What if the Devs volunteered their time to continue working on AoE III DE, without pay?
Ok wait, that’s absurd, right? Hear me out.
If it’s logistically and contractualy possible in their contract to allow them access to company resources and to develop the DLC - in exchange for no salary - would the company allow them to participate?
If so, could devs just be paid on a voluntary basis through a GoFundMe of sorts? It would be a passion project with fans around the world paying donating to them. It would also double as a social experiment in the field.
I know people have bills to pay and the risk is not getting paid for the hours you put in.
I also know companies have clauses.
WE has proven to be useless, incompetent, greedy, and downright selfish.
That’s why we’re entertaining absurdities right now.
I don’t think Microsoft would tolerate the optics of using unpaid/crowd sourced labour on their games. Not to mention the dubious legality.
2 Likes
I still believe the cancelling of AOE3 was NOT a well-calculated business move, but an extremely tone-deaf, arrogant and shortsighted one, very much like the recent DLCs they’ve made.
If the player community could pressure them to change course by voting with our wallets, they’ll discard the idea of aggressive monetization and return to constant support and regular updates to their games.
Sidenote: Creative Assembly didn’t become backrupt with going back to the original course, or giving away planned DLCs for free. They became much better.
5 Likes
Bro this isn’t a poor little indie title, this is one of the biggest franchises in the world.
It’s not like devs are idling at the company either, if anything it’s most likely they are massively overworked and spread thin or they wouldn’t have to keep shuffling teams between games.
9 Likes
OMG I almost forgot about that after several people tried to tell us the devs need our support and help to sustain. /s
Sarcasm ends here.
If this is such a big title requiring massive amounts of work on so many projects, all with promising returns, why don’t World’s Edge simply hire more people?
It feels like they are providing indie-level investment while expecting big title-level revenue.
8 Likes
Yes it’s almost disgusting how much they blatantly have to cut corners.
8 Likes