Liser
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A new statement from Chris Avellone:
To give a little more detail on the financial issues raised shortly before (and then after) the departure:
Note the financial issues were only part of the discussion points, and we did continue to debate them after the departure. They amounted to:
- I asked about making the company’s finances more transparent, since those were often a mystery. This lack of clarity also interfered with the review process (in short, you can’t do reviews and give raises until finances are in order, and we always got held up on that as part of the process, sometimes for months, even if reviews had been written – this is apparently still the case).
- Feargus as CFO had total control over this part of the process. Unfortunately, it was hard to see behind the curtain, and that curtain was not only Feargus himself, but HR and also a number of long-time friends who worked offsite. I have never felt Feargus to be good with money and budgeting, and we had much different approaches on how to save, spend, and what amounted to raises and equal pay for employees. Our usual lack of funds ended up causing a lot of problems with publishers because we were very, very dependent on their payments, so we had little or no leverage or breathing room if disagreements arose - if we had funds in the bank, there's a number of things we could have handled differently.
- The problem is when we did have a lot of money in the bank, Feargus tended to spend it freely and rarely checked with other owners before doing so. Worse, when we had little in the bank, you learned to avoid him, as he’d interpret the depletion in funds as somehow a failing on your part (even if you weren’t being paid for months at a time, or worse, if you’d given the company loans to make payroll).
- Strangely, this particular point is likely one of the big triggers for the de-ownering: I asked why family members who didn’t work at the studio were doing on our payroll – notably, Feargus’s wife (other employees have spotted this as well and brought it up to me after I left since they saw her on spreadsheets, so either it didn’t get fixed or is still the norm). To be fair, I don’t know if she’s still on payroll or not as of today, but even for a while after my departure, she was still employed by the studio, and while she was, I had no idea what she was doing for us.
- I asked why the Fair Market Value of the company hadn’t been adjusted in 10 years (it was still sitting around what the company’s initial value was, which was almost nothing). It turned out none of the procedures for voting on this had ever taken place according to the company’s own bylaws. So I asked we resume our own procedure and vote on having it evaluated – which was ignored, then interrupted by being de-ownered before the shares could be re-evaluated (which was also good business, but again, poor ethics). I don’t know if not doing a FMV evaluation is legal or not, but guessing it is.
Any of these could have been a trigger for de-ownering, even the last one, but there were other issues brought up as well (non-financial) that continued to be discussed before or after I was no longer an employee. These weren’t resolved.
For the record, I would have been far more comfortable if the finances were managed by someone else, including any other owner (and despite my other feelings about the owners and their organization/communication, I would trust any of them more than Feargus with finances because at least they understood the basic principles of how to maintain a positive cashflow).
As an added benefit, you’d also remove a good deal of any potential defensiveness by having it managed by a neutral party when inquiring about it - hopefully. That may be naive, but I'd like to think so.
As another benefit, removing this aspect of his job would have been one less thing to distract Feargus, since he was already overseeing and doing too much that arguably he shouldn’t be doing, and he couldn’t keep track (or remember) the tasks he was asking for anyway. This was certainly the case in dealings after the departure, which made the problems more apparent. This may have changed since – any of this may have, but they were issues at the time.
Anyway, this wasn’t all the issues brought up, but it’s a good chunk of the financial issues that were causing problems overall.-
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Asked for a full refund on my Fig pledge, hope it goes through.
Got it
Hi ,
Thank you for contacting us and I’ll be happy to take care of that for you. It may take a few days to get the refund on the Fig side as I need to have them process it, but I can refund the PayPal DLC purchase right away.
Regarding the comments from Chris, we have and still do wish him nothing but the best for him and his family’s future.
We sincerely thank you for having backed us.
Thank you again,
Darren Monahan
CIO and Co-Founder
Obsidian Entertainment
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Now Eric Fenstermaker is slinging some mud himself, publicly accuses Avellone of sabotaging PoE's development "at a vital stage":
If Avellone hurt PoE's development that much, maybe he really was fired?
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Asked for a full refund on my Fig pledge, hope it goes through.
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IGN has released a 13 minute gameplay video of the very start of the (just after character creation).
Great stuff! The radial menu and the "cycle through targets" mechanic seem a lot better than the old PC interface.
I hope this will be available for mouse+keyboard users as well!
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There are apparently no plans to release Pillars 2 on console.
https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/162089614411/wtf-poe-on-console-deadfire-is-a-pc-exclusive#notes
That's really going to hurt PoE 1's sales on consoles. Not much point in playing the first half of a series when the next part is exclusive to a different platform.
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Now I really have to wonder if any of the changes in PoE 2 to party size, casting, interface, etc. were made with a future console port in mind.
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Paradox Interactive Bringing Pillars of Eternity and Cities: Skylines to PS4 and Xbox One
Best-Selling, Award-Winning Games Launching on Consoles This August
STOCKHOLM — June 21, 2017 — Paradox Interactive, a publisher of best-selling games across many genres and platforms, today announced that Pillars of Eternity, the critically acclaimed role-playing game (RPG) from Obsidian Entertainment, and Cities: Skylines, the smash-hit city-building game from Colossal Order, will both be released for new console platforms later this year. Both award-winning titles have been redesigned for console players with controller-friendly gameplay and UI, and will be available in August for their respective platforms.
Pillars of Eternity, originally the result of a crowdfunding campaign by over 75,000 backers, first released for PC platforms to broad critical acclaim, winning several awards for its rich story and deep, original world. Now, the original game, alongside the expansions The White March – Parts I & II, will be released as Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition for the PlayStation®4 and Xbox One consoles on August 29, 2017.
Rediscover the world of Eora in the debut trailer for Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition: -
Where does this leave Tyranny 2?
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Sounds like Josh is taking on a lead writer-like role:
"Given that Carrie Patel is titled only "Narrative Designer", who is the Narrative Lead now that Eric Fenstermaker is gone?"Feargus:
HI Eschalion - let's see, Carrie Patel is one of the main writers, Josh is the Game Director and in charge of the narrative, Bobby Null is the Lead Designer (he was the Lead Area Designer on Eternity), Dimitri Berman is the Lead Character Artist (he was that on Eternity 1), Sean Dunny is the Lead Environment Artist (he was that on the Eternity expansion), Jorge Salgado and Jeff Huseges are area designers as they were on Eternity 1... One of the new additions to the team has been Dave Williams, if you do a search you'll find out he was the creator of Legend of the Five Rings. He's been able to offload a lot of the system design stuff from Josh.
The sales thread
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted · Edited by Liser
I don't see how they could have spent more than 2 or 3 million on this game. It's a sequel in the same engine with a lot of re-used stuff (soundtrack is an obvious example). What would they have spent the money on? Does VA cost 10+ million?