itch.io

You mean Tweets like this one saying that, despite being sad, he’s still working on the update?

https://twitter.com/Kael_Tiger/status/1420073226043117569

No, being sad on Twitter is not solid evidence of delay before the delay happens. None of us knew how much longer he needed to work on it, and we had no reason to assume his personal issues would prevent him from meeting a deadline that he himself had set. We only found out about the delay after it happened, and what you may have found on Twitter is being used to rationalize it post-hoc.

And while I empathize with him, those personal issues are also not a valid reason why he couldn’t spend the 15 minutes required to send out a Tweet and take down that incorrect release date from the main page.

Kael,

Your behavior regarding this situation is disappointing. There have already been two delays within the last month and, without any kind of warning or heads-up, you pushed it back again on the third release day.

Many of us, myself included, were here eagerly awaiting for the update on August 10^th. It didn’t come out, and then main page was updated to “TBA” without any further information about the situation. I saw people worry that you were overworking yourself and needed a break, or that you needed to hire more help to get things done on time. (And before people start going on about making assumptions, it is not unreasonable for us to assume Kael underestimated the amount of work that needed to be done based on the information we had at the time.) You say that some were wildly misunderstanding what was happening in other ways, which prompted your post on August 12^th.

In your post, you say that “Patreons have received a notification regarding the delay on the 28th of July,” which means you knew about this delay at least two weeks before the August 10^th release date here on Itch.io. In addition, you say the update hasn’t been released to Patreon yet and that the Itch.io version will only come out two weeks afterwards. It sounds like this may release on Itch.io in September, not August 10^th, and you didn’t think we would want (or deserved) to know about this earlier?

Instead of taking ten minutes out of those two weeks to remove the false Itch.io release date before we all thought the update would drop at any moment, you waited until release day –probably after people started to voice their concern/displeasure– before doing anything. You flat out ignored an entire circle in your Venn diagram of fans thinking it was no big deal, or that we didn’t deserve to know because we weren’t supporting you financially (“I wish that people who are not members of our support team [i.e. Patreon] did not inflict themselves into the discussion they are not a part of”). You knew weeks in advance that this deadline would be missed, and now you get frustrated when we start wondering what is going on?

You have to understand that many of us are not on your Discord server nor have access to that patron-only post you put up on Patreon, and so sending us an update here on Itch.io should also be on your to-do list if plans change. It doesn’t have to be much, and you don’t even need to explain the “why” behind the decision; all you have to do is say something like “Hey guys, something came up. I’d rather not go into detail, but it is going to push the update back a bit. I’m not sure when it’ll come out yet, but I’ll keep you posted.” Hell, even a Twitter update would have been nice, because then we could have linked it to each other when someone was out of the loop. But none of that happened, and you left us in the dark to speculate. You did ghost us, Kael, despite your claim otherwise.

As of now, you have 1,638 patrons on Patreon. Assuming that your Itch.io audience is a measly 20% of that size, that is at least 320 people. And because of how people tend to flock towards free content, I suspect that number to be an underestimation of the reality. This isn’t a small group by any means, and we shouldn’t be so casually disregarded.

I do not appreciate being lied to regarding release dates nor do I appreciate the backhanded response to our concern over the multiple delays (both from you and your overly-forgiving fans). In the future, I hope you will take better care to keep all of your fans informed of relevant information well ahead of time.

P.S. To everyone posting excessively-positive comments in response to Kael’s post, keep in mind that you are encouraging this kind of behavior from him. He has no reason to improve if he thinks this is okay. Negativity, in moderation, is a good thing.

EDIT:

Wow, you guys must have zero standards if you think wanting basic communication with fans and not to be misinformed is “entitlement.” For those who just want the TL;DR, I’ll reiterate in bullet-point form this time:

• August 10^th was the promised release date on Itch.io.
• Kael told his patrons about the delay on July 28^th, which was two weeks before.
• The advertised release date was only changed on August 10^th after us Itch.io people started wondering what was going on, not when he told his patrons.
• Sending a Patreon-exclusive update does not notify us non-patrons of a delay.
• Kael did not send any Tweet explicitly stating that the build would be delayed prior to August 10^th (vague Tweets about being sad are not enough evidence of a delay). In fact, he sent one on July 27^th stating that he was still working on the update despite his personal issues (https://twitter.com/Kael_Tiger/status/1420073226043117569):

All Kael had to do was send out one Tweet on July 28^th saying the build would be delayed and then remove the incorrect release date from Itch.io. That’s all I’m asking for. From there, we would have known about the delay and adjusted our expectations accordingly. 

I get that you all like his work, and I do too, but stop simping for him when he does something wrong.