Why Starbound Failed

in 2016 chucklefish Studios released a game that was supposed to change gaming forever Starbound Starbound was hailed as the next Terraria and was celebrated for being the first truly endless Adventure game fast forward to present day and the game is abandoned with the company being hated by fans what went wrong and how did Starbound have such a large Fall From Grace well as always to tell this story we need to start at the beginning with the founding of a company called chucklefish chucklefish Studios was founded in 2011 by a guy named Finn Bryce he had nothing but a small group of developers and a dream a dream to make a game beyond what anyone had seen before a space RPG where players can explore an infinitely large universe and build their 2D Empires chucklefish planned to call this game Starbound after publishing a few Indie Games to get experience in the industry they began dedicating time to fleshing out star bounds mechanics world and gameplay as progress was made they knew they had something groundbreaking on their hands but there was a problem they were running out of money despite the revenue they gained from publishing their first game called Wonder lust and their use of unpaid volunteers to the Starbound project the game would still bankrupt the studio long before it was released the solution a Kickstarter campaign if Starbound was truly worth making people would be willing to help fund its development so they launched a Kickstarter campaign on their storefront in April of 2013 backers were promised things like access to the the beta an NPC named after themselves and getting their name in the credits people willing to drop $1,000 could even design their own weapon to be put in the game and fans fell in love with the concept of Starbound instantly within one day the campaign had raised over $230,000 it's easy to see why early descriptions of the game made it sound like Game of the Year material it was a Sandbox Universe with infinite planets all procedurally generated every single one of these planets was supposed to be fleshed out and interesting as stated directly by chucklefish each planet is entirely unique too this is no half effort not only is the terrain different but also the weather the gravity the difficulty level the plant life the behavior and the appearance of alien creatures this feature alone would be a Monumental accomplishment and meant that the game had nearly endless content and complexity you could land on a planet that had peaceful inhabitants but dangerous weather and a different planet where the challenge was dealing with the heavy gravity anything was possible possible however this wasn't all that Starbound had to offer there would also be a story mode and side quests you'd be able to build your own space colonies and claim planets of your own the game also had full multiplayer what fans were being promised wasn't just good it had the potential to be like Terraria and become one of the best Indie Games ever made the support Starbound got didn't just come from its promised features but also its connections Finn Bryce chuckle fish's founder had also worked on Terraria everything from the art style to the basic gameplay led many players to essentially see the project as Terraria 2 Space Edition this benefited Starbound as it tied an unknown franchise to one of the most popular and beloved sandbox games ever made it was also really good timing because around the same time Terraria was going through a rocky period in fact disgruntled players were worried that the game was on the brink of death and Starbound was touted as the next big thing this combination of factors made chucklefish quickly realized that Starbound was a hype generating Machine by May of that same year they had earned over $1 million on their Kickstarter and had reached their stretch goals it was an overwhelming success and reaching their stretch goals meant that they'd promised even more features a whole new race a pet system and fossils what was already an ambitious project had only grown in scale and thousands of people had given the company their money and had high expectations the stakes for chuckle fish's first ever game were undeniably high with all eyes on them the dev team put their heads down and began working and on December 4th chucklefish released the beta and reactions were mixed to say the least a very loud and vocal portion of the fan base was incredibly happy the game was rough around the edges but it had a ton of potential the random planet and enemy generation meant endless replayability the story showed potential and the art was Charming while there were issues the part of the game was there fans figured that the Starbound they were promised would soon come this was only the beta after all frankly with Kickstarter games the bar is pretty low the fact that the beta was released at all made many hopeful but not all fans were optimistic in fact many had felt like they'd been scammed the original Kickstarter page had promised that a beta would be released no matter what in 2013 and that the full game would follow the next year but what chucklefish had released didn't feel like a beta it was far too underdeveloped for that it also certainly didn't feel like a game that was ready to be released in a year most of the promised feutures weren't implemented and the ones that were had gamebreaking problems the generated enemies were too syy the game's difficulty was insanely broken and progress was painful and slow building space colonies was a fun thought but completely impractical everything you needed was in your ship so there was no reason to waste time trying to build elaborate bases on other planets doing so would waste precious resources and most likely result in you getting killed the story mode had potential but was unfinished even the basic stuff was broken the controls were clunky and combat felt horrible how can your game be ready to release in a year if you haven't even nailed the controls to some backers this was all evidence that what chucklefish had released wasn't a beta it was more closer to an alpha or early proof of concept and this was basically confirmed in a Q&A held on the Starbound subreddit where Bryce admitted honestly what you're playing right now feels like more of a tech demo it seemed like chucklefish had oversold how far along they were in development and rather than being honest they' thrown out this mess of a beta to avoid backlash things did start to cool down however as the beta received steady updates the devs were responsive to the community and it seemed like they were back on track however there was another burst of outrage after chucklefish did something sneaky they changed the game's release date without telling anyone the full game would come out in 2015 rather than 2014 the original timeline told backers that the beta would be released in 20133 and the full game would be released the following year these promises made it seem like backers wouldn't have to wait long for the project most importantly it gave the project credibility and the quick timeline meant that the game was unlikely to get stuck in development hell the perception that Starbound was a lowrisk investment contributed to how quickly it was able to raise money when chucklefish started walking back release dates many were concerned the fact that they push back the date without any communication or explanation made the release of Starbound seem a lot less certain many of the game's original supporters were starting to see this project as a sinking ship the beta was an unfinished Tech demo developers were going back on their promises and it was starting to look like the original vision for Starbound was too good to be true this culminated in a rush of fans asking for refunds on their pre-orders rather than respecting that these fans felt legitimately betrayed and misled by chuckle fish's actions the company responded by Flatout rejecting attempts for refunds on July 21st 2014 a former fan posted on Reddit to expose chucklefish for ghosting him when he attempted to get a refund and well all hell broke loose with over 12200 upvotes on this post the community was extremely upset causing more people to request refunds for the game this drama LED some people to stop supporting the game entirely and to openly call it a scam but even with the brief chaos there was still a big group of people who had hope and trusted the devs to get things back on track moving into 2015 progress slowed to a crawl the game's release was postponed again and developer updates were few and far between chucklefish was also bogged down by internal issues throughout development the company was a revolving door of people leaving and joining the designers programmers Etc were constantly being replaced the game received three more major updates but it was still far from matching what was originally promised the drawn out development cycle and pure incompetence of the dev team killed off much of the hype that was surrounding the game the subreddit became a ghost Zone and Starbound went from being one of the most hyped games around to being forgotten chuckle fish's reputation was also severely damaged the team went from being seen as passionate Trailblazers to irresponsible scammers more and more people saw the release of the beta as a dishonest way to get more money out of backers and it didn't help that since the start of starbound's development cycle chucklefish had published three additional games rather than focusing solely on their unfinished project the company claimed that publishing didn't take resources from development but but the fact is the studio was given a million dollar and was 2 years late on delivering the product they promised chucklefish could make all of the excuses they want but until they actually released the game more and more people would consider them as scammers on July 10th 2016 chucklefish announced that Starbound would be released on the 22nd fans rejoiced in a couple weeks the doubters would be proven wrong players were about to experience the best adventure game ever made the hype had returned when Starbound was released it peaked at 62,000 players a large number for such a small indie game that had already pissed off quite a few people there was hope for the future well that is if the game was actually good by September the player count had already plummeted to around 6,000 players to put things into perspective Terraria the 13-year-old game Starbound was supposed to be better than in every way is still averaging 20,000 players as of right now Terraria is currently three times more popular than Starbound was weeks after its release why is that well the Starbound release wasn't just disappointing it was disastrous the game was just bad and the problem began all the way back in the beta when chucklefish transitioned Starbound from the beta to the final version they made the baffling decision to remove a ton of content everything from futuristic Tech to boss fights and detailed temperature mechanics were taken out of the final version many fans complain that the final game was actually a downgrade from the beta which if you recall was already getting some hate this decision might have been defensible if it led to the game being more polished but upon release Starbound was still a mess the difficulty and pacing were horrible dying was unavoidable and Incredibly punishing building or crafting anything required so many resources that are incredibly spread out getting the materials and blueprints to so much as make a chair is a multi-hour Extravaganza combat had been clunky and boring since the beta and despite multiple attempts to revamp it it hadn't really improved there were plenty of flashy and cool weapons but they weren't fun to use adding to the sense of tediousness is the planet's generation Starbound players had to learn the same lesson no man's Sky players did procedurally generated planets tend to be incredibly boring when environments are slapped together by an algorithm you're sacrificing the depth and polish that comes with intentional design the devs seem to Value quantity over quality there were lots of resources to collect planets to find and activities to do but none of these experiences were actually valuable or fun exploring in Starbound was Limitless but there was no reason to actually want to explore the world even the story was a shallow shell of what it should have been by release it had been reduced to being a generic and typical sci-fi story The NPCs are uninteresting and irrelevant and there were no complex or engaging interactions with the people that you meet on your travels starbound's world didn't feel alive and across the board it was just lame Starbound was an instant stain on chuckle fish's reputation at best the company proved to be incompetent and lazy and at worst the studio seemed to be actively scamming people but things would soon get much worse for the aspiring publisher and Starbound would become the least of their worries in 2019 chucklefish took another hit when they were exposed for exploiting young volunteers former developers who worked on Starbound alleged that they'd put hundreds of hours into the game for free chuckle fish's founder Bryce would intentionally play favorites and manipulate these young devs to convince them to continue to work these volunteers were as young as 16 years old so it was easy for Bryce to normalize toxic expectations and he wasn't just allegedly manipulative but also verbally abusive one musician tweeted I almost did the audio and music for Starbound until Bryce told me that this was going to be unpaid he revealed that none of the artists or coders were getting paid either and I said that that didn't seem right to me he just exploded at me after that he launched into this foul mouth screed about how entitled I was and that he would just do the music himself because I was probably bad at my job anyway undertale developer Toby fox actually went on record to give credibility to the allegations actually I composed about an hour of WIP music that ended up being completely scrapped because I wasn't in the IRC Channel enough I left after that chucklefish responded with a standard PR statement that didn't actually apologize or meaningfully address the allegations the backlash to the situation was so bad that it actually caused the developers of stardew Valley who was published by chucklefish at the time to cut ties and this is a huge deal in the indie game Space to have Toby Fox the developer of one of the most successful Indie Games ever made and concerned ape who made one of the most beloved and wholesome games ever made negatively commenting on your company's behavior is like getting shot in the kneecap and chucklefish fell off the radar almost as quickly as they'd popped up this controversy was the killing blow for Starbound chucklefish has tried its best to move on from its failures and has continued developing and Publishing new games but start hadn't received an update since 2019 and its player count has dwindled chucklefish has continued to publish games though it hasn't shaken off its bad reputation what began as a promising vision for an ambitious space exploration game ultimately unraveled due to a combination of mismanagement broken promises and gameplay issues so what do you think did you play Starbound did you think the game was fun or was it lacking in the ways that we discussed in this video what are your thoughts on the modern-day Starbound situation let me know your thoughts on these in the comments ments and I will see you guys next time and also I just want to mention that I have another Channel on YouTube now called Solace where I simply sit down play some Minecraft and talk about what we're going through in life it's just some casual conversations about things like how to make more friends how to meet more people how to get out of your comfort zone and how to be the best version of yourself and if you like those types of topics and are interested in checking it out I will put a link in the description below it's a really fun Channel and I'm uploading twice a week on there so definitely check that out if you're interested peace

Channel: RoboKast

Views: 500,137

Keywords: starbound, starbound game, why starbound failed, starbound game failed, why the starbound game failed, starbound what happened, starbound in 2024, what happened to starbound, why starbound died, starbound failed, starbound died, chucklefish, chucklefish starbound drama, starbound controversey, chucklefish controversey, robokast

Id: e4AQHxiE5mw

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2024