GooglePlay experience

Yep, so I ported Heavy Metal Death Pirate on Android. It seemed to me like a daunting task at first and I was really scared I couldn't make it. But, now that it's over, it was actually quite simple and hassle-free. Game Maker handles everything perfectly and all you have to do is pure programming, no conversion or authorizing crap stuff.

The most difficult part was the controls. It took me a lot of time to create the screen pad and make it so that it feels simple yet intuitive to play. The rest of my time was made of converting graphics and other little things.

Then comes the time to create a Google Developper account and upload the game. I did it one month before the actual release. The fist thing to do is to create an expansion for the game. Yes, Google doesn't allow app bigger than 50 Mb. You have to split your game into a little 50 Mb app and then add a download for an expansion which contains the rest of your game (in my case, 450 Mb of graphics and sound mostly). It's really easy to do with Game Maker.

Then I created my account and you enter the Android Developper Console. Everything is shiny and beautiful and easy to configure, very "Google Style". In no time, I could upload my game, put all the needed info and assets, configure the prices and create leaderboards and trophies. I was amazed at how easy it was. Since you can't put a release date, I didn't publish the game and let it rest until the fateful day. I was relieved and happy.

A few days before, I noticed a forum post where people were complaining about Expansions not downloading well on GooglePlay. It was strongly advised to test your download before the release date. Wow! I panicked as I didn't worry about this at all! I rushed to my Google Developper Console and quickly realized things were not that easy...

First, if you don't want your game to be release officially but still you want to test the download, you have to upload in the alpha channel and PUBLISH it. Then you create a googlegroup where the testers will be able to download the game through the alpha channel. I thought at first that the publish button was for the official release, silly me (=one workday wasted).

Then, the game is uploaded in the alpha channel. Since I'm the only tester, I joined my own group and try to download. Failure. The thing to know is that it might take one to two days before the app is available for download (=two workdays wasted).

Four days later, I still couldn't download the game to test it. I emailed the Google Developper support. They couldn't understand what I was asking for. In the end, they didn't answer my question and told me to check the help section (which didn't help me) (=two workdays wasted).

The release date arrived and my game wasn't available. As you've seen it, I had to announce the game would be late (a big shame for me). I was at a loss, I couldn't find the solution. Then my girlfriend suggested me: "Maybe you can't download your own app...?". WHAT?!!! She joind the googlegroup, became a tester and try the download link on her smartphone......................AND IT WORKED!!!

So yeah, with GooglePlay, YOU CAN'T DOWNLOAD YOUR OWN GAME AS A TESTER TO TEST IT! This important fact is nowhere to be seen in the Google Help center, DAMMIT!!!

In the end, I created a new google account and I could test the download. It works. But the trophies do not show up.......... * sigh* Anyway, I might be able to release the game in a few days, so stay in touch!