Is Egosoft giving up?

[adeine]

Fun fact. Skype 8 can't handle posting the upcoming changelog in one post.

Is it one line, and Skype just randomly refuses to send messages again?

[ei8htx]

if ur not ms teams ur not pro

[Socratatus]

Oh crap, Egosoft have been silent about the past 2 weeks since the last patch was deployed. They are probably dying as a company. /s

I've seen not one gaming company going bankrupt, a few of them were actual AAA developers. This is not how "giving up" looks like.

There have been gaming companies that have gone bankrupt and it`s mostly sudden, when no one outside (and few inside) saw it coming.

In my experience before it happens, there is a 'silence before the storm' period that sometimes extends into multiple months when no dev communicates outside the company at all.

TellTale Games (of Walking Dead fame) is one such company. Most employees didn`t know until a week before the end. And they were quite vocal until then. Look it up. In some ways Egosoft is not unlike them.

The only way to tell is if you keep a very close eye on the company shares and finances. Silence or no silence means little.

[Skeeter]

Skype? Who uses that old piece of rubbish anymore, whatsapp/discord is where its at nowadays.

Besides the only change log i want to see is.

[new] Campaign for argon added - You can now play a would be hero that saves the universe.
[fixed] All other bugs now fixed.

One can dream.

[Shehriazad]

There have been gaming companies that have gone bankrupt and it`s mostly sudden, when no one outside (and few inside) saw it coming.

In my experience before it happens, there is a 'silence before the storm' period that sometimes extends into multiple months when no dev communicates outside the company at all.

TellTale Games (of Walking Dead fame) is one such company. Most employees didn`t know until a week before the end. And they were quite vocal until then. Look it up. In some ways Egosoft is not unlike them.

The only way to tell is if you keep a very close eye on the company shares and finances. Silence or no silence means little.

With the amount of gear and personnel their upkeep cost will have been in the millions per year.
Keep in mind that Telltale on its' height had about 15 TIMES the amount of employees that Egosoft has right now...talk about unnecessarily BLOATED.
Coupled with the fact that Steam until very recently took 30% from every sold copy no matter what AND Telltale probably having to have paid licensing fees left and right or some sort of cuts to the owner of the IPs...they ran a business model that is a LOT less sustainable if not every product is a total shelf-clearer.

Egosoft is running with less than 10% of the personnel and has their own IP.


Definitely comparing apples to oranges here.

This is also why I think Egosoft is less likely to go bankrupt than Cloud Imperium Games who are now having 500 people working on a single IP with 2 unreleased games...burning through money faster than Bill Gates can earn it ( )

[Artean]

Fun fact. Skype 8 can't handle posting the upcoming changelog in one post.

I'm sure I can handle it. PM me.

[jakotheshadows]

Fun fact. Skype 8 can't handle posting the upcoming changelog in one post.

Ever heard of Slack?

[darrund]

Egosoft give up, I don't believe they know the meaning of the word. Every X series they have put out has been supported with patches for so long it puts many other developers to shame.

This is probably very true. Egosoft have a history in supporting their games so far and it is not in their nature to give up.
After all it is who they are.
However software developing is not exactly like "Harry Potter" using his magic stick and shout "problem fix yourself" and everything is fixed in an instant.It takes a lot of try and error process before achieving you goals.
I still hope for the best.

[Skeeter]

Egosoft just made a video saying about this subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

[Socratatus]

In my experience before it happens, there is a 'silence before the storm' period that sometimes extends into multiple months when no dev communicates outside the company at all.

TellTale Games (of Walking Dead fame) is one such company. Most employees didn`t know until a week before the end. And they were quite vocal until then. Look it up. In some ways Egosoft is not unlike them.

The only way to tell is if you keep a very close eye on the company shares and finances. Silence or no silence means little.

With the amount of gear and personnel their upkeep cost will have been in the millions per year.
Keep in mind that Telltale on its' height had about 15 TIMES the amount of employees that Egosoft has right now...talk about unnecessarily BLOATED.
Coupled with the fact that Steam until very recently took 30% from every sold copy no matter what AND Telltale probably having to have paid licensing fees left and right or some sort of cuts to the owner of the IPs...they ran a business model that is a LOT less sustainable if not every product is a total shelf-clearer.

Egosoft is running with less than 10% of the personnel and has their own IP.


Definitely comparing apples to oranges here.

This is also why I think Egosoft is less likely to go bankrupt than Cloud Imperium Games who are now having 500 people working on a single IP with 2 unreleased games...burning through money faster than Bill Gates can earn it ( )

You`re missing the point and going off track as always happens. I`m simply saying gaming companies can and do suddenly go bankrupt and close. That is it.

[Buzz2005]

well then you have to compare relatively similar companies, devil is in the details

[CBJ]

You`re missing the point and going off track as always happens. I`m simply saying gaming companies can and do suddenly go bankrupt and close.

They can and do, but it does seem a little unreasonable that us not releasing anything new over a period of less than two weeks leads to someone demanding to know if we've given up or gone bankrupt, don't you think? It's not the first time this has happened either; in fact it happens with monotonous regularity.

[EmperorDragon]

Well, a dev him/herself (CBJ) joining the discussion says it all, doesn't it? I don't think there's anything to worry about, in fact, there may be a pretty big update coming.

Egosoft still has big plans (see the roadmap) and I'm confident that X4 will still end up super awesome. Two weeks without a patch is really not a cause for alarm.

[darrund]

You`re missing the point and going off track as always happens. I`m simply saying gaming companies can and do suddenly go bankrupt and close.

They can and do, but it does seem a little unreasonable that us not releasing anything new over a period of less than two weeks leads to someone demanding to know if we've given up or gone bankrupt, don't you think? It's not the first time this has happened either; in fact it happens with monotonous regularity.

Short answer YES this discussion is unreasonable and there is no foundation for this kind of speculation.
Egososft is quite an established (relatively small but with long presence and good tracking record company) in a country like Germany.
Knowing how the market works it is quite unlikely that something like this (bankrupsy of all reasons) will happen to a well established company especially after launching a new promising product and in such a short period.
Being a software company owner myself,in a far less developed market than Germany, I would say it is next to impossible, given the time frame involved.
It is also quite absurd to start even thinking about this kind of issues for a 2 or 3 weeks absence of 'announcements" or media releases or whatever on a almost 20 years of presence and experience company like Egosoft and for a game that was released just 4 months ago.
This kind of easily crafted conclusions based on non existing facts are hasty to say the least.
There are other companies doing a lot less and still existso honestly I wouldn't be worried about ES.
All I want to say is that,like everyone else here i believe,wait for new things to come!

[Artean]

Well, a dev him/herself (CBJ) joining the discussion says it all, doesn't it? I don't think there's anything to worry about, in fact, there may be a pretty big update coming.

Egosoft still has big plans (see the roadmap) and I'm confident that X4 will still end up super awesome. Two weeks without a patch is really not a cause for alarm.

Yup.

As stated several times, Egosoft has - for good reasons - a reputation of providing long term support on their titles. Since the release of X4, this certainly hasn't changed. Quite the contrary imo, their patching intensity and forum activity is better then ever.

So, on a more relevant note - are we closing in on 2.5 beta??

[CBJ]

So, on a more relevant note - are we closing in on 2.5 beta??

By definition, we must be. Unless the recent imaging of a black hole has somehow reversed the direction of time.

Edit: You might want to go and look on the Public Beta forum.

[Artean]

So, on a more relevant note - are we closing in on 2.5 beta??

By definition, we must be. Unless the recent imaging of a black hole has somehow reversed the direction of time.

Edit: You might want to go and look on the Public Beta forum.

Ha, I knew it! And that's an impressive list of fixes!

[EmperorDragon]

Edit: You might want to go and look on the Public Beta forum.

Yup, pretty big update forthcoming indeed!

Bit saddened that the indestructible partially-built station issue still remains a fat, jousting lance-sized arrow in my heel. Oh well, I guess it's a tough one to fix...

[CBJ]

It is indeed more complicated to find a solution for than it might appear, for gameplay rather than technical reasons, and needs more thought than we were able to put into it for this release.

[g04tn4d0]

The suggestion that the list of bugs that are being fixed is getting shorter and shorter is demonstrably false. The 2.00 and 2.20 lists were longer than any of the previous ones, and 2.21 was an exception because it was essentially just a hotfix for 2.20. I've not yet compiled the 2.50 changelog, but I'm confident that it too will have plenty in it.

The only thing that has slowed down is the frequency of release. The rate at which we were building and releasing patches immediately after release was never going to be sustainable in the long term. Building and releasing an update takes a considerable amount of time and resource away from actually fixing and improving things, and it doesn't make sense to continue doing that on a daily or weekly basis once the most critical issues have been dealt with.

As for giving up, that's just nonsense. We have set out a general roadmap in one of the sticky threads at the top of the forum, and that's what we are working to.

CBJ wins....

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