• It’s not helpful to us, this is not some grand gesture on Eurogamer’s part and it doesn’t do us justice. Eurogamer is running the re-review for their own sake, again at our expense. We’re not going to sit here looking at their bogus review while we wait for their next verdict in about a month. We won’t play that game. It’s pointless. If Kieron gives us a good review, a bad one, or an average one, the perception will be that he’s simply mopping up. Eurogamer will not take down the original review even if the new one overturns it.

• It’s a conflict of interest any way you want to look at it. Eurogamer is paying another writer according to Eurogamer’s editor to “…see whether he agrees with Ed or not”. Ed is a fraud, there’s nothing to agree with here as far as we’re concerned.

 

Holy jeebus!  I agree with Tasos!  The highlighted text is why he shouldn't consider another eurogamer review.

Now maybe tasos realizes he should've kept his mouth shut.  He could've avoided all the fallout from the review and take it on the chin as he has decided to do suddenly.

Whenever DF receives a bad review in the future everyone will compare it to Eds and remember tasos's big mouth so it will be a long time if ever when people forget this incident thanks to tasos.

Originally posted by Zorvan01

Originally posted by Adigiron

Originally posted by Zorvan01

Kieran already stated he would have barely given DF a 4/10 using Eurogamers rating system. That is why Tasos decided against using him.

 

Hrm?  Was this publicized somewhere, I can't imagine someone saying this in his position.

 

It's in one of these "eurogamer" threads. Link and all. I'm trying to hunt it down now.

Please do find it.

I had a feeling that Tasos must have realized that, after talking to Kieron, that he wasn't going to get any better of a review and is trying to spin it to look like he's trying to be the bigger man.

He wouldn't mind if he did the review for another site because it's likely that no other site requested a copy of the game for review, and Av hasn't given any other site a copy.

Hence the uproar by Tasos over this ONE review, because as far as he's aware its the ONLY review that anyone will see for a length of time.

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by Zorvan01

Originally posted by Adigiron

Originally posted by Zorvan01

Kieran already stated he would have barely given DF a 4/10 using Eurogamers rating system. That is why Tasos decided against using him.

 

Hrm?  Was this publicized somewhere, I can't imagine someone saying this in his position.

 

It's in one of these "eurogamer" threads. Link and all. I'm trying to hunt it down now.

 

Please do find it.

I had a feeling that Tasos must have realized that, after talking to Kieron, that he wasn't going to get any better of a review and is trying to spin it to look like he's trying to be the bigger man.

He wouldn't mind if he did the review for another site because it's likely that no other site requested a copy of the game for review, and Av hasn't given any other site a copy.

Hence the uproar by Tasos over this ONE review, because as far as he's aware its the ONLY review that anyone will see for a length of time.

I'm looking, I'm looking. If this site had a search feature worth a shit, i'd have it already.

Also, as i'm sure you know, this is not my regular account, so I'll probably be re-banned here shortly, so any help digging through the 50 damn eurogamer threads would be appreciated.

Originally posted by javac 

it cost them less than 10mill euro to make, they have 20-40K subs, let's call it 25K for the sake of argument.

 25K * 42 euro = 1.05 mill euro, plus 275K euro / month. it's enough to break even at least.

Not necessarily.

1.05 million Euro - income taxes - overhead costs - paychecks for the entire AV staff - payments to investors/banks (plus interest) - whatever other expenses I'm missing = a lot less than 1.05 million Euro

Also, that 275k a month? Same thing. Expenses and taxes have to be paid first. Anything that is left is profit. There's no way to know they're breaking even just by using assumptions like this.

Well, guess I was mistaken. it was Keen from Keen and Graev, not Kieron. Unless there's a post here I've missed.

"I do think that 2/10 is unfair based on Eurogamer’s scale. I would have given it a 4/10 after reading the explanation of how they rate games." - Keen

http://www.keenandgraev.com/

Originally posted by Lidane

Originally posted by Kyleran 

Actually, this is one conspiracy theory that doesn't sound all that far out.

Maybe so, maybe so.

Now, I don't pretend to know AV's business behind the scenes. However, I *am* currently up to my eyeballs in business classes and I'm trying to look at all this from a management point of view.

What possible reason is there for the lead designer of a game (and, presumably, the CEO of the company) to repeatedly fly off the handle like this over a single bad and/or unfair review? Bad reviews are nothing new in the games industry. Unfair reviews can be discussed quietly behind the scenes with the game company and the website/magazine who printed that review, with a retraction and/or apology posted after the fact. There's no logical explanation why anyone would have multiple back-to-back walls of public nerd rage text over a game review unless there's something else at work here.

Plus, I'm trying to think about all the money they spent developing this game, only to have such limited sales, no physical distribution of DF, and such a tight grip over how often anyone can have access to the game. Those things don't compute. You don't spend millions of dollars making a game to only sell it at your website and only on certain dates and times. It's impossible to recoup your investment that way.

There's a lot more at work here that AV isn't saying. Such an extreme overreaction to a single review just doesn't make any sense unless they're trying to kick up enough dust so the fans will have someone else to blame when Darkfall folds.

I had discussed this with my friends one time, and was not going to discus it here, but well, i could add some fuel to the flames :)

Lets say you try to make a game, you spent many years and  a big quantity of money. In the end, time and money run out and the game is not finished, you try to got some more investors to finish game, but you found no one.

You need money, and only have one server, and unfinished, very unfinished or crap game, that its not going to give you the money it vost to do it, but also its one of the most talked games in some sites, and have around 300k sings for beta tries on you site

You do not do an open beta, so you dont really know the limit of you server, so you "release" the game in a limited ways, allowing only a raction of what you estimate is the limit of you server (lets say 6k the first day) then after you see the game is stable (and patch the out of sync fiasco) allow more people on a limited way until you system is at its limit on peak time, and well, you still need some more money, so you sell some extra accounts (creating long queues, but, well, you have hardcore gamesrs, they could wait 3 hours in line to play the game) so youhave around 12-15 k accounts sold.

Because of the hard way to buy it, only the extreme fanboys would buy the game at release, so you know that a high porcentage of the players that buy the game will resub. Some other will leave, np, more spots to sell and more money (if alll stay, second month all will pay 11.77 instead of some of then the 50 of a new player)

In 2 o 3 months we will have that 12-15 playerrs that like the game and keep they subscription. They are not enought to keep the game alive and allow us to pay our debts, but thats not a problem

Also, we have been done a heavy damage control work on the forums, removing post that dont suport the game and baning the posters, so looking at our forum, a people could suspect that we have a really great game that no one dislike

So second part of the business, and the one that give us the profit. ...Find some investor that have money and zero knowledge of games

We are a little company with no resources, but a great game that all people playing it likes, and although we are still in beta (its said in their web) they paid us to try the game and have beed doing it some onths. We are about to release the game, but we have no resources to do it properly (older investor is picking all the money we are making right now) with may servers and we have 300k players banging at our door to buy the game (as it could be seen in the web), so we need money to do the launch and be rich.

Obviuously they make the game, so the part of the lion in the benefits shol be for them (although in some of the conversations they would let the investors acknowledge, although not telling them it directly, that they would be willing to sell the game, although that is not what they want to do (that was what they really want)

After many conversations, refusing to do it at first they agree to sell the game at a high price, after all, 300k subs at 11.77 month are are almost 40M a year, and that only the start of the game

The day after they sold the game, buyer would find themselves with a crapy game, no devs, obviously no 300k subs and with some dozen less $M

So that critic, yes, it hurt they a lot

http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=2303

Originally posted by Alanako 

I had discussed this with my friends one time, and was not going to discus it here, but well, i could add some fuel to the flames :)

Lets say you try to make a game, you spent many years and  a big quantity of money. In the end, time and money run out and the game is not finished, you try to got some more investors to finish game, but you found no one.

You need money, and only have one server, and unfinished, very unfinished or crap game, that its not going to give you the money it vost to do it, but also its one of the most talked games in some sites, and have around 300k sings for beta tries on you site

You do not do an open beta, so you dont really know the limit of you server, so you "release" the game in a limited ways, allowing only a raction of what you estimate is the limit of you server (lets say 6k the first day) then after you see the game is stable (and patch the out of sync fiasco) allow more people on a limited way until you system is at its limit on peak time, and well, you still need some more money, so you sell some extra accounts (creating long queues, but, well, you have hardcore gamesrs, they could wait 3 hours in line to play the game) so youhave around 12-15 k accounts sold.

Because of the hard way to buy it, only the extreme fanboys would buy the game at release, so you know that a high porcentage of the players that buy the game will resub. Some other will leave, np, more spots to sell and more money (if alll stay, second month all will pay 11.77 instead of some of then the 50 of a new player)

In 2 o 3 months we will have that 12-15 playerrs that like the game and keep they subscription. They are not enought to keep the game alive and allow us to pay our debts, but thats not a problem

Also, we have been done a heavy damage control work on the forums, removing post that dont suport the game and baning the posters, so looking at our forum, a people could suspect that we have a really great game that no one dislike

So second part of the business, and the one that give us the profit. ...Find some investor that have money and zero knowledge of games

We are a little company with no resources, but a great game that all people playing it likes, and although we are still in beta (its said in their web) they paid us to try the game and have beed doing it some onths. We are about to release the game, but we have no resources to do it properly (older investor is picking all the money we are making right now) with may servers and we have 300k players banging at our door to buy the game (as it could be seen in the web), so we need money to do the launch and be rich.

Obviuously they make the game, so the part of the lion in the benefits shol be for them (although in some of the conversations they would let the investors acknowledge, although not telling them it directly, that they would be willing to sell the game, although that is not what they want to do (that was what they really want)

After many conversations, refusing to do it at first they agree to sell the game at a high price, after all, 300k subs at 11.77 month are are almost 40M a year, and that only the start of the game

The day after they sold the game, buyer would find themselves with a crapy game, no devs, obviously no 300k subs and with some dozen less $M

So that critic, yes, it hurt they a lot

 

I think I got a brain tumor reading this.

Originally posted by Alanako

So that critic, yes, it hurt they a lot 

So if I'm understanding your post correctly, you think Tasos is reacting the way he is because the Eurogamer review might cost them a potential buyer for their game because it's clearly in trouble. Did I read that correctly? If not, I apologize.

I can see that, but at the same time, you'd have to assume that anyone willing to buy a company out for millions won't do any research at all. That's doubtful. Any potential buyers of either Aventurine or Darkfall would want to see and know as much as they could about them before buying, especially in the current economy.

I think it's much more basic than that. They're in trouble, but if they're going to go down they don't want to admit they did anything wrong. It's much easier to have a scapegoat in the forms of Ed Zitron and Eurogamer than it is to admit that you failed.

Tasos is funny, thanks Polar, you have once again done this site and the entire DF community a service.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

 

"didn’t understand even the very basics right before he stopped playing to write his review."

 

Somehow this is the players fault, and not the games?

Again, it is not the responsibility of the player to hunt,  or suffer through to find the "fun", its the responsibility of the game to show it to them.

 

Well said!

I've neve seen a grown man cry this much. As a newbie developer he has A LOT to learn. This debacle will definietly not help. 

To quote someone earlier in this thread:

Funny thing is... the vast majority of us would have no idea who Ed Zitron is, or would have never even read his review if Tasos hadn't made it center spot-light reading material.

Nice work Tasos, keep it up!

We all know Aventurines PR is crap. Has been since time eternal.

I read the review, seems pretty damn close to the game experience.

The reason he declined a re-review is because of a line he might hear form the movie, "A Few Good Men".

"Truth, you can't handle the truth"

Originally posted by Zorvan01

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by Zorvan01

Originally posted by Adigiron

Originally posted by Zorvan01

Kieran already stated he would have barely given DF a 4/10 using Eurogamers rating system. That is why Tasos decided against using him.

 

Hrm?  Was this publicized somewhere, I can't imagine someone saying this in his position.

 

It's in one of these "eurogamer" threads. Link and all. I'm trying to hunt it down now.

 

Please do find it.

I had a feeling that Tasos must have realized that, after talking to Kieron, that he wasn't going to get any better of a review and is trying to spin it to look like he's trying to be the bigger man.

He wouldn't mind if he did the review for another site because it's likely that no other site requested a copy of the game for review, and Av hasn't given any other site a copy.

Hence the uproar by Tasos over this ONE review, because as far as he's aware its the ONLY review that anyone will see for a length of time.

 

I'm looking, I'm looking. If this site had a search feature worth a shit, i'd have it already.

Also, as i'm sure you know, this is not my regular account, so I'll probably be re-banned here shortly, so any help digging through the 50 damn eurogamer threads would be appreciated.

Don't go near the regular EG search you poor soul - that way lies madness.  Use this unofficial one instead

Originally posted by oddjobs74

Originally posted by Galadourn

Originally posted by oddjobs74

Originally posted by Ruyn

Awesome.  Once again Tasos owns Ed Zitron.  Now we can all go back to enjoying the game.  Well that is the 10% that frequent this poor excuse of a forum that actually play.

 

Explain how Tasos owns anything other than bills he cant pay..

 

There are mental midgets bigger than you.

you totally missed the sarcasm there...or not?

 

Nah that guy is 1 of Tasos' alter boys

reading it again, you're right,...

Originally posted by Galadourn

Originally posted by oddjobs74

Originally posted by Galadourn

Originally posted by oddjobs74

Originally posted by Ruyn

Awesome.  Once again Tasos owns Ed Zitron.  Now we can all go back to enjoying the game.  Well that is the 10% that frequent this poor excuse of a forum that actually play.

 

Explain how Tasos owns anything other than bills he cant pay..

 

There are mental midgets bigger than you.

you totally missed the sarcasm there...or not?

 

Nah that guy is 1 of Tasos' alter boys

reading it again, you're right,...

And I thought Gaute Godager was a bad example on how to handle things, looks like Tasos competes for the title, and to be honest, he is not far from it either :)

Originally posted by Zorvan01

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by Zorvan01

Originally posted by Adigiron

Originally posted by Zorvan01

Kieran already stated he would have barely given DF a 4/10 using Eurogamers rating system. That is why Tasos decided against using him.

 

Hrm?  Was this publicized somewhere, I can't imagine someone saying this in his position.

 

It's in one of these "eurogamer" threads. Link and all. I'm trying to hunt it down now.

 

Please do find it.

I had a feeling that Tasos must have realized that, after talking to Kieron, that he wasn't going to get any better of a review and is trying to spin it to look like he's trying to be the bigger man.

He wouldn't mind if he did the review for another site because it's likely that no other site requested a copy of the game for review, and Av hasn't given any other site a copy.

Hence the uproar by Tasos over this ONE review, because as far as he's aware its the ONLY review that anyone will see for a length of time.

 

I'm looking, I'm looking. If this site had a search feature worth a shit, i'd have it already.

Also, as i'm sure you know, this is not my regular account, so I'll probably be re-banned here shortly, so any help digging through the 50 damn eurogamer threads would be appreciated.

Your original account got banned? hrm, i miss your posts lol.

Now on to the thread, great entertainment at the least. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, seems that AV is scared of another review. Just as an FYI you dont want darkfall to fail. think of that community spreading to all of our games......

Originally posted by Polarization

 http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=185733

Regarding Eurogamer's offer to re-review Darkfall

Dealing with this Eurogamer scandal has been extremely frustrating for us. To those of you that believe we’re unprofessional for calling Eurogamer out on this, we’ll have you know that there’s nothing professional about this entire affair. It’s obviously personal when someone will tear our game apart without actually playing it. It’s certainly personal for us to see our livelihood being torn to shreds by a fraud using a respected large game site to do it through. We tried to deal with this privately but Eurogamer wouldn’t hear it, so we had no recourse but to go public. 

We would never accuse Eurogamer , Ed Zitron or anyone without solid evidence. We know for a fact that we’ve been wronged. Eurogamer is right to keep it up as they’re seeing some good traffic from this, but in the meanwhile we‘re taking irreparable damage and there’s simply nothing we can do about it. We are in an impossible situation, with many future possible repercussions to our game and we’re helpless to react. The Eurogamer smear piece is picked up by online media everywhere and this will stay with us long after this issue is forgotten. Gamerankings and Metacritic for example have already used this Eurogamer score of Darkfall, and unless this review comes down, a new review won’t be taken into consideration. Metacritic informed us earlier today that they sympathize but they can’t do anything unless the review comes down.

So we considered Eurogamer’s offer to have Kieron Gillen re-review our game on their behalf but in the meanwhile they will not take down the original review. We have to decline the offer for a re-review (as if we have a choice) for the following reasons:

• We don't need a re-review, we need a real review. We know for a fact that the original review is a fraud and yet Eurogamer stands by it. They should keep standing by it then or take it down based on the evidence *we have offered them, the numerous factual errors and omissions, the feedback they’re receiving on it, the reviewer’s questionable track record, former similar accusations about him, and our word. These half baked measures to save face mean nothing while this assassination piece stands. We’ve offered enough proof to justify taking it down to protect our game and their credibility. If they as much as suspect that we might be right, and we believe they know we are, they should have taken it down pending a re-review.
  
  *The evidence: The reviewer’s supervisor and MMO Editor for Eurogamer spent 2 minutes in the character creator but didn’t create a character. Ed Zitron spent 2 hours 33 minutes logged in the game and the character creator. In this time the reviewer tried 9 different characters. Much of the time was spent creating and deleting these characters. 14 minutes before the reviewer stopped playing Darkfall altogether he said in global chat: “how do I cast spells…..help”. During his entire time in the game he repeatedly asks: “what do I do?” in public chat. After less than an hour logged in the game he speaks in race chat and says “this game is awful” His entire chat log shows someone biased that spent very little time in game, didn’t understand even the very basics right before he stopped playing to write his review. We offered to pay to fly one of Eurogamer’s IT people over here and cover all his expenses so he can also inspect all our logs, verify our claims, and see that they are practically impossible to doctor. Eurogamer refused.

• I spoke with Kieron and I believe he is capable of doing an excellent job at reviewing Darkfall, so much so that it’s completely unfair for him, and for us, that he does mop-up duty after the original fraudulent review. We hope he’ll review Darkfall for another respectable publication sometime and we don’t want to blow it on this one. If they wanted Kieron Gillen they should have let him write the original review instead of tossing Darkfall to some random and unsupervised amateur. They got what they paid for but why should we have to suffer for it?

 

• It’s not helpful to us, this is not some grand gesture on Eurogamer’s part and it doesn’t do us justice. Eurogamer is running the re-review for their own sake, again at our expense. We’re not going to sit here looking at their bogus review while we wait for their next verdict in about a month. We won’t play that game. It’s pointless. If Kieron gives us a good review, a bad one, or an average one, the perception will be that he’s simply mopping up. Eurogamer will not take down the original review even if the new one overturns it.

 

• The MMO Editor for Eurogamer should have checked up on the review when Darkfall received a 2/10. When your site instructs the public to avoid someone’s livelihood at all costs, and calls their playerbase morons, you should at least make sure you’re not pulling these things out of your ass. We gave them 2 accounts for this reason and the MMO Editor chose to not use his. We pleaded with him to give us some time to discuss this, but he turned us down and sited Ed Zitron’s supposed impeccable track record. This about a guy who at best was happy to take Eurogamer’s money and spend a couple of hours using troll posts as reference to write a review on our game. We’re not the first developer to accuse Ed Zitron. He seems to have done this kind of thing before on several occasions and mostly against independent games. It’s not often that you see these kinds of accusations, but Ed seems to have collected a few of them. So much for his impeccable record. Eurogamer also knows this but chooses to ignore it. They’re forced to take his word over our proof and his prior track record because they’ve got nothing else to go on.

• It’s a conflict of interest any way you want to look at it. Eurogamer is paying another writer according to Eurogamer’s editor to “…see whether he agrees with Ed or not”. Ed is a fraud, there’s nothing to agree with here as far as we’re concerned.

So if it’s all the same to Eurogamer we’ll just take it on the chin and stick with the original review. We don’t need their concessions. If they can live with this, so can we. 2/10 from the likes of Ed Zitron is going to be a badge of honor for us. They can keep that fraud up as our memorial contribution to journalistic integrity and to independent games everywhere. At the very least they may think twice before they try doing this to someone else. 

We hope these can be our final thoughts on this topic.

 

LMAO!!! This game is the biggest joke of all time.

Originally posted by Tasos 

We offered to pay to fly one of Eurogamer’s IT people over here and cover all his expenses so he can also inspect all our logs, verify our claims, and see that they are practically impossible to doctor. Eurogamer refused.

If this actually true Tasos knows nothing about database management or how easy it is to change logs.

...sited Ed Zitron’s supposed impeccable track record. We’re not the first developer to accuse Ed Zitron. He seems to have done this kind of thing before on several occasions and mostly against independent games. It’s not often that you see these kinds of accusations, but Ed seems to have collected a few of them. So much for his impeccable record. 

Ed does have an impeccable track record.  The other games he gave low scores to are gone, so it looks like he was right to give those low scores.

after the original fraudulent review.

instead of tossing Darkfall to some random and unsupervised amateur.

Ed is a fraud, there’s nothing to agree with here as far as we’re concerned.

They can keep that fraud up...

Wow... slander much Tasos?  Calling someone a fraud because they gave a factual account of the broken/poorly designed game mechanics in your sub-standard game is a bit of a stretch.  But not for Tasos!

At the very least they may think twice before they try doing this to someone else. 

Do what?  Give an honest review of a game?  Maybe you should have went with IGN.  I hear they take bribes.

Tasos is a control freak that tends to go ballistic on stuff that is out of his control.

If they want honesty they should get that Yahtzee Croshaw guy to do a review of this game.  I bet he will give it a high marks.  What's a matter Tasus, you believe in your game don't u???

Originally posted by SuperCrap

If they want honesty they should get that Yahtzee Croshaw guy to do a review of this game.  I bet he will give it a high marks.  What's a matter Tasus, you believe in your game don't u???

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/208-Eve-Online

Yep, he seems to fully appreciate niche MMO's.