After originally threatening to sue me for releasing this video, CEO of QI software, Nikz(johnny guitar on twitter) and I spoke privately and resolved all matters. He had an understandably emotional reaction to the video and I always afford people that without holding it against them, as I understand seeing a video like this is never going to be received well. We've sorted it all out privately, he has thoroughly apologized publicly on twitter and it's all good. I always think it takes way more character to own up to your mistakes and apologize than it does to double down and run away from responsibility. No worries on my end and glad it's resolved. This pinned comment was updated/edited on 11/04/2023 at 6 am Bangkok time, so any replies to it before that were directed to the original message talking about the threat of legal, which is now not on the table.
Mans unhinged, there was some other like youtuber or someone with social standing that would knee jerk react to criticism with claims of lawsuits or calling the police etc but honestly can't remember who. You might have already covered it and I'm just living in the past
Does he have money for lawsuits?? 🤣😂 Where do i apply to join the company ?? i m open to get some free money 👋👋pick me next... i know how to draw stuff in paint 🤯🤯
No at this point Derek or Derrick is the only one I have any sympathy or compassion for. That there. Is a failed Elliott Ness bc he wasn't given appropriate tools or authority. A failed Patton.
You can tell from his initial breakdown of the problems in studio. He had his thumb right on its pulse. Meaning. You weren't given the proper tools or authority.
I'm so glad people are not simping or defending them. I could not believe how many people on the big video on this game kept trying to say this game is not a scam and it was just a management issue. People wanting to hold indie company's to lower standards and look the other way when they make other indies look bad make me sick.
It's definitely a sign of a company being managed poorly when something like this results in finger-pointing, screaming and name-calling behind the scenes instead of any actual addressing of the issues.
I'm so thankful for your investigations like this, I'm a junior 3d artist and trying to get my foot in the door in the industry via junior jobs or internships, and just to hear that THIS studio was looking for interns is hilarious but worrying, I don't know why that level designer was happy to be building a portfolio, who the fuck would want that project on their portfolio, an complete mess and horrible reputation. This sort of content has definitely increased how cautious I am with applying for games studios, there's a lot of studios hiring that look either too good to be true or shady at best. Stay a real one Kira
Just to be clear the level designer doesn't want Dark Matter on his portfolio, he seen how bad the project was and knew it was a sh*t show, he was basically using the time / money he was getting as a contractor to work on his own stuff, that was what the guy was saying. Lots of people take any job in the industry just to secure rent / food while they figure out what they want to do or get themselves to a level where they can jump ship to a project they actually care about.
The project while completely mismanaged by leaders, is still a good one to have on your portfolio, many in the industry are aware of the game and the failures that are due to leadership, not the team involved. I say this as an industry professional.
@@desocrate Exactly, learning to become a 3D generalist myself. Employers should and usually do focus on the quality of your work, not whether a game sucked in ways not related to your contribution.
@@CruelestChrisBethesda's gameplan is "we build a janky piece of shite game with an interesting premise, but also release a game editor then the public will fix it" Genius in fairness.
I run into this mentality all the time for writing a novel instead of a video game but it's all the same. I'm a self-published author and people come to me and say: "I have a great idea for a book. What advice do you have?" I tell them to learn about the five act play, the hero's journey, theme, character arc, the inciting incident, the protagonist, antagonist, conflict, voice, etc. "Too hard. I'll just write it and it'll be great."
True. Very, very, VERY few people can just write a good book without learning about the well established tropes, themes and writing styles. Sure, it's not a bad idea to twist existing concepts a bit, but there are many good reasons for some books selling and others, well: not doing selling at all.
If anything, you have to learn about the tropes so that you can subvert them. Expectation sets quite a lot of people's reactions to things, after all. Having a "great idea" for anything is normally a sign of someone doomed to fail. Writing, like most creative industries, takes a certain sort of machochistic drive that anyone who's convinced their idea is great from the start won't be able to withstand. If learning is too hard, oh boy, wait til you get to the rejection and brutal honest feedback stage! (Which they likely will never reach because the effort of actually *finishing* the book will likely drive them off first.)
@@zoltanz288 not exactly the same. You can't be a licensed electrician or be hired in food service without going through the training (and keeping up/complying with all relevant laws and standards.) Artistic endeavors don't have any bars to entry.
@@PointsofData more like invisible entry bars, like the comment above said, once you reach the feedback stage, prepare to have your ego brutally murdered.
Oh my goodness! This sounds like project management hell. What an absolute nightmare it would be to be a serious employee trying to get things done in that environment.
I clicked on this half expecting to zone out after 5 minutes but good lord is this story juicy. Props on documenting all this and cataloguing it in a easy to follow format.
This project is modern gaming development in a nutshell. It is everywhere, not just this game. Developers and studio heads stretch a games development out as long as possible to secure paychecks for as many years as possible. The game itself is secondary to the yearly paycheck. Maybe it comes out, maybe it doesn't. Maybe the studio goes bankrupt, maybe it doesn't'. Maybe the game is a hit, maybe it's forgotten. Nobody cares about the result, as long as the process takes years, maybe decades with a guaranteed paycheck the whole time. This is modern day game development. Just look at Forsepoken. That game was nothing more than a paycheck for a decade for the team making it. They(Luminous) would have been more than happy to delay it another decade if the suits would have allowed it.
Luminous was formed in 2018, meaning that the roughly 4 year and 4 month production of Forspoken is pretty standard AAA fare. The game was just blandly designed, not some development hell production.
Of course you're not a journalist, Kira, you're an entertainer! I could listen to you talk for hours about the incompetent and delusional bottom of the barrel of this industry. Keep it up, as many others have already said, you are doing the work so-called gaming "journalists" haven't been doing for years now.
Gaming "journalists" worry too much not to slip even a few millimeters out of devs' arses. There are a very few real journalists and content creators that do decent work in this gigantic industry filled with trash human beings.
I have a friend who did something like this; but he actually committed fraud and fled Canada before anything could come of it. He started a video game company, managed to somehow convince a publisher to provide them money to pay for some developers. He wound up hiring 4 people at around $4K/mo, and paid himself $15K/mo out of the publishers money. When the publishers asked him to see the finances because he blew through the budget so quickly, he very quickly purchased a plane ticket and fled Canada. When you're starting a game company, regardless of your position - You as CEO should not be getting paid more than your developers until AFTER you actually have something to show for it. Also the talent pool in Alberta is not thin, anybody who uses that as an excuse is full of shit - Alberta was home to multiple big Triple A studios, because that's where a lot of software and game developers are coming out of.
HR is supposed to be seemingly nice to employers while actually being on the side of the company, no matter how scummy the company is. With that in mind, I don't think Kira would be willing to take the side of the scummy company often enough.
I'll never stop being amused at the idea some possess. That if you can call into question someone's status as a journalist then you can somehow desperately avoid judgment. As if "journalists" are the only people able or willing to talk about something, let alone pass judgment. Remember kids, desperation is a poor substitute for good life choices.
"Haha he isn't a journalist he is just a youtuber" As if those two things can't both be true. It's kind of crazy I know but being one does not prevent someone from also being the other
Hahaha acting like journalists nowadays are better than some RUclipsrs considering they use real sources with links and no politics. Journalists just use anonymous sources and say believe me when real sources pop up say the opposite
There's a youtuber I watch that specifically QUIT game journalism because it meant they could actually tell the truth without all the stupid red tape. In today's world, I would trust a youtuber over pretty much any journalist in gaming.
The highest achievement any journalist can get is to be recognized for uncovering some sort of widespread BS. In essence uncovering some messed up scheme and bringing it to light is THE thing good journalism is all about. It doesn't matter what we call Kira, what he does is actually good journalistic work. Perfect? No. Pretty damn good compared to most journalists? Hell yeah!
Anyone who watched your videos knows you are VERY careful to designate sources when possible, allude to where you got the information when not, and if you're just guessing you say so. When people like these try to tear you down they simply confirm that you're 100% on the mark. Please send the funds the usual way.
I don't blame the Contractors at all. They were working and they had no leader to tell them what they needed to focus on. Like he said, I'm hear learning as much as I can and getting paid for it. They are not leading their team at all...
I'm listening to this as I work on my game and planning how I'm going to afford a new graphics card so I can work faster, and am amazed at these guys with millions of dollars just pissing away such a great opportunity to make their game.
Fascinating. There seems to be a lot of overlap between this story and other stories I have heard about management and organization that leads to underwhelming results in the tech sphere. Did I get it right that they identified a whole bunch of issues and then didn't act on it? I wonder if that office they rented was also tied up in long term contracts so they couldn't ditch it when realizing they didn't really have much need for it.
4 million of gamers, people with real lives, who have mouths to feed, all down the drain for basically nothing. people getting paid for nothing while most of us at dead-end 9-5 jobs just to survive. Damn shame, truly sad.
I was a Dead Matter fan before they turned out to be run by a bunch of "shitters" and made threats against Kira and friends instead of fixing there broken game. What a let down. Thanks Kira for showing me what a bunch of asshats Quantum Integrity Software Inc turned out to be.
"We can't find any local talent"...I have an unfounded suspicion that of they stopped renting the office space and used that extra 12k to increase salary offerings they might just be able to find someone local.
Note there’s a lot of talent but not in Alberta (this is like wondering why there is no local talent in Nebraska). Vancouver has tons of talent. They could easily get remote contractors from Vancouver to work on stuff or even Toronto or Montreal all hotbeds for gamedev talent
Excellent work by Kira again, going through the hard details. As someone who has seen work in Accounting, 145k a month on all expenses is actually not a lot.
Kind of true. 145k/ month can be a lot or nothing at all. It depends on what you get out of those 145k/ month. And in this case it looks like the money is going down the drain, hence the company gets f-all for it.
Had a friend who backed the game and we managed to get into the closed Alpha or whatever it was. It was horrid. There was no chance this game would make it anywhere
I swear, it's like these people are playing at the roles they're supposed to be fulfilling and treating it like some weird soap opera. If they put half the energy into completing the game that they put into trying to censor any kind of vaguely critical voice they'd probably already be on DLCs
With the state game journalism is in, you should take "not a journalist" as a compliment. The gaming news sites are trash. It's guys like you, Karl Jobst etc, that dig up the real news!
I remember seeing the early teasers for this and it looked very promising. Unfortunately the whole thing has been run with ineptitude and no professionalism. With this and what's happening with Dark and Darker, there really is some crazy stories deep in the gaming sphere at the moment.
I genuinely wonder why the CFO hasn’t put his foot down with some of this. They’re really paying 12k/month for office space in Calgary (which is a decently sized city that would have the talent, people don’t want to work for them because of their bad reviews from employees). Any qualified accountant would stop that shit spending immediately. Also I’ve worked for a small business as an accountant, sometimes they hide people on the payroll that really shouldn’t be there or they don’t want anyone knowing what that person makes. My boss would pay his girlfriend some money (heard this from someone who worked there and verified it) when she never worked for the business…
Say what you want about Derrick but he at least went in and did what they paid him to do; find out what the hell was going wrong and create a solution.
Hey, I just want to say that 10K CAD is only about 7k USD, or 5.5K GBP. Our money is very inflated currently, and while it's a decent wage no doubt, it's not exactly the big bucks. In terms of USD, that would be a CEO taking an 85K a year salary, which would pretty much solve most of the world's economic problems.
I'm from "the region" they're located in and there's is lots of talent near here. I'm disappointed because it excited me to play a game with real world locations near my home, especially in a zombie apocalypse.
That's a very low bar tbf. Games journos are only in gaming because they failed to become actual journos. Even their champion Jason Schreier holds the controller upside down and lowers the difficulty on cutscenes
@@banneduser5187 so u like to group a huge bunch of individuals together, make assumptions and then dump on them with contempt, based on ur allegations? Says more about u than about journalists
@@shadesmarerik4112 The game journalists have earned a bad reputation. From downvoting Alien Isolation because it was too hard to saying Resident Evil 2 Remake was racist because you couldn't save Marvin a character how died in the original game, they have proven over and over that they aren't people who play video games. And that's why they get dunked on. There are a few good ones in the space but I go to real gamers when I want news and reviews and I am not alone. Could Banned User been a bit nicer in his comment. Yeah he could have. But that is just how actual gamers feel about people who write for Polygon and IGN. They aren't gamers so why are they reporting on my games?
I got to say ... I kind of like the CEO ... he sucked quite a bunch of money out of Tencent WITHOUT giving them the chance to somehow gain interest on their investment ... everybody who does this deserves at least a bit of props, although the other stuff he did sucked xD
I thumbsed-up right away, but only because I know the story and I know that you're gonna have a lot of things to say that I probably don't know about. You're surprisingly good at investigative journalism, even for weird stuff. You would've been a goddamn beast at a real news company, if any of them cared to take you on and let you do what you do with a larger team, bud.
A kid modder getting $9.5m to create a company and start a game? That kid is an adult now since it's been 8 years. People should have known this would be a shit-show once his inexperience came out to the public. This really doesn't help with the quaint, dumb, small-town, Prairie Provinces stereotype when 'there wasn't even enough talent to have an office'.
That is a hefty amount of money for someone to pay himself without any product... At the end he will be so rich, that he can start his own enterprise at least, so everything will be just fine.
Everything about this mess really does scream: Some idiot kid woke up one day and thought he could make and deliver a AAA game. I don't think he's a scammer, but rather an absolute incompetent moron, that he'd rather threaten you with legal action for showcasing his incompetence and mismanagement rather than actually try and scrape together a semblance of a game says enough.
Not a journelist? Maybe, but you do the work of a journelist from what I've watched of your videos. You've got a sense of balance, you may as well be one.
Anybody can be a journalist. These people just want everybody to think that being a journalist is some special title that requires some kind of university degree so they can gatekeep it. Nope. Anybody with the ability to record words and activities can be a journalist. You, me, even Kira. Kira is, in every way that matters, a journalist.
@@SvendleBerries Well yes anyone can be a journelist, but at the same time no. There is some value in schooling for it and there are a lot of amatuer journelist there that represent good and bad aspects, but I don't disregard the things that schools do teach like the standards and practices, so I would say yes and no, but its not that simple. Just like anyone can be an amateur scientist, but there is value in going through formal education for that, and that isn't just gate-keeping. Of course there are amateur scientists that do make excellent contributions also, but the purpose of formalized schooling is profit (yes) and also having a standard of education so you know that person has gone thru a certain level of expectations.
@@zombiehampster1397 Journalism isn't entirely dead, and one can make solid arguments for it always having been bad with few shining good journalists. (See the Ford company turning people being run over into a crime for stupid people "jaywalkers"). Churnalism has always been around, it's just more visible today like most other things because of the many kinds of media we get it from.
I study gamedesign and their game sounds exactly like our first Group Project. I get warflashbacks listening to the while progress Story. It exactly like firsttime gamdesign students plan their game!
My only complaint here is this channel is heavily underated. Grade A journalism and work. Looking forward to see your channel blow up and hit millions of subs
9 million?! I work as an accountant/analyst and it’s so easy to waste millions if your not hyper careful. Especially if your income is nonexistent yet. It should have been an internal discussion even before beginning this project what each million will be spent on and what to do get done asap to build a player base and over time build it up.
their plan was to release EA in Steam end of August 2023 at the price around 30 euros (as far as I know). It didn't happen (of course), but after watching this video I'm pretty sure they are clearly trying to get money from the EA to keep funding the game (or better said, their salaries) even when Steam EA (according to Steam rules) is not meant to finance the project, but to give earlier access to player so they can provide feedback and devs can make the proper adjustments to deliver a better product.
I can 100% sympathize with the contractor around the 20:00 mark. I was in a similar situation for a project-turned-crypto-cash-grab and I just kind of checked out until they fired me. I wasn't billing them though, I just couldn't find the motivation to keep working and my checkins were all BS.
I live in Alberta, our current Government has no interest in tech at all and trying to hire in this shit hole is a huge mistake. Most of us are blue collar or some sort of administrative worker. So they should have started a remote office, made a game that is viable, and then tried to move people to here instead. This is honestly what I expect from my province, brain dead moves made by a kid who stumbled into money and wasted it.
They do a lot of finger pointing externally for a company at least a year behind on an over-funded game. Makes me think of the No Man's Sky fiasco except the company took it on the chin and showed the fuck up with huge fixes/updates/new content.
Man... I invested in a double pack of this game WAY WAAAY back in the beginning. So much misinformation about this game. Had so much potential and was trash. I was in the discord b4 most of the bigger youtubers covered the game. The community had a "cultist" feel to it and anytime an issue was brought up it was "stop bashing the devs" or "you are just trash because its a beta and you're not accepting it". Got into a long conversation with one of the devs in their Gen chat. He asked me for "exact specifics" of how the game as i said "was not trash, but the devs were obviosly bad at their jobs". I laid out an on point synopsis of the facts i had compiled, with only a few speculations and opinions. Citing their own statement, claims and other BS that they fed us all with no follow thru. After that, he said "some of that is true". Then never responded. So i left the discord. Sad state we are in with the survival genre now. Thx you Kira for calling all these aho's out.
Derek nearly destroyed NWI after joining their executive committee. Specifically Sandstorm. They are only just now getting back to being close, but several people left DIRECTLY because of him. A pair of guys left to take higher-paying/more prestigious jobs, but everyone else who left did so because Derek is an absolute choch.
This company probably had good intentions but ended up scamming a lot of us. I got banned from their sub reddit for questioning about the release during the whole steam key situation and how bad the game played when Big Fry and Atomic Duck streamed the game before anyone else could play. Also, the NDA was absolute BS.
I've managed at many levels in the military and in the civilian world. I've had barrages of complaints levied against my department and my organization. I've always pulled my employees together and said 'hey, look, this is what happened. This is what we are doing to address it. Unless I tell you personally, you're doing fine, don't listen to the BS outside.' Then I set the example by shutting out the outside noise and doing my best to lead my team to hit our metrics. I've never gone and tried to get reviews taken down or complaints zeroed out of the system. The fact that these jokers are putting so much effort into trying to shut down Kira just tells me that Kira is right. If they had substance, they'd shut him up by releasing their finished product or a substantial and verifiable status update that shows the error of the initial video. The fact that they can't and are instead so focused on trying to censor the critiques tells me that the critiques are spot on.
Shout out the Microsoft Word/Office 365 Dark Mode though. I also love the page-less scrolling feature too. Makes it much easier to create documents when you don't actually plan on printing them. ESPECIALLY PDFs.
Bro you were so right. Just saw this game was in Early Access (not following too closely) almost nothing but negative reviews. They are charging $40 haha. They clearly were running out of money, became desperate, and rushed an Early Access release which has back fired.... The consensus is the game is unfinished and unoptimized. Disappointing, I was hoping for a 3D Project Zomboid type game.
"Unable to find talent locally." There was a game studio that determined the same thing for CryEngine, so it started a college course to train local talent. When each student graduated, they were picked up by bigger studios.
I remember when this game first got announced and how much hype was around it. seems to be the norm nowadays. So much hype and game ends up being shit or never released.
If you start a company and then go on to take outside investment, let alone crowd funding, you should be drawing a bare minimum salary (if at all) until you're profitable. You got investment to build or develop something of value... Not to pay yourself a C-suite salary.
Thanks for the 1k to post this positive comment. But for real. Game dev here, like, a real one. Thanks for doing these stories on these big timers who spend their time cashing check instead of providing value and making products. They need a light shown on them.
I'm sure somewhere in an alternate universe Kira is that very British finance director of certain company who constantly asking his employees "where the fook is/are the spendings listed here etc etc" kinda stuff 🤣 anyway great job on the breakdown of issues regarding DM.
I really want to know exactly what their employees are doing all day. I get that they haven’t gotten any work done but I mean in a practical sense, what does an average work day look like? Have to wonder.
so yall willingly gave money to a teen at that time to make a game this big without even having an experience of making a game at all or leading a team to make one....😂 what?!! wtf did they do for 7 years because the game that people got felt like it was rushed and made for a month or even less.
I am so pissed off with Quantum Integrity because I bought into the scam way back. The worst part is it made me feel so fucking stupid buying into it. All of the prior dev blogs just made it look like there was an actual game there. It looked like it was in a playable state and it looked liked there were game mechanics implemented. That all changed when I watched the live stream that AtomicDuck did and that's when I knew I bought into a fucking waste of a "game." The first alpha build was literally dog-water. I get it was supposed to be an alpha and pretty early in development, but the dev blogs were so misleading. There was literally nothing implemented in the first alpha. On the bright side, I did learn my lesson. I will never, not in a thousands years, support another game through Kickstarter or GoFundMe. It's also really sad too because Quantum Integrity Studios, or QI studios, is a damn good name for a gaming company. Even the badass name is wasted on this "game company."
it might not be only a studio but a physical address who can be used for much more than just "spending" 10k a month I don't know any of those shady companies but I know I once saw a mailbox who had 30+ company names on one mailbox linked to a single room studio too I highly doubt that's for a "good" reason not an ethical one for sure
After originally threatening to sue me for releasing this video, CEO of QI software, Nikz(johnny guitar on twitter) and I spoke privately and resolved all matters. He had an understandably emotional reaction to the video and I always afford people that without holding it against them, as I understand seeing a video like this is never going to be received well. We've sorted it all out privately, he has thoroughly apologized publicly on twitter and it's all good. I always think it takes way more character to own up to your mistakes and apologize than it does to double down and run away from responsibility. No worries on my end and glad it's resolved.
This pinned comment was updated/edited on 11/04/2023 at 6 am Bangkok time, so any replies to it before that were directed to the original message talking about the threat of legal, which is now not on the table.
Ah the tried and true "frivolous lawsuit to silence the critics" strat. They'll get WR in "Tank my reputation" this run, for sure...
Jesus christ. Fuck em up Kira! 💪
Mans unhinged, there was some other like youtuber or someone with social standing that would knee jerk react to criticism with claims of lawsuits or calling the police etc but honestly can't remember who. You might have already covered it and I'm just living in the past
This right here is why I avoid social media.
Does he have money for lawsuits?? 🤣😂
Where do i apply to join the company ?? i m open to get some free money 👋👋pick me next... i know how to draw stuff in paint 🤯🤯
I absolutely adore our "not a journalist, not a journalist advisor" Kira for providing us with the receipts
"not a journalist, not a journal writer"
@@bookle5829it just for the entertainment y'all
He's not.
Don't forget, he also doesn't have a "real job"!
Not a journalist, not a journalistic reporter.
Calling fellow employees "shitters" is really showing how much professionalism they have as a company.
You mean Derick who was fired?
No wonder they wanted him gone.
I think the guy read Christine one too many times.
No at this point Derek or Derrick is the only one I have any sympathy or compassion for. That there. Is a failed Elliott Ness bc he wasn't given appropriate tools or authority. A failed Patton.
You can tell from his initial breakdown of the problems in studio. He had his thumb right on its pulse. Meaning. You weren't given the proper tools or authority.
I like how they are talking down on Kira, cause he isn't a journo.
They act like they're game devs and not just crooks 😂
They took the money for a very expensive game dev cosplay, it what it sounds like.
Not to mention game “journalists” are complete fucking jokes.
At this point being "roasted" as not being a "journo" should be considered high praise.
I'm so glad people are not simping or defending them. I could not believe how many people on the big video on this game kept trying to say this game is not a scam and it was just a management issue.
People wanting to hold indie company's to lower standards and look the other way when they make other indies look bad make me sick.
Oh you're not a journalist? Well you can't prove anything then!
It's definitely a sign of a company being managed poorly when something like this results in finger-pointing, screaming and name-calling behind the scenes instead of any actual addressing of the issues.
yeah and calling fellow employees lazy or shit never helps much.
Ive seen the same thing in multiple industries it all ends the same unless someone saves them.
I'm so thankful for your investigations like this, I'm a junior 3d artist and trying to get my foot in the door in the industry via junior jobs or internships, and just to hear that THIS studio was looking for interns is hilarious but worrying, I don't know why that level designer was happy to be building a portfolio, who the fuck would want that project on their portfolio, an complete mess and horrible reputation.
This sort of content has definitely increased how cautious I am with applying for games studios, there's a lot of studios hiring that look either too good to be true or shady at best.
Stay a real one Kira
to be fair. as it seems you can remote plug them and get paid for whatever you do 😂 this style of leadership attracts shady ppl. with bad workethics.
Just to be clear the level designer doesn't want Dark Matter on his portfolio, he seen how bad the project was and knew it was a sh*t show, he was basically using the time / money he was getting as a contractor to work on his own stuff, that was what the guy was saying.
Lots of people take any job in the industry just to secure rent / food while they figure out what they want to do or get themselves to a level where they can jump ship to a project they actually care about.
The project while completely mismanaged by leaders, is still a good one to have on your portfolio, many in the industry are aware of the game and the failures that are due to leadership, not the team involved. I say this as an industry professional.
@@desocrate Exactly, learning to become a 3D generalist myself. Employers should and usually do focus on the quality of your work, not whether a game sucked in ways not related to your contribution.
The idea that they would be able to court/dupe DEVOLVER DIGITAL into publishing their product is absolutely delusional.
Devolver would tweet roasting them.
They should try Bethesda, they'd think it was a totally normal release build.
@@CruelestChrisBethesda's gameplan is "we build a janky piece of shite game with an interesting premise, but also release a game editor then the public will fix it" Genius in fairness.
It's called quantum integrity because it's integrity both exists and doesn't exist until you measure it.
9 months late but holy shit what an incredible joke, this deserves way more than 16 likes
I run into this mentality all the time for writing a novel instead of a video game but it's all the same. I'm a self-published author and people come to me and say: "I have a great idea for a book. What advice do you have?" I tell them to learn about the five act play, the hero's journey, theme, character arc, the inciting incident, the protagonist, antagonist, conflict, voice, etc. "Too hard. I'll just write it and it'll be great."
True.
Very, very, VERY few people can just write a good book without learning about the well established tropes, themes and writing styles. Sure, it's not a bad idea to twist existing concepts a bit, but there are many good reasons for some books selling and others, well: not doing selling at all.
If anything, you have to learn about the tropes so that you can subvert them. Expectation sets quite a lot of people's reactions to things, after all.
Having a "great idea" for anything is normally a sign of someone doomed to fail. Writing, like most creative industries, takes a certain sort of machochistic drive that anyone who's convinced their idea is great from the start won't be able to withstand. If learning is too hard, oh boy, wait til you get to the rejection and brutal honest feedback stage! (Which they likely will never reach because the effort of actually *finishing* the book will likely drive them off first.)
this mentality is everywhere. plumbing, state, food industry... you name it, it has it.
@@zoltanz288 not exactly the same. You can't be a licensed electrician or be hired in food service without going through the training (and keeping up/complying with all relevant laws and standards.)
Artistic endeavors don't have any bars to entry.
@@PointsofData more like invisible entry bars, like the comment above said, once you reach the feedback stage, prepare to have your ego brutally murdered.
Seems like Quantum Integrity is quite an apt name for this company.
Looking for this comment so I didn't need to post it myself.
They are all trying very hard to see how fast the game development is going that they have no idea where the it actually is.
My thoughts exactly
Oh my goodness! This sounds like project management hell. What an absolute nightmare it would be to be a serious employee trying to get things done in that environment.
Reminder for anyone who wants a game like this that Project Zomboid is a thing
Yup. And if you want a 3D open-world survival game, DayZ is infinitely better than this dumpster fire.
Kira pays me to post positive comments, thanks Kira
kira pays you?
you're getting paid???
Damn son gimme the link
You guys get paid?
I get 50 a comment
I clicked on this half expecting to zone out after 5 minutes but good lord is this story juicy. Props on documenting all this and cataloguing it in a easy to follow format.
This project is modern gaming development in a nutshell. It is everywhere, not just this game. Developers and studio heads stretch a games development out as long as possible to secure paychecks for as many years as possible. The game itself is secondary to the yearly paycheck. Maybe it comes out, maybe it doesn't. Maybe the studio goes bankrupt, maybe it doesn't'. Maybe the game is a hit, maybe it's forgotten. Nobody cares about the result, as long as the process takes years, maybe decades with a guaranteed paycheck the whole time. This is modern day game development. Just look at Forsepoken. That game was nothing more than a paycheck for a decade for the team making it. They(Luminous) would have been more than happy to delay it another decade if the suits would have allowed it.
I thought rushing and crunching were still the bigger problems.
Luminous was formed in 2018, meaning that the roughly 4 year and 4 month production of Forspoken is pretty standard AAA fare. The game was just blandly designed, not some development hell production.
@@RobertDrane with today's damn near 6 year dev cycle? if they have to rush and crunch its probably because they suck at their jobs.
@@zoltanz288 Stop blaming workers. That's the attitude of entitled pricks.
Of course you're not a journalist, Kira, you're an entertainer! I could listen to you talk for hours about the incompetent and delusional bottom of the barrel of this industry. Keep it up, as many others have already said, you are doing the work so-called gaming "journalists" haven't been doing for years now.
Gaming "journalists" worry too much not to slip even a few millimeters out of devs' arses. There are a very few real journalists and content creators that do decent work in this gigantic industry filled with trash human beings.
I have a friend who did something like this; but he actually committed fraud and fled Canada before anything could come of it.
He started a video game company, managed to somehow convince a publisher to provide them money to pay for some developers. He wound up hiring 4 people at around $4K/mo, and paid himself $15K/mo out of the publishers money.
When the publishers asked him to see the finances because he blew through the budget so quickly, he very quickly purchased a plane ticket and fled Canada.
When you're starting a game company, regardless of your position - You as CEO should not be getting paid more than your developers until AFTER you actually have something to show for it.
Also the talent pool in Alberta is not thin, anybody who uses that as an excuse is full of shit - Alberta was home to multiple big Triple A studios, because that's where a lot of software and game developers are coming out of.
I fucking love watching this game die, mmmm it gives me sustenance.
You can say, this game is a dead matter
@@iloveanothermanswives4278 (seinfeld theme plays)
in a way, I'm getting my money''s worth of buying the game from all the drama it's produced
Kira sounds like he'd make an excellent HR personnel official. Nothing phases him.
i rather see him in accounting/finances 🧐 "who tf bought monkey nft's 😡" "what have you done during 170 hours 😡" "we will be broke in 6 months 😡" 🤣🤣🤣🤣
HR is supposed to be seemingly nice to employers while actually being on the side of the company, no matter how scummy the company is.
With that in mind, I don't think Kira would be willing to take the side of the scummy company often enough.
@@lightworker2956 Exactly, nothing phases him.
i agree he could totaly sack someone for "hotdog hunting" with a straight face
I mean... CEO's receiving incredibly large salaries and bonusses despite actively doing a terrible job is just the standard everywhere
I'll never stop being amused at the idea some possess. That if you can call into question someone's status as a journalist then you can somehow desperately avoid judgment. As if "journalists" are the only people able or willing to talk about something, let alone pass judgment. Remember kids, desperation is a poor substitute for good life choices.
"Haha he isn't a journalist he is just a youtuber" As if those two things can't both be true. It's kind of crazy I know but being one does not prevent someone from also being the other
As if every news organization in the world doesn’t have a RUclips channel.
Hahaha acting like journalists nowadays are better than some RUclipsrs considering they use real sources with links and no politics. Journalists just use anonymous sources and say believe me when real sources pop up say the opposite
There's a youtuber I watch that specifically QUIT game journalism because it meant they could actually tell the truth without all the stupid red tape. In today's world, I would trust a youtuber over pretty much any journalist in gaming.
The highest achievement any journalist can get is to be recognized for uncovering some sort of widespread BS. In essence uncovering some messed up scheme and bringing it to light is THE thing good journalism is all about.
It doesn't matter what we call Kira, what he does is actually good journalistic work.
Perfect? No. Pretty damn good compared to most journalists? Hell yeah!
Anyone who watched your videos knows you are VERY careful to designate sources when possible, allude to where you got the information when not, and if you're just guessing you say so. When people like these try to tear you down they simply confirm that you're 100% on the mark.
Please send the funds the usual way.
I don't blame the Contractors at all. They were working and they had no leader to tell them what they needed to focus on. Like he said, I'm hear learning as much as I can and getting paid for it. They are not leading their team at all...
I'm listening to this as I work on my game and planning how I'm going to afford a new graphics card so I can work faster, and am amazed at these guys with millions of dollars just pissing away such a great opportunity to make their game.
Fascinating. There seems to be a lot of overlap between this story and other stories I have heard about management and organization that leads to underwhelming results in the tech sphere. Did I get it right that they identified a whole bunch of issues and then didn't act on it? I wonder if that office they rented was also tied up in long term contracts so they couldn't ditch it when realizing they didn't really have much need for it.
4 million of gamers, people with real lives, who have mouths to feed, all down the drain for basically nothing. people getting paid for nothing while most of us at dead-end 9-5 jobs just to survive. Damn shame, truly sad.
I was a Dead Matter fan before they turned out to be run by a bunch of "shitters" and made threats against Kira and friends instead of fixing there broken game.
What a let down. Thanks Kira for showing me what a bunch of asshats Quantum Integrity Software Inc turned out to be.
Nick: "I did nothing wrong! It's not true! It's bullshit! I did nothing wrong! I did naaht"
Kira:"You wanna explain how?"
Nick: **Bans Kira**
That's been Nick's only move since 2020 when anyone questions his work.
"We can't find any local talent"...I have an unfounded suspicion that of they stopped renting the office space and used that extra 12k to increase salary offerings they might just be able to find someone local.
Note there’s a lot of talent but not in Alberta (this is like wondering why there is no local talent in Nebraska). Vancouver has tons of talent. They could easily get remote contractors from Vancouver to work on stuff or even Toronto or Montreal all hotbeds for gamedev talent
Excellent work by Kira again, going through the hard details.
As someone who has seen work in Accounting, 145k a month on all expenses is actually not a lot.
Kind of true. 145k/ month can be a lot or nothing at all.
It depends on what you get out of those 145k/ month. And in this case it looks like the money is going down the drain, hence the company gets f-all for it.
Kira is a far better journalist than most journalists
Had a friend who backed the game and we managed to get into the closed Alpha or whatever it was. It was horrid. There was no chance this game would make it anywhere
Do you know about Vein?
I swear, it's like these people are playing at the roles they're supposed to be fulfilling and treating it like some weird soap opera. If they put half the energy into completing the game that they put into trying to censor any kind of vaguely critical voice they'd probably already be on DLCs
With the state game journalism is in, you should take "not a journalist" as a compliment. The gaming news sites are trash. It's guys like you, Karl Jobst etc, that dig up the real news!
I remember seeing the early teasers for this and it looked very promising. Unfortunately the whole thing has been run with ineptitude and no professionalism. With this and what's happening with Dark and Darker, there really is some crazy stories deep in the gaming sphere at the moment.
Hi, I'm from September in 2023 and Kira's prophecy has come true.
I was lucky I could refund my money. This was in February this year. So at least they stick to their words in regards to refunds.
Oh wow, scammers are doing scammy things.
Johnny is still denying any dev was unpaid or paid late lol
I genuinely wonder why the CFO hasn’t put his foot down with some of this. They’re really paying 12k/month for office space in Calgary (which is a decently sized city that would have the talent, people don’t want to work for them because of their bad reviews from employees). Any qualified accountant would stop that shit spending immediately.
Also I’ve worked for a small business as an accountant, sometimes they hide people on the payroll that really shouldn’t be there or they don’t want anyone knowing what that person makes. My boss would pay his girlfriend some money (heard this from someone who worked there and verified it) when she never worked for the business…
Say what you want about Derrick but he at least went in and did what they paid him to do; find out what the hell was going wrong and create a solution.
Hey, I just want to say that 10K CAD is only about 7k USD, or 5.5K GBP. Our money is very inflated currently, and while it's a decent wage no doubt, it's not exactly the big bucks. In terms of USD, that would be a CEO taking an 85K a year salary, which would pretty much solve most of the world's economic problems.
I'm from "the region" they're located in and there's is lots of talent near here. I'm disappointed because it excited me to play a game with real world locations near my home, especially in a zombie apocalypse.
Kira, my dude, you are more of a journalist then anyone in the gaming journalist space.
That's a very low bar tbf. Games journos are only in gaming because they failed to become actual journos. Even their champion Jason Schreier holds the controller upside down and lowers the difficulty on cutscenes
@@banneduser5187 So......you are agreeing with me. Right?
@@banneduser5187 so u like to group a huge bunch of individuals together, make assumptions and then dump on them with contempt, based on ur allegations? Says more about u than about journalists
@@the_sixxness Yes my mate. Just had to throw a slap in at game journos is all
@@shadesmarerik4112 The game journalists have earned a bad reputation. From downvoting Alien Isolation because it was too hard to saying Resident Evil 2 Remake was racist because you couldn't save Marvin a character how died in the original game, they have proven over and over that they aren't people who play video games. And that's why they get dunked on. There are a few good ones in the space but I go to real gamers when I want news and reviews and I am not alone. Could Banned User been a bit nicer in his comment. Yeah he could have. But that is just how actual gamers feel about people who write for Polygon and IGN. They aren't gamers so why are they reporting on my games?
I got to say ... I kind of like the CEO ... he sucked quite a bunch of money out of Tencent WITHOUT giving them the chance to somehow gain interest on their investment ... everybody who does this deserves at least a bit of props, although the other stuff he did sucked xD
Yeah sure, all you have to do is also conveniently forget that he took other people’s money too
I thumbsed-up right away, but only because I know the story and I know that you're gonna have a lot of things to say that I probably don't know about. You're surprisingly good at investigative journalism, even for weird stuff. You would've been a goddamn beast at a real news company, if any of them cared to take you on and let you do what you do with a larger team, bud.
A kid modder getting $9.5m to create a company and start a game?
That kid is an adult now since it's been 8 years.
People should have known this would be a shit-show once his inexperience came out to the public.
This really doesn't help with the quaint, dumb, small-town, Prairie Provinces stereotype when 'there wasn't even enough talent to have an office'.
That is a hefty amount of money for someone to pay himself without any product...
At the end he will be so rich, that he can start his own enterprise at least, so everything will be just fine.
Everything about this mess really does scream: Some idiot kid woke up one day and thought he could make and deliver a AAA game.
I don't think he's a scammer, but rather an absolute incompetent moron, that he'd rather threaten you with legal action for showcasing his incompetence and mismanagement rather than actually try and scrape together a semblance of a game says enough.
What I enjoy in stories like this is the psychology angle and it's not disappointing
If this is true, imagine Tencent will be contacting their legal team tonight…
Not a journelist? Maybe, but you do the work of a journelist from what I've watched of your videos. You've got a sense of balance, you may as well be one.
Not a journalist in title only, and quite honestly that word is so tarnished "RUclipsr" is a better one. Lol.
Anybody can be a journalist. These people just want everybody to think that being a journalist is some special title that requires some kind of university degree so they can gatekeep it. Nope. Anybody with the ability to record words and activities can be a journalist. You, me, even Kira. Kira is, in every way that matters, a journalist.
@@ectothermic lol yeah but there are great examples of journelists out there, but i know what you mean :)
@@SvendleBerries Well yes anyone can be a journelist, but at the same time no. There is some value in schooling for it and there are a lot of amatuer journelist there that represent good and bad aspects, but I don't disregard the things that schools do teach like the standards and practices, so I would say yes and no, but its not that simple.
Just like anyone can be an amateur scientist, but there is value in going through formal education for that, and that isn't just gate-keeping. Of course there are amateur scientists that do make excellent contributions also, but the purpose of formalized schooling is profit (yes) and also having a standard of education so you know that person has gone thru a certain level of expectations.
@@zombiehampster1397 Journalism isn't entirely dead, and one can make solid arguments for it always having been bad with few shining good journalists. (See the Ford company turning people being run over into a crime for stupid people "jaywalkers"). Churnalism has always been around, it's just more visible today like most other things because of the many kinds of media we get it from.
I am glad I dodged this bullet. I was really looking to get into it.
they called the company quantum integrity because you would need a quantum level microscope to find their integrity from how small it is
I study gamedesign and their game sounds exactly like our first Group Project. I get warflashbacks listening to the while progress Story. It exactly like firsttime gamdesign students plan their game!
My only complaint here is this channel is heavily underated. Grade A journalism and work. Looking forward to see your channel blow up and hit millions of subs
u know that this is his 2nd channel?
@@shadesmarerik4112 This content should have been on the main channel, so much good info they were trying to hide.
9 million?! I work as an accountant/analyst and it’s so easy to waste millions if your not hyper careful. Especially if your income is nonexistent yet. It should have been an internal discussion even before beginning this project what each million will be spent on and what to do get done asap to build a player base and over time build it up.
For real, money can be spent like water really easily.
their plan was to release EA in Steam end of August 2023 at the price around 30 euros (as far as I know). It didn't happen (of course), but after watching this video I'm pretty sure they are clearly trying to get money from the EA to keep funding the game (or better said, their salaries) even when Steam EA (according to Steam rules) is not meant to finance the project, but to give earlier access to player so they can provide feedback and devs can make the proper adjustments to deliver a better product.
LOL FEW HOURS LATER... they release the EA in Steam ... User ratings say it all....
I can 100% sympathize with the contractor around the 20:00 mark. I was in a similar situation for a project-turned-crypto-cash-grab and I just kind of checked out until they fired me. I wasn't billing them though, I just couldn't find the motivation to keep working and my checkins were all BS.
Great video, very thorough. Subscribed!
That executive summary - holy shit. How do you even fix a company THAT deep in the hole??? What a mess...
I live in Alberta, our current Government has no interest in tech at all and trying to hire in this shit hole is a huge mistake. Most of us are blue collar or some sort of administrative worker. So they should have started a remote office, made a game that is viable, and then tried to move people to here instead. This is honestly what I expect from my province, brain dead moves made by a kid who stumbled into money and wasted it.
Hope we get another From Kickstarter to court soon. Thank you for another amazing video
They do a lot of finger pointing externally for a company at least a year behind on an over-funded game. Makes me think of the No Man's Sky fiasco except the company took it on the chin and showed the fuck up with huge fixes/updates/new content.
I had entirely forgotten this game existed. I was the nefarious hooligan behind the initial "tester key" debacle way back when. Fun times.
Thought this was chronicles... I bet caspien was sweatin😅
Same, I had hoped we get more quality sleep aid reading his dev blogs.
Man... I invested in a double pack of this game WAY WAAAY back in the beginning. So much misinformation about this game. Had so much potential and was trash. I was in the discord b4 most of the bigger youtubers covered the game. The community had a "cultist" feel to it and anytime an issue was brought up it was "stop bashing the devs" or "you are just trash because its a beta and you're not accepting it". Got into a long conversation with one of the devs in their Gen chat. He asked me for "exact specifics" of how the game as i said "was not trash, but the devs were obviosly bad at their jobs". I laid out an on point synopsis of the facts i had compiled, with only a few speculations and opinions. Citing their own statement, claims and other BS that they fed us all with no follow thru. After that, he said "some of that is true". Then never responded. So i left the discord. Sad state we are in with the survival genre now. Thx you Kira for calling all these aho's out.
That man not taking RUclipsrs seriously is one of their fatal mistakes first of all. This shit gets all over the web!!
When you brought up the 'Inner Circle' all I could think of was that 'The Office(US)' Episode with Will Ferrell in it oml
Derek nearly destroyed NWI after joining their executive committee. Specifically Sandstorm. They are only just now getting back to being close, but several people left DIRECTLY because of him. A pair of guys left to take higher-paying/more prestigious jobs, but everyone else who left did so because Derek is an absolute choch.
The Tale of Dead Matter continues
This company probably had good intentions but ended up scamming a lot of us. I got banned from their sub reddit for questioning about the release during the whole steam key situation and how bad the game played when Big Fry and Atomic Duck streamed the game before anyone else could play.
Also, the NDA was absolute BS.
I've managed at many levels in the military and in the civilian world. I've had barrages of complaints levied against my department and my organization. I've always pulled my employees together and said 'hey, look, this is what happened. This is what we are doing to address it. Unless I tell you personally, you're doing fine, don't listen to the BS outside.' Then I set the example by shutting out the outside noise and doing my best to lead my team to hit our metrics. I've never gone and tried to get reviews taken down or complaints zeroed out of the system. The fact that these jokers are putting so much effort into trying to shut down Kira just tells me that Kira is right. If they had substance, they'd shut him up by releasing their finished product or a substantial and verifiable status update that shows the error of the initial video. The fact that they can't and are instead so focused on trying to censor the critiques tells me that the critiques are spot on.
Shout out the Microsoft Word/Office 365 Dark Mode though. I also love the page-less scrolling feature too. Makes it much easier to create documents when you don't actually plan on printing them. ESPECIALLY PDFs.
Im appalled that a studio can "function" for so long without anyone working as they should, how is that possible.
Hell yeah bro! Thanks for bringing light into this man! Keep up the great work!
Backed this game back in the day and realised after 30 seconds of gameplay "aha it's one of those games"
Great video as always Kira, thanks for making these and keeping us aware.
Bro you were so right. Just saw this game was in Early Access (not following too closely) almost nothing but negative reviews. They are charging $40 haha. They clearly were running out of money, became desperate, and rushed an Early Access release which has back fired.... The consensus is the game is unfinished and unoptimized. Disappointing, I was hoping for a 3D Project Zomboid type game.
"Unable to find talent locally." There was a game studio that determined the same thing for CryEngine, so it started a college course to train local talent. When each student graduated, they were picked up by bigger studios.
They are right saying you are not a journalist, cause you clearly put in more work into your research than the modern journalist.
I remember when this game first got announced and how much hype was around it. seems to be the norm nowadays. So much hype and game ends up being shit or never released.
If you start a company and then go on to take outside investment, let alone crowd funding, you should be drawing a bare minimum salary (if at all) until you're profitable. You got investment to build or develop something of value... Not to pay yourself a C-suite salary.
Absolutely spot on considering the steam reviews.
Thanks for the 1k to post this positive comment.
But for real. Game dev here, like, a real one. Thanks for doing these stories on these big timers who spend their time cashing check instead of providing value and making products. They need a light shown on them.
I'm sure somewhere in an alternate universe Kira is that very British finance director of certain company who constantly asking his employees "where the fook is/are the spendings listed here etc etc" kinda stuff 🤣 anyway great job on the breakdown of issues regarding DM.
really disgusting to hear that they have a groupchat and click that toxic in a company i feel sorry for the people who have and is working there
TB would be proud of you Kira, so proud. 🎩
i agree Biscuit would approve even though he's ginger
@@banneduser5187 You made my day! 🤣🤣🤣
I don't know exactly where the line into "is a journalist" begins, But Kira is certainly near it. I say that positively.
Watching this video after the early access release is so
enlightening.
I really want to know exactly what their employees are doing all day. I get that they haven’t gotten any work done but I mean in a practical sense, what does an average work day look like? Have to wonder.
so yall willingly gave money to a teen at that time to make a game this big without even having an experience of making a game at all or leading a team to make one....😂 what?!! wtf did they do for 7 years because the game that people got felt like it was rushed and made for a month or even less.
I can’t wait until the executives post more juicy shit
It's really a wonderful world where you make a video I can watch so you can make more videos I can watch.
Another great exposé, Kira.
As someone who appreciates good journalism, you're great. Really, technically, very good. Thorough and fair. Love your work.
I am so pissed off with Quantum Integrity because I bought into the scam way back. The worst part is it made me feel so fucking stupid buying into it. All of the prior dev blogs just made it look like there was an actual game there. It looked like it was in a playable state and it looked liked there were game mechanics implemented. That all changed when I watched the live stream that AtomicDuck did and that's when I knew I bought into a fucking waste of a "game." The first alpha build was literally dog-water. I get it was supposed to be an alpha and pretty early in development, but the dev blogs were so misleading. There was literally nothing implemented in the first alpha.
On the bright side, I did learn my lesson. I will never, not in a thousands years, support another game through Kickstarter or GoFundMe. It's also really sad too because Quantum Integrity Studios, or QI studios, is a damn good name for a gaming company. Even the badass name is wasted on this "game company."
RIP my $20. Guess driving around old Canmore in a Crown Vic police cruiser will never come to pass.
I wasn't planning on asking for a refund because I thought they were at least trying. But these people are completely inept. I'll take my $30 back
it might not be only a studio but a physical address who can be used for much more than just "spending" 10k a month I don't know any of those shady companies but I know I once saw a mailbox who had 30+ company names on one mailbox linked to a single room studio too I highly doubt that's for a "good" reason not an ethical one for sure