How NOT to run a Indie company...

[JtheDuelist]

After today's actions, ATeam (the creators of Unison League) have shown us all how NOT to run a Indie game company- the amount of backlash they have received from this decision is absolutely insane, and I have to agree.

Since I suck at explaining things, I'll let these quotes from Reddit explain the situation at hand:

I play an app called Unison League.

There was this event going on that allowed people to collect “scrolls” to gather items to exchange for blue tickets.

These blue tickets were being used to spawn items out of a box. Among the 220 items, there were 20 purple tickets that could be used to spawn for a Super Rare or more collab gear:

Apparently, the Super Super Rare rates were extremely high. Everyone who was spawning with the purple tickets were receiving extremely rare and powerful gear, probably only meant to be received in paid spawns. The game devs(Ateam) made a mistake with the rates for the premium gear.

This morning, Ateam made an announcement that they were recalling all the gear received from the purple tickets.

Naturally, people were extremely upset about it. People had paid for AP refills(you need AP to attempt a quest and gather scrolls), people had exchanged rare items for materials to make the gear stronger, and people had spent their entire WEEKEND grinding out all these scrolls to get this rare gear.

-a Reddit user

As many of you know A Team fixed the SR tickets this morning. Some of you don't know that they will also take all our SSR gear that we got from the tickets we used. Honestly I think this is not right. This was a mistake that they did and they should just let us keep the gear. They could of fixed it the first day, but they took over a week for us to farm for those tickets, waste our time.. You know what they will give us for this "inconvenience" a SSR TICKET for every 5 SR tickets you used... -a Reddit user

Note from me: these SSR tickets they are going to give in compensation have been notorious for years of being flat-out terrible to begin with.

Spoiler: Set as spoiler due to this quote being a wall of text

This decision to roll back collab SR tickets comes as a very serious disappointment and it feels like it was made with complete disregard for the investments the player base has committed. As this was an error on Ateams part they should bare responsibility for it rather then opting for a solution where the player base pays for their mistakes.

Factors that Ateam does not consider important or just doesn't give a damn about: 1) players time and energy put into this event 2) players who have planned around the new gear and infused other non-collab items 3) players who had spawned using gems for these tickets

This solution by Ateam comes across as an insult to every player. Yes, mistakes were made on Ateams part, however an apology is not enough in this case. Not when so much was invested via time and money by the players.

I feel like this disrespect for the community should be met with equal disregard for this games stability in NA. If it needs to close due to boycott so be it. Any game who's directors are incapable of resolving an error on their part in any other way then to pretend it never happened won't last anyways.

Our Response:

1) Apple users, you are entitled to request a refund for all money spent on gems. Call Apple and explain the situation. If they receive enough complaints about UL, they might even be pulled from the App Store. *** I've already contacted Apple, they have refunded me for purchases made involving this event and by escalating the issue they will now begin an investigation of Ateams activities with pending removal from the App Store. This may not work for everyone, but it every call / complaint to Apple will escalate this further, so I encourage you all to let Apple know what is going on ***

2) Amazon coin users. Same plan, call Amazon and request a refund for coins used. You'll get your refund, and with enough pressure Unison League will be removed from Amazon underground as well. ** Confirmed that Amazon will refund money for coins purchased for this game **

3) F2P players, since you're not invested into this game as far as money spent, go find a new game for awhile. Let your voices be heard through inactivity. Ateam needs to know how upset we all are about this decision.

4) Whales, I think we boycott all purchases. Hit them where it hurts most. Ateam needs to understand they simply cannot do whatever they like and get away with it. Request refunds mentioned above and other avenues used for in-app purchases. Ateam lives off of us, so we're the ones that need to make a point most.

If we stay quiet, say nothing, do nothing, Ateam will continue to explicitly monetize us without care for their actions. It's time to be heard and let Ateam know we are serious, and we need to do it as a united community.

This is a call to action for all who are affected by this. -a Reddit user

You can read more about their decision here (if you can get past all the "403 Forbidden" errors the site has been giving since the announcement): https://forum.a-tm.co.jp/forum/unis...important-sword-oratoria-sr-or-higher-tickets
Tens of thousands of fans are deciding to quit the game if ATeam actually puts this into action, and many more already have quit.

Moral of this story: Don't be like ATeam.

 

[Archeia]

This does not really tell us much especially if we don't play Unison league. I think it will be beneficial to edit your post so it doesn't look like you're trying to incite drama/boycotting.

 

[mlogan]

It might help if you explain a bit more. Knowing nothing about this game and what tickets mean, the only thing I get from it is a company trying to fix a problem and compensate its members, which does not seem like a bad thing. I realize that it is probably more complicated than that, but without any context of meaning, I don't see the issue.

edit: ninja'd

 

[JtheDuelist]

@Archeia @mlogan Edited original post to explain as best as I could.

 

[gstv87]

more than "how to not run an indie company" this looks like a case of "why to do proper beta testing before release"
it's not the company's fault that the rate of items was too high, it's the coding team's!
when seen as a whole, looks like the promotion was solid, except for that excess of items.

 

[Churro]

Even if some people will hate me now:
If someone is so stupid enough to spend a lot of money for a digital nonexistant content(with no additional gameplay) it's his own fault...
I say nothing about buying a loot box from time to time - BUT by buying this stuff you support the developers to do actions like ATeam.
My advice: Dont by ever loot boxes, tickets or any In-Game money and all will be happy (ok the devs not XD)

 

[JtheDuelist]

more than "how to not run an indie company" this looks like a case of "why to do proper beta testing before release"
it's not the company's fault that the rate of items was too high, it's the coding team's!
when seen as a whole, looks like the promotion was solid, except for that excess of items.

Then there were the 2 months of bugs PRIOR to the collab, where spawns were false advertisement (featured gear that could not be obtained were in the spawns' advertisements anyway), group missions were completely gone for two full weeks (we only got a single gem for this error, when normally these group missions would have given 14~17 gems in that two week timespan), PvP matches were completely off-balance (they always had been, but that case was more so than usual)- just to name a few we have had in a two-month timespan.
Also, this game already had this collab in Japan before the rest of the world, they had similar spawn results, but they didn't do this to their Japanese player base at all.

 

[Andar]

I don't see how else they could have handled the original problem.
They had to get rid of the mass of overpowered items, or they would loose the players that paid regular price for similiar items. And that would hurt the company more, because it would be their top payers.

so whatever the solution, there had to be a down-powering of those players, and that would always cause protest.
and contrary to the opinion posted by one user, it would have been impossible for them to correct that first day - you need a large statistical base to even detect such problems, then you have to go through coding and testing a fix while the financial department decides on what to offer for compensation.

The only question that no one caan answer and that has any real bearing is if the compensation is adequate or not.
As said above there will always be people who protest even the tiniest amount taken from their accounts, so that is not something that can be decided on based on some internet rants - 90% of people who disagree post about it, but only 10% of the people who are satisfied. Those numbers have been proven time and time again in statistics, and you need to keep them in mind when reading about such cases.

 

[JtheDuelist]

@Andar Except Google and their support team themselves have told the people that, by law, the devs are not allowed to do recall spawned gear so long as Google Play Store is hosting the game, as this person's screenshot revealed: .
Also, the ENTIRE player base is complaining with zero satisfaction- the free-to-play players are complaining, the light spenders are complaining, even the "whales" (aka the big spenders) are complaining that their ticket spawned stuff will be taken away- yeah, zero satisfaction is showing up here...

 

[Zalerinian]

Alright, well let me ask you this, if there's a problem with what everyone else has been saying, what should an indie company - a company who by definition doesn't have a giant bank account to allow themselves to make a mistake that costs them money - do in the event of this level of crisis, @JtheDuelist ?


EDIT: Wait... This is what the company posted as for what they were doing:

1. They're fixing the issue so more tickets from the event aren't broken
2. The gear received from these broken tickets is being recalled - it will be removed from your account
3. (2b) If you used an item you got from the broken ticket in, essentially, a crafting recipe, you will get back all other items and gold that were in said recipe.
4. For every 5 broken "SR Tickets" you got, you get 1 "SSR Ticket" (which probably means Super Super Rare instead of Super Rare (SR), or equivalent)

So honestly... what are you losing here? They're admitting they made a mistake and I see no problem with their solution. They're not removing the items from your account and saying, "Oops, sorry, that sucks, deal with it", it's, "Well crap, we messed up, but you're not going to lose anything because of it. In fact, have some stuff because we messed up!"


So really, where's all the outrage and drama coming from...?

 

[JtheDuelist]

Alright, well let me ask you this, if there's a problem with what everyone else has been saying, what should an indie company - a company who by definition doesn't have a giant bank account to allow themselves to make a mistake that costs them money - do in the event of this level of crisis, @JtheDuelist ?


EDIT: Wait... This is what the company posted as for what they were doing:

1. They're fixing the issue so more tickets from the event aren't broken
2. The gear received from these broken tickets is being recalled - it will be removed from your account
3. (2b) If you used an item you got from the broken ticket in, essentially, a crafting recipe, you will get back all other items and gold that were in said recipe.
4. For every 5 broken "SR Tickets" you got, you get 1 "SSR Ticket" (which probably means Super Super Rare instead of Super Rare (SR), or equivalent)

So honestly... what are you losing here? They're admitting they made a mistake and I see no problem with their solution. They're not removing the items from your account and saying, "Oops, sorry, that sucks, deal with it", it's, "Well crap, we messed up, but you're not going to lose anything because of it. In fact, have some stuff because we messed up!"


So really, where's all the outrage and drama coming from...?

Reply to #1- They fixed the tickets this morning, so doing more than that is unnecessary excess.
Reply to #2- As I showed in a previous screenshot, if the developers DO recall the gear (even if they do compensation), they broke the laws/rules as set by the app stores that host the app, which can lead to them losing more money via lawsuits than loss of paying players.
Reply to #3/2b- Players have limited item storage, and many have spent several full inventories worth of upgrade materials to upgrade the collab gear- limited storage in this matter means players aren't receiving/can't receive their FULL supply of returned materials.
Reply to #4- They didn't say if these compensation tickets will be collab SSR Tickets that will pull collab or the notoriously bad standard SSR Tickets that only spawn everyday, non-special SSRs. So we'll still have to wait and see on that.

 

[Archeia]

Isn't the outrage too premature then? I thought the entire issue is that the gears are already recalled but that didn't seem to be the case.

 

[JtheDuelist]

Isn't the outrage too premature then? I thought the entire issue is that the gears are already recalled but that didn't seem to be the case.

They fixed the tickets this morning THEN put out the notice about the gear recall AFTER the tickets had been fixed- wouldn't it be wiser to just let the gear that is already in people's inventories stay, especially given the fact that the paid players are just going to regain the PvP advantage within a few days when the next big spawns hit and are ones that free-to-play players can't do, which is always the case in this game.

 

[Zalerinian]

Reply to #1- They fixed the tickets this morning, so doing more than that is unnecessary excess.

That's a half-baked solution... It's like a company keeping quite a security breach, or even what Apple did with slowing down iPhones. The problem was fixed in Apple's eyes, so they stopped there. Whoops

Reply to #2- As I showed in a previous screenshot, if the developers DO recall the gear (even if they do compensation), they broke the laws/rules as set by the app stores that host the app, which can lead to them losing more money via lawsuits than loss of paying players.

I won't accept this argument until I am able to read the specific license agreement/terms provided by Google for developers on the platform in regards to this type of issue. It would be different if they were just removing the items and not returning anything, but that is not the case here.

Reply to #3/2b- Players have limited item storage, and many have spent several full inventories worth of upgrade materials to upgrade the collab gear- limited storage in this matter means players aren't receiving/can't receive their FULL supply of returned materials.
Reply to #4- They didn't say if these compensation tickets will be collab SSR Tickets that will pull collab or the notoriously bad standard SSR Tickets that only spawn everyday, non-special SSRs. So we'll still have to wait and see on that.

Storage limitations posed by this issue are something that they will need to address, but that's not enough to spark a public outcry like you seem to be looking for. The type of SSR ticket that they choose to reimburse you with is also up to their discretion, but take care and reread that sentence... the type of SSR ticket that they choose to reimburse you with. They are giving you something for free as an apology, and you're here being upset because you want more than

1. What you already had to begin with (You didn't lose anything, remember)
2. Something they're giving to you for free because they made a mistake.

The event was bugged, presumably from launch on January 18th, and was fixed the morning of January 22nd (4 days, worst case scenario). The event continues on until the first of February, which means there are 9 more days where the issues have been fixed, which means plenty of time to get the tickets that have been fixed.

As mentioned by Archeia, it's still a bit early to be raging about anything. Your argument of

They fixed the tickets this morning THEN put out the notice about the gear recall AFTER the tickets had been fixed- wouldn't it be wiser to just let the gear that is already in people's inventories stay, especially given the fact that the paid players are just going to regain the PvP advantage within a few days when the next big spawns hit and are ones that free-to-play players can't do, which is always the case in this game.

is also a half-baked solution. See my first point again about a security breach, or Apple's pending lawsuits over the slowdown issue. You don't solve an issue and then pretend it's gone for good, and that's not what they're doing. They solved the issue, they're being upfront about it, and they have outlined their path forward. If you choose to discontinue playing the game, don't do it because you think it'll leave them bleeding. They may be indie, but they still have an ecosystem of over 8 million people to keep balanced and entertained.

 

[xdan]

You know, the solution I'd have gone for here is a bit sutile and kind of evil: release a small expansion to the game with new rare gear so good that it shifts the meta and leaves the previous items outdated and unefficient in comparison. I know of some companies that actually do this.

Btw many of you have said you don't get the problem. Imagine if, in the lottery, lots of people get a million prize. Then, the company decides that, since that's too much money to give away, they are cancelling the validity of the tickets and exchanging them for tickets that are worth a lot less. Of course people would get mad- it's actually illegal, in fact.

 

[barnzie8]

I never really trusted ftp games, just not good from the consumers angle. The few ftp I have played the most I have spent is three dollars.
@xdan https://www.northernstar.com.au/news/glitch-in-lottery-could-mean-251-million-in-winnin/3301535/

 

[Andar]

nothing ever anywhere is really "free to play". the real meaning of that word sequence is always "someone else pays for you playing".
And if a gme does not get enough of "someone else" to pay, then it will stop working and its servers will be shut down as proof that it never was really free.

That is where any player has to make a choice. And simply demanding "it has to be free", no matter what the situation, will only result in the game being shut down if there is not enough paying for the servers to continue to run.

No, there are never perfect situaation when money is involved - but you can't have the game servers running without someone paying for those servers, and for development of the software running on them.
The players can decide if the payment options are something they can live with, and as a result the company providing the game has to decide if the money they get is enough to continue providing that service or to shut down the game.

That is something everyone should keep in mind when talking about "free to play"