Interesting dev blog post from the makers of Rust

I read this post today, and thought it was interesting as Rust uses Unity and the issues they have had with uLink.
But what I found most interesting, is how uLink has treated them.

http://playrust.com/friday-devblog-4/

 

LOL exactly. The license he purchased changed after he purchased and they will revoke his license. WTF?
I'm guessing they made that change specifically for him too to shut him up.

Really bad business. If they would have focused their time helping them make it successful, they would sell more license to us Unity devs who read such things rather than trying to gag him.

 

It's like those developers who used a YouTube copyright take-down on a bad review of their game... the backlash did much more damage to their whole company than the bad review ever would have.

I think one of the first rules of DIY public relations should be: Never ever try to censor the people criticizing your product -- rather spend that time trying to address the issues.

 

Indeed. They effectively drove away one of the devs they feature to help sell their product. http://www.muchdifferent.com/game-technology/ Brilliant move.

I would suggest as one of the rules of PR should be not to promote your product with this kind of home page : http://www.muchdifferent.com/ I could make a snarky remark, but that picture says it all.

 

I like the approach they're taking: maintaining both branches and temporarily splitting the community until most people agree switching is better.
Too often supposedly community-driven developers mandate changes and then act surprised when people don't immediately agree.

Not that I don't think a developer is free to change their game however they want. But you either involve the community, or you don't. When an honest developer wants to change their stuff, they don't pretend to have a discussion - they just change whatever it is they think needs changing and then document it in the release notes.

Also, how bad is it going to look for uLink if the community agrees to switch immediately

 

Exactly. That a game is buggy is not necessarily a bad thing these days if it is cheap, early and as long as the user knows it will be fixed. It's like buying an unripe fruit and then letting it ripen.

How many people downloaded the first copies of Windows 8 even though it was buggy?

 

I never downloaded Windows 8.

 

I don't think most end users even understand or even care about the situation. I brought it here because they use Unity and most of us would find it interesting, especially since uLink is a popular solution to handle networking. I doubt the typical user even comprehends most of it.

 

Don't like that analogy because I don't like fruit that is picked and left to ripen while being transported by cargo. It never tastes as good as being able to pick fresh.

 

My concern here is we haven't heard the uLink side of the story.

However, its a good insight though into why bigger companies choose to develop most everything in house. It would be crippling to be held hostage by some 3rd party over the sake of some spat.

 

Strongly disagree and the analogy also doesn't hold up.
A fruit will ripen. A game developer might fix the bugs. It's sad that there's so much utter crap on Early Access. But what's worse is that most of the time you aren't even allowed to point out problems. If you do, you will just get those infuriating replies by stupid people: "It's early access therefore it's okay", "You cannot criticize a game while it's on early access", "The developer said that this feature he has advertised will come...some day."


Early Access comment information:
This comment is still in development. As such, please read the following set of facts before you answer:
-Despite not being finished, it's already worth as much as a finished comment, because it will be finished some day
-You cannot criticize it
-It's always right
-If this comment is provably wrong, it's just a placeholder which will be replaced with something right further down the line; Therefore it's still right
-Claims that I will add facts, depth and other features in future are always given without guarantee
Thanks, have a nice day

 

Muchdifferent have done a lot of bad moves, their technology is not updating rapidly enough and I'm yet to see a lot of the things that have been promised.
As much as I dislike Muchdifferent right now, the move with Rust is only one side of the story, so far I've only seen incompetence from their developers(although, I have to admit, the game is fun! just..full of problems). Their blog posts are misleading, which anyone that uses uLink would know.

In a post bashing uLink, this seems to suggest that uLink isn't capable of this. In fact, it's very capable of this and the only reason you wouldn't build your server like that is for hacker reasons and giving out your servers source code (albeit, they don't seem to care about hackers so it doesn't matter anyway).

They have a few posts like this and I just cringe when I see the blame they put on uLink.

 

Early Access is treated as a get out jail free card.
Continual Development (aka Early Access I guess) works for systems that constantly change business needs but for something product oriented, like a game I don't see what value early access brings. Quite the opposite in my opinion.

Funny. Can you imagine if airplanes were made early access?

 

I used to think "Early Access" meant they were done and just doing the very final play testing. But now I now it means "Nowhere near done but need an infusion of cash."

 

Early access in this situation means Alpha, as that is what Rust is.
Beta typically means the game is functional, but needs testing. Some features won't be working or implemented but you have something working.
Rust is Alpha, which means a lot of if it isn't working, and isn't implemented. Much of it is place holders (like graphics and the zombies, which they recently changed out for bears and wolves).

Garry suggests people not to buy the game yet, as it is Alpha, yet has sold almost 2 million copies already which is insane for an Alpha.

 

If he didn't want people to buy it, he wouldn't be selling it.

 

True, but it was more of a thing where he suggests people not to buy it unless they really want to be part of it. Of course he wants everyone to buy it, but it wasn't like he was selling it saying it's finished and amazing.

 

Damn.. that's some S***ty business practice.
specially for a product which is not special at all,

there are many and better network libs around the forums for free
also the upcoming Unity 5 will support new networking solution

MuchDifferent should bow to their current customers and keep them happy, above and beyond the standard support level
thou the future of uLink seems bleak

 

You are only looking on one side of the argument.

Imagine that Rust is constantly posting support tickets that are not all related to bugs. Now the company behind uLink could choose to work for Rust and ignore all other clients and go out of business. They may choose to offer Rust better support for a bigger price. (what they did); It could be that Rust is requesting new features but pretending they are just bugs. It could be that those features are so unique that they can only benefit Rust and no other uLink client.

If the license cost say 500$ for a year. But then you have to spend 100 programmer hours supporting that client. That's like 100*30$ = 3000$. If you were the CEO, what would you do? I know I would offer them to pay for that support - even though I'll still be loosing money. But it's a polite way of saying "You are requesting too much of us...";

Should Rust immediately post about it on they blog. They can do whatever they choose - just looks very unprofessional.

 

Thanks for shedding light to the situation from a different angle. However, is it legal to revoke someone's license, if they've already bought the product? Sounds conspicuous to me :-/

 

I don't think they have the license revoked. But you are right, it is not appropriate to just change the EULA and then threaten to revoke the license because the customer is a pain for them. My point was - we don't know the full story.

 

RUST did post it was bugs that caused DDOS, (should be critical update for all their user base not just RUST)
we are not talking about new features, only bug fixing, and that's the big difference.

if we would pay for the man hours on Microsoft's critical updates, we would be broke.

ofc uLink can charge bug fixing as technical support, its just not common among software companies.

 

it absolutely is and is probably written into the agreement that Rust committed to when they licensed the technology.

"every" software you buy, has a license agreement which likely has a revocation clause.... case(s) in point: 3D Coat, Maya Student License, Office... on and on and on.

 

just because something exists in an eula does not mean it will hold up if it were to go to court. everyone likes to cram in as much as possible to cover their own asses into eula's.

 

They're a Swedish company, so it's extremely unlikely what Muchdifferent did is legal.

 

I agree. Business never go without working for free.
As I am also developing and providing a game server and network middleware(yes, we are competitive to MuchDifferent), I can say some about this situation.

I will talk about with an assumption: What would we have done if Rust did not use uLink but our software at first?

- No EULA nor cost change from the first evaluation usage.
- We give the exact cost table of maintenance license when the evaluation starts. All payment requests are based on it.
- We provide online customer support that requires no money while the maintenance license is not expired, but it can be delayed based on our priority policy: highest for Already in service, high for About to open the service, etc.
- If the customer wants the problem fixed in hurry, they can request us to go to their office and help fixing it. In that case, we request on-site customer support fee per hour, whose cost is already described in the table above. Sometimes we let customers know about on-site customer support for faster resolution.
- After fixing the problem, we identify the cause of it. If the cause is in our software, we don't receive on-site customer support fee. Of course, we notify these policies before going to their office.
- Two-month fall of a service cannot be mentioned with a single word 'severe.' If the cause of the problem is ours, we would have refunded the license fee without revoking the license.
- Our pricing is, free or expensive. No cheap one. But it is unavoidable. Consequences by problems from game server are mostly severe, thus tech supports always involve much efforts. If it is cheap, our balances will become red and the customers are unhappy with low-quality tech supports.

Our policies have become mature nowadays while having 190 customers.

 

I find it hard to take anything anyone says seriously if they have a post count below 150.

Especially if what they're saying is completely wrong or they don't know what they're talking about. I'm saying this because lately there seems to be some shady accounts posting to these boards. Its almost sinister to me.

As for the topic at hand, its damn S***ty of the devs who make uLink to do something like that. DDOS vulnerabilities are never acceptable. I think they were just upset that someone exposed their existence publically. Imagine the kind of lawsuit they would get if Rust were allowed to go offline for however long they would have been forced to. If anything this is the middle range of possible bad things that could happen to them.

They ought to be thankful.

 

I guess it must have worked out for rust because according to steamspy it sold over 2 million units anyway @ $20 a pop

 

I believe they replaced uLink, but they were doing really well reguardless. It's hard to do poorly after people buy a product that can't be returned. A majority of people who bought Rust only played a very sort period of time to "see it" as it was so unique and they just wanted to see dicks in a video game.

 

I dont know but from what I can tell adding multiplayer to your steam game is a real force multiplier (if you can sell 4 packs and gift em to your friends).

 

I was going to say the same thing. It is fun to see the inside of a spat, remember you are only hearing one side of the story. And that server comment baffled me. You can do that with any solution, and if you are not currently doing it that way it is your own fault.

 

I am surprised nobody checked out the comment section.

Looks like on of uLink engineers got frustrated.