Raphael van Lierop

Hey @Glacia-- I know you mean well, but you don't have to "explain away" my comments or expectations about the community. Saying it's a minority or it's normal and just best be ignored, is not really the point. I know how online communities work, and what is typical, what is normal, etc. I'm saying, I expect better of my players. And that starts here.

Hey all, I don't usually post in here, but I'm not fond of some of the tone of the discussion and comments (including ones that are being reported). Let's keep it friendly. In all this situation around "Signal Void" and Interloper (which we've already explained and I won't spend more time on that b/c I don't think it's our job to justify our dev decisions to folks), it's been quite disappointing to see how heated, and how "coded" the language has been at times. From our perspective, people who choose to play the game using Interloper experience mode settings are just one of our many sub-groups of players. It might surprise you that there are many more that prefer to pay primarily Pilgrim (you just don't often hear from them, because they don't define themselves as "Pilgrims" or whatever). Or the other modes. I don't think it matters. Each of these modes is valid. The reason we included the Experience Modes was to give players some choices, from save to save, in how they might like to bias their experience along a spectrum (from exploration on one end, to survival on the other). There's no one right way to play, no Experience that is somehow superior to another. There's only how YOU choose to play, what is valuable to YOU, and what brings YOU enjoyment. They are all part of THE LONG DARK. You aren't somehow "better" or "more important" or "more valuable to Hinterland" because you play Interloper. The disappointing part -- for me -- isn't so much the anger and jibes that were pointed at us when we first launched Part Two of TALES -- sadly, we've become used to that. It was to hear stories from people who *don't* primarily play using Interloper settings, saying how they are being berated by "Interloper players" in the community, or while streaming, being told that if they don't play using Interloper they aren't really playing the game, they aren't good at it, they should try this or that strategy or they aren't doing it right, etc. etc. This is super disappointing to me personally, as it's 100% not what I wanted or foresaw for this Experience Mode. If I'd known it would create this occasionally toxic set of behaviours in our mostly generous and accepting community, I would never have added it to the game. That's never been what THE LONG DARK is about. I also think it's easy to forget that we've always made THE LONG DARK with a player community, and we've always kept our ears open to player feedback, because this game is a living, breathing thing, and so is the community -- it's not the same as it was when we first launched, and it won't be the same when we eventually close the door on the game. That's part of our job as developers -- to help guide the game along its life-cycle. It's easy to look at a change like bringing Signal Void to Interloper and behave like it's some victory of the players *over* the developers, or whatever. To me, that's super counter-productive. We don't "cave" to pressure and we've never made the game that way. Personally, I don't care how many of you yell at me at Twitter, if I don't agree with a thing, I'm not going to change it. But as stubborn as I may be, I also know that we can't see everything, no matter how careful, not matter how thoughtful we are in our approach. And sometimes with new info, we realize we want to change a decision we had made. So we change it. That's a healthy thing for a game, pretty sure? Setting up a dynamic of "we triumphed against the developer!" (those exact words weren't written here, I'm just talking about a general sentiment that often exists in our industry, and in player communities across all games) is really damaging, in my opinion. I hope we can be a little more self-aware in our interactions with each other, make space for players of all kinds with all kinds of tastes and looking for various different kinds of experiences in THE LONG DARK. That's what makes the game special. That's what makes this community special. Let's not lose sight of that, ok? - Raph

My comments re: trust aren't targeted at anyone in particular, so please don't make it about any individual and certainly don't make it about yourself. It's just a comment, and an opportunity for reflection about how you respond to developer updates. (Ducking back out now, so don't look for further responses from me.)

Steam being the operative word here. 👀

Every time we talk about making bigger changes to the game, there's a host of people who come out of the woodwork expressing angst about how we might change the game in ways they don't like. This has been the case since we launched on Early Access in 2014. And yet most of you are still here, and the player base has grown steadily, which suggests we might be doing something right despite these fears. 😅 A healthy, vibrant TLD game and community benefits all the fans, regardless of what you think about a specific feature, area of the game, whatever. I understand that the fear comes out of protectiveness for something you love, I really do. And I understand that in some cases, maybe the people who make some the games you love do so thinking of it as a "product" and maybe chase trends or try to focus on features that will make the game more profitable or more popular. We've never done that. In 8+ years of development, we've literally never made a choice that was purely about extracting more money or about chasing a trend. For us, creating THE LONG DARK is probably as close as you can come to being a labour of love as is possible while still having something you are sharing with millions of other people. The first question we ask before we start making anything is, "does this fit TLD?". And when we say "yes, it does", we're coming from a pretty good place of knowledge around how to properly evaluate that question. For anything in the recent announcements people might be feeling anxious about, like the Trader for example, I can probably find 10-20 other similar things we've added over the years that inspired forum posts that started out with, "well...I sure hope Hinterland doesn't break the thing I love about this game. I sure hope they know what they are doing". Most of those things turned out fine? (You can always find a thing you personally don't like...) I promise you that it's 100% possible to still enjoy a game you love "as it is" and still let it evolve and be interesting for the devs to make and for players to experience. Many of you have been doing it for years. It's also possible to discover that things you didn't think you wanted, might actually add something meaningful to the experience, and give it new life, new meaning. And in our Master Plan for TLD, the things we're adding might actually fit into a Bigger Picture Vision that you just can't see (nor do you need to see) yet. I guess all I'm saying is, I hope you understand that we love TLD as much as you do. For me, it's gone far beyond just a game I've been making for the last 10 yrs of my life. The team that's working on it loves it to bits. And I mean you can choose not to put trust us, for sure, that's your prerogative. The world's full of exploitative assholes who are only in it for the money and don't really care about their players. All I'm saying is, that's not us, has never been, and never will be as long as I have something to say about it. So by all means theory-craft away about any feature you like, for sure -- that can be a lot of fun. But please know that nobody in this forum really knows our plans, and never ever doubt our commitment to TLD.

I promise the "Trader" feature mentioned is not some stealth way to add micro-transactions to TLD. That's not our style and it wouldn't align with our general philosophy about game development or business in general, which should hopefully be evident by now.

I would be very interested to know what morally questionable things you feel we have done. I ask because we hold ourselves to a very high moral and ethical standard in our business so this type of language is very disturbing to see. If this is about donations made to support different disadvantaged groups, I would say these are not a function of questionable morality as much as perhaps philanthropical decisions you might not agree with. Which is entirely your prerogative. And ours.

For the record, I don't think this would be unethical at all. We have two teams working on two different aspects of the game. The remaining episodic story content will come out and nobody who owns the game will pay extra for it. Survival Mode has been as complete as any game for a while now -- what would be unethical about selling DLC for major updates to this portion of the game at this point in time? I think it's a misunderstanding from some people in the community (and players of other games as this seems a common sentiment) that they have some entitlement to influence or dictate how a studio's resources are utilized. At the end of the day we will deliver all the things that have been promised. We also have to make the best decisions for our business. It's worth noting that while we love Story mode and have invested heavily in this part of the game, Survival mode is what drives the long-term engagement and ongoing sales of The Long Dark, which is the game's revenue lifeblood, and this also allows us to continue investing in episode development. I encourage all our fans to consider the success and ongoing health of The Long Dark as a holistic thing and fall prey to tribal thinking about episodes vs. survival. I understand that everyone has their particular favourite but in the end it's still one game, and its success comes from both its parts, as they feed each other in a very symbiotic fashion.

Yikes, ok well I guess this is a week for dispelling rumours/wild speculations. Re: movie -- Jeremy Bolt, the PRODUCER (not director) of the Resident Evil films has been my collaborator on the film project for many years, to the point where I now consider him a good friend. There's never been a stronger advocate for creating an artistic, thoughtful film for The Long Dark, aside from maybe yours truly. No feedback (negative or positive) "put an end" to the movie project. Turns out making movies takes even longer than making games, especially if you don't want to "sell out", so as with everything we do, we're taking it slow, doing it our own way, and won't release it unless we think it's great. This is also a whole new industry for us that we're learning how to navigate (not easy) so it just takes the time it takes. It's not a licensed/cash-grab for us so we can afford to take our time and as we've always said, if we can't find the right partners for the film, we just won't do it. But for the moment, it's still unfolding in the (very far) background as we are mostly focused on our core business. 🙂 Please, I know you all mean well and it comes from a place of love, but rather than speculate "hey the company must be going out of business because they don't charge for DLC" or "hey the movie must be cancelled because it hasn't come out yet", just...you know...ASK. If we can answer we will. And if we can't answer, well we'll try to explain why we can't answer. For what it's worth, it's not uncommon for films to be in development for many many years before they ever see the light of day. This is entirely normal.

I don't jump into these threads much these days (really busy, as @Admin pointed out!) but when it comes to speculation around my business, I like to set the record straight and touch on a variety of points and speculation in this post. Without commenting too much on the paid DLC idea, I can 100% confirm that we have not switched folks to part time or laid anyone off. In fact, we are actively hiring and growing (which anyone looking at our website can clearly see). 🙂 https://hinterlandgames.com We have always committed to including Episodes Four and Five with the purchase of the game and we still plan to deliver on that for everyone who has bought it with that promise in mind. Episode Four is not far away and Episode Five will follow. The game still sells well for us -- our business is healthy. We believe we can continue to run a profitable business without being greedy, which is why we haven't charged for Survival updates and the like. (We also think selling a reasonable and fairly-priced slate of DLC products would also be entirely fine, at least that's what we keep hearing from a lot of our players, but those would be "in addition to" the episodes we have committed to. We'll probably put out some feelers into the community to see how people feel about the idea, as it would be nice to expand the game in some ways that are harder to justify if we are doing them essentially "for free".) On the topic of no longer selling swag -- we temporarily shut down our merch store b/c of COVID, to avoid people having to go into the physical studio to deal with inventory, take it to the post office, etc. We'll re-open it at some point. That said, the merch store is not a money-maker for us -- we run it more as a service to our fans. We make a bit of profit on it but almost nothing. Re: Episode Four and other stuff -- there will be a new dev diary coming "soon" -- the team's just finalizing some assets for me. Thanks for your concern about our business but we're doing well and continuing as we always have. - Raph

@MrsMilton I just confirmed where the error happened -- it was an honest mistake in shipping. Someone on my team misread the console version of the game in place of the actual console. To remedy it, we will send you both the consoles. Apologies for the mistake! We would never mislead or take advantage of our community and I'm sorry you felt that we might have done so.

You weren't misled or you shouldn't feel dumb @MrsMilton! We did say the grand prize included a console. It's a mystery to me why this wasn't sent out to you, but I will follow up and take care of it. Very sorry. Please don't let this sour your feelings -- we will get it to you ASAP.

It's hard to put your own work out into the world, especially when it's something as personal as cosplay. Everyone should be lauded for their efforts and encouraged -- I don't want to see any critical or negative comments, especially not from anyone who hasn't also taken a risk to put themselves out there. The last thing I want anyone to feel is ashamed or regretful that they shared their personal creation with this community. So let's all make sure we show due respect.

Love it! Awesome work.

Great! Love it!

Wow! Love it!

Love it!

Love it! Amazing.

Love it! (Perfect wolves BTW.)

Love it!

Love it!

The Decoy is not meant to be a hunting tool - it's meant to give you a chance to get away from Stalking wolves.

It being your favourite game doesn't excuse this kind of insulting insinuation towards the dev team. You can have a little time-out.

Oh, some of what you describe here are bugs. But the idea that you can drop a Decoy, back away to like 20-30m, and get a guaranteed headshot -- that's the part that we removed. That was definitely an exploit, because it was a very low-cost, low-risk (or no-risk) way to get a pretty much guaranteed kill. That's just not how this game is meant to work.

Being a snarky ass doesn't make the hotfixes come any faster. Re: the Bait issue -- say goodbye to that long-standing exploit. You can no longer just drop bait and get an easy shot on Wolves. You'll have to work for those kills.