Well here goes another round of insults on these forums. Personally I think we should be left out of the business end of Stardock. The only thing that should matter is the product they sell to us and in this case the product was pretty piss poor. Now why don't we all join hands and sing "We are the World" or "Kum-by-yah". Somebody tell me exactly how Brad admitting to laying off people makes him a stand-up guy? It's a really crappy thing to do especially with the economy the way it is. Seems to me like a way to deflect blame. "Elemental didn't sell well so we're laying you off". Well who's fault was that? Just a few days ago Brad took full responsibility and now some of his people pay the price. That's not right. If anything these past 2 weeks have given us an inside look at the inner workings of Stardock. Apparently everybody has to be a "yes" man willing to kiss Brad's ass. Sorry but it's pretty unbelievable to think or be told that not one person at Stardock thought that Elemental wasn't that good or was being released too soon. Sorry to those who got laid off. You have my sympathy but in the long run you'll be better off not working for a guy like Brad.

If this post gets me banned then so be it. I'm fed up with all the Brad is a god talk. I thought maybe he was a standup guy by taking the responsibility for putting out such a bad product. I was wrong. Brad is not a standup guy. My impression of Brad now is that he will say or do anything to deflect blame from himself and to make a sale. That's not the type of person I want to do business with.

This is true.   If layoffs occur because Elemental did not do well, then it is Elemental who should take the hit.   Who is it that did not deliver-someone on the Elemental team, or someone on this second team that had nothing to do with it?

Thing is, managers are not in the business of levying justice.   Their job is to run the business.   If they decide to keep Elemental alive--which is a reasonably good business decision--then the people already on the staff already intimately know the source code, release processes, IDE configurations, etc..   You have to keep them on board if you are to have any chance of keeping Elemental alive.   That leaves the stark reality:   money out > money in.   You have to balance the books.   So you let go of the people who do NOT have you by the balls already.   And identify what went poorly on Elemental.   Identifying WHO went poorly on Elemental is a discussion for a later time.

I was disappointed in the actual game being so buggy; I pre ordered it and after attempting to play it a couple of times I went back to playing some TF2 whenver I have a little gaming time, with the idea that I will play Elemental in a few weeks once it gets patched up properly.

Not sure thats the best way to do a launch, might have been better to simply postpone the release a couple of weeks... but hindight is 20-20. As for layoffs, it happens people.  Stop freaking out.

And 50 dollars is not a lot of money; if you are someone who feels like you wasted 50 dollars, then welcome to reality. Not every purchase made in life will give you the value you anticipated. I have paid for PPV fights that sucked a lot worse than Elemental; and once they were over there wasnt even a hope that I would get added value from them later.  With Elemental there is still a chance to get some value for that 50 bucks spent; maybe from patches, maybe from community mods later on, who knows.... but at least there is a chance.  I have made worse purchases -- Napoleon Total war, and Arsenal of Democracy are two that come to mind... and those titles dont even have a chance of getting better, the companies that produced them have moved on to other things.  But Im not wasting time bitching and moaning about them-- so i wasted some money on them, oh well. Life goes on.

Keep your chin up Stardock; if it really gets bad financially maybe you can offer to sell yourselves to one of Microsofts puppet kingdoms that seem to own 90% of the rest of development land?  There are worse fates. Developing software is difficult, I have worked for more than one company that ended up going under after dumping lots of money and man-hours into projects that never got completed, its just a risk of modern capitalism that companies (especially small ones) have to deal with.  Try to be more understanding if possible guys, sometimes it is not anyones "fault" at all, its just a confluence of events.  All I can ask as a consumer is an honest effort at delivering a good product, and if the product is kind of sucky, an honest attempt at restitution (via fixing it or refunding, either works for me). Good luck at FIXING IT Stardock! I wish you all the best. 

I didn't think game was *that* bad, but I guess people disagreed... With that said, I don't see how anyone who played in Beta could have misread writing on the wall and considered game anywhere near release ready. Release-day miracle patches don't ever work and Frog's cocky attitude (i.e. it compiled comments) did not help any.

Frog, next person you going to hire - make it PR/Community manager.

I think all of us are feeling badly for the people being laid off.

It happens, its a business, and it sucks.  It wouldbe nice if everything could go on with unlimited funding, but that is not the case.  They sacrifced a few to save the whole, which is the only way to operate.

Commenting, here, on Stardock CEO Frogboy's reply # 60 to the cheap shot sent in his direction at post # 52 :

Frogboy post # 60 is extremely impressive in its cool, calm, polite tone and style -- taking care to express reasonable explanations, in reply to an unreasonable guy who didn't merit any serious explanation from the owner of a hard-working corporation.

Extremely rare are CEOs who take the time and trouble to read numerous forum posts and to compose analytical replies -- even to nasty and petty users who do not merit any waste of time.

If this statement of mine brands me as a frog-*** kisser, so be it !

(As a French-Canadian, I've been called a few times by local Anglos ... but never frog-*** kisser.)

Once the game gets its footing. Brad, you should release a Directors cut... kinda like what the Witcher did!

If I was to be out of a job, I sure would 100% rather it be to poor projections/planning/earnings then because the company thought I should be fired because it was my fault.

As for the news, I am sorry to hear, but shall remain a loyal customer!

Oddly, I had planned on applying for a support position at Stardock next year...  (I do software tech support and have for years, and am a short commute away... actually I may very well still!  Maybe they need me!!!?   ) 

My thoughts on the matter was... how much revenue did Elemental make versus what it did not make.  I am sure the first week is pretty much on par with what was expected.  The people who love SD bought it.  The people who love 4X probably bought it.  Some people on the fence bought it. I am betting that even if the game was a wild 9.9 out of 10.0 success to most reviewers that the overal income would have been the same, no?  Unless the projected income was from mass buying of the untapped market that is outside of the normal purcashing of 4X games.  Were they expecting the same people who purchased StarCraft 2 (which was not that long ago) to start purchasing Elemental enmasse as well?  Was midnight openings at bestbuy and Gamestop even planned?  Nope.  I have a feeling...  after reading this comment and thinking about it.  That Brad and SD still made money from Elemental.  I am going to guess that they still made more than they lost.  Guessing (I have no figures and no facts).  I am also guessing that someone at SD knew this game would BOMB. 

Why do I say that?

Let us look at this:

How many Gamestops and BestBuys opened at midnight to release this game?  How many copies were sent to Gamestop and BestBuy?  We all know Gamestop normally hates the PC market.  However, they sell important PC games.  Yet copies of this game were either not at all stores or very few.  The Gamestop I normally go to (and I dont buy many games) did not even get a copy of this game to sell.  The Bestbuy at my work has an inventory list of 3 copies of this game at their store - but they claimed they never got their truck shipment of this game.

Very interesting how this game was suppose to fuel the next investments of Stardock - but, there were so few copies that ... even if the game was a glaring sucess and perfection... that we could not buy this game enmasse.  There was no ... or very little... marketing campaign.  SHOOT.  I think it was mostly word of mouth... and I gut my arse handed to me by fanbois.  However, let us assume the game was a perfection and it was revolutionary and every review of it was a 9.0 or higher... or 4.5 out of 5.0 or a 5 out of 5 ...  or a 92% or better review...

Could this game brought in the revenue?  Was there enough stock and enough product out on the market to sell this game to make it a success?

It just does not seem so.  Almost like, someone realized...  why bother ...  thats more returns and more overhead and we need to make sure to keep the returns and overhead to a minimum on purpose.... makes me wonder, no?

I expect less and will need to be more cautious is the way how I read it.  Buyer be warned.  If stardock makes a product wait a month and read ALL the reviews before even CONSIDERING to buy a Stardock purchase.   THEN, once they make a few good games.  I will see if I am willing to risk an opening day or opening weekend sale.  I do not have money to flaunt around.

Having personally experienced both situations I will say that it makes a huge difference. One is an unfortunate situation outside of your control, the other is a direct reflection on you. When you're laid off it sucks, suddenly your world is thrown off track. You've got to figure out how to make ends meet and start looking for another job. Getting fired is so much worse since you have to deal with all the bad from a lay off plus the fact that you may need to reevaluate your line of work, personal behavior, work ethic, etc. and live with the knowledge that this thing did not simply happen to you but that you had a hand in it. Not to mention it's a huge black mark for future employers.

The difference may be primarily psychological but it is massive none the less.

*Also fired employees only fail to qualify for unemployment if they were fired "for cause" which generally is loosely defined as willful misconduct. So in terms of unemployment benefits there would be no difference in this case.

This is very sad to hear but I do hope that some good can come out of this. I don't want Stardock to go under or be enveloped by Electronic Arts. Brad, I hope you guys pull through this and continue on. Your one of the few developers these days that make interesting and unique games built on the classics. You guys are an endangered species in the industry.

That makes absolutely no sense. Major retail chains do midnight releases for mainstream titles that are predicted to sell millions of copies and typically have budgets of over $20M. As for marketing heck the marketing budget for MW2 (~$150M) was 3x the dev costs (~$50M). Outlying the kind of marketing cash it takes to make a midnight release worthwhile for retailers costs more than the total net worth of Stardock.

Also SD games (along with many niche and smaller studio games) have what is typically called a "long tail" after the way their sales charts look. They do not sell massive numbers on opening weekend and then peter off to nothing as soon as the next big thing comes out as many mainstream AAA titles do. Rather they sell slowly but steadily over a long period of time since there is no next big thing in their niche market. Of course that long tail is heavily dependent on it being a quality product and having good word of mouth. Elementals word of mouth has been deservedly ruined by a bad first impression and is unlikely to recover. So even if it becomes a quality product that long tail is depressed by the permanently tainted word of mouth.

Not to mention the costs of returns and the inevitable discounting by retailers which largely comes out of SDs pocket. So it makes sense that both longterm and shortterm revenue would be downgraded in light of the launch.