DoubleFine drops SpaceBase DF-9 development

well, the guy is a politician.
the thing that really bug me about this whole thing is how they didn't prevent this... Double Fine is not a new indie studio that have no experience on the industry, they have, a lot. some of their games are a thing of cult, they should know better how manage things, people trusted in them because they were DF.

that and the the "from alpha to Gold in 1 step!" thing, are they going to keep supporting the game in any way? or it will just be abandoned there to rot in hell? selling an unfinished product is shady as fuck, and early access allows that, but outside of early access the game will still be unfinished, and they are going to sell that...

Reading their plan, it's easy to see how they screwed up.

They didn't put enough into the initial release to make it fun. Prison Architect had a similar plan, but because the early releases already had the core gameplay implemented, it got good reviews even in early access, so people bought it.

Spacebase DF-9 didn't have that core gameplay down, so the early reviews were scathing and people stopped buying it. They tried to design it as if it was a "normal" game with internal development rather than an early access game which was intended to rely on those early sales -- and you can't do that; if you want lots of early sales, you need it to be fun from the moment it hits the marketplace.

The fact that he thought EA sales can and would support an extremely long development development cycle alone proves he's deluded and does not understand either how early access is supposed to work or why small developers use it to begin with.