Flipping a 2 Pence - July Update

Let me start with a confession: before I decided to write this post, I wanted to bail on it until everything was resolved and we could share a solution instead of merely announcing a problem. I don't like talking about problems. You don't need our problems. I like talking about solutions. But a solution is yet to come ... and I don't think we can wait on an update any longer.

So, this is our July update. Because of its nature, it seems rather obvious that it should be me bringing this update to you. We’ve promised more transparency, so here it is.

2Pence, the indie studio that was developing Feudums in the past year is broken. And that means Feudums is currently trapped in limbo.

Back in early June, we had some kind of a shock therapy. I'm sure many indies and/or startups, at some point, have gone through the same. Even though we conquered Steam Greenlight, we missed another very important development deadline, were faced with a devastatingly unsuccesful Kickstarter event and received word that our head developer (and 2 Pence co-owner) didn’t want to continue collaborating on the project due to creative differences on our monetization strategy and marketing efforts. With our early investment already spent and development stopped without making progress for months, the team and our early investors  held a series of meetings about possible routes to take, including the possibility of cutting our losses and abandoning the project.

After considering several options, the vast majority agreed to save the project, and also agreed to take the opportunity this rift presented to make some needed changes. We're not an AAA company, but a small indie studio, and we should embrace this in its entirety. Make small steps. Make them often. Focus on current things, and not the far future. Focus on coding, not selling thin air. And for a change, take the foot off of the brake which have stopped us doing so earlier. It requires changes: a different, hopefully more fitting development and project execution model with significantly less loopholes. It'll signal some important changes in the core development staff too. We should even redo some coding groundwork. Development has been our weak spot, as not being able to show more of the concept hindered all other efforts of the team. It’s a huge mistake from an indie and we had to remove a couple obstacles from the way. There is no magic about our goal here: we need to grab more people and offer them a good and unique blend of gaming experiences every so often that we can keep gradually incrementing number of them, until the project can self-support itself. The new setup hopefully fits to the idea much better than the old ways did.

The caveat? It's not going to happen today. Yep, we’re the indie equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever’s development. We have our 2Pence co-founder who believes in taking a different approach and so our journey parts ways here to allow both parties to chase their own agenda. We need to settle this case before anything else, both ethically and legally - and we will probably close 2Pence to create a new, dedicated entity behind the project. We then also need to make room for new staff members. If we hadn't put all our money, time and assets into the project already, it would be easy to resolve the situation, but we did. So it's a lot harder to figure how such a depleted company, and the game assets it has, could be handled. Anyway, 2Pence members have been in internal negotiations for more than a month now, trying to make sure both the person leaving and the remaining Team Feudums members get through this event as painless as possible. While 2Pence will eventually be put to rest, we don't wish to bury Feudums with it. It'll take time.

One more thing. Due to the current situation, while we all wish to honestly and humbly thank you for your priceless support, we decided to offer a refund to anyone who ever sent money to us through our crowdfunding campaign on Patreon. Please drop us a mail through Patreon or to patreon[at]feudums.com if you want to take advantage of the opportunity to get a refund (please use your Patreon registration address if you decide to send us an email). Otherwise, once we see how the project will exactly continue, we’ll find a way to transfer the remaining pledges over there.

We will keep you posted.

The king is dead… so long live the king!
 

Until the next post,
- Mat