I’m still pissed at The Odd Gentleman

annadesu:

eldantedelante:

annadesu:

eldantedelante:

Not for taking Hussie’s money, but for WASTING HIS TIME. If they had told him immediately that they were going to run off with it, Hussie could have bounced back. But instead he had to pull away from his LIVE PERFORMANCE ACT for a solid YEAR to try to whip them into shape because they just threw him in a loop.

Hussie will never recover from that. The Gigapause asked more patience from his fans than could ever be expected for the type of story it was, and most of them left. He knows this game has a market a FRACTION of the size it was when he set out to make it, and it will never grow beyond that. So why is he still determined to finish it, without cutting corners? The same reason he asked us to send him our selfies: because the handful of us that are still here mean that much to him.

Imagine if the worst that ever happened to Hussie was that he lost $600k of game funding in the blink of an eye. Homestuck would have finished almost a year earlier. The fandom would still be almost as large as in its heyday, and would still remember the comic with fondness. Hiveswap’s production would be shortened by almost two years. We could be playing Act 2 by now. The game’s sales might even match what he had lost. What Pumpkin never would have been absorbed into We Love Fine. Book 2 of Paradox Space could have been completely posted online for free already, and a third issue might even be in the works. There would still be enough demand for the print volumes that they could feasibly see their completion. Hussie would have a thriving enterprise after a decade of work instead of something he has to keep sinking more into from his pocket just to hold together.

So fuck The Odd Gentleman, because they didn’t just cost Hussie $600k. They cost him EVERYTHING.

I’m not into Homestuck, but someone please enlighten me: How on Earth did they get away with stealing all that money? Did they not sign contracts with him? There’s no paper trail? I don’t get that part of the story, because personally I would have sued their asses.

Short story is Hussie never got it in writing how much they would help. Their final product was one room where the main character would walk into the wall and the game would crash (about $50 and half a week’s worth of work at most). Technically, this was all they agreed to do, and now Hussie’s been court ordered not to discuss it in any way that could be construed as libel.

Even so, I meant it when I said I wan’t mad about them taking the money. I don’t even believe that was their intention when they accepted the job. I think they took it because they needed the work, but soon found they just had no artistic drive or vision for it, which led to ever-worsening procrastination. When interviewed about taking the job for Kings Quest, they explained that they had to choose between the project at had that they were lukewarm about and the one new one that brought them both feelings of nostalgia and inspiration. (Not to mention that KQ’s budget and projected profits made Hussie’s $600k look like chump change.)

Between the drive and the money, I can’t blame them for deciding to change projects, but what infuriates me is that they never really got around to breaking the news to him that they’d essentially halted all production on Hiveswap. He moved house to be down the street from their studio so he could whip them into shape, and they respond by barring him entry. He invested so much time and effort into them, more than he had, just for them to wind up Scott Pilgriming him, and his comic and following suffered for it. If only they had fessed up when they had lost their momentum, none of this fiasco would have happened.

See, I’m a little less forgiving than you. Using a contract technicality to screw someone over like that, and then using the money of Homestuck fans to make something else, is complete bullshit. It speaks a lot about the morality of the people in charge of the company. I already said I was boycotting the company, but HOO-BOY. I hope they crash and burn, now.

1 year ago / 10448 
via: polyglotplatypus
  1. kanamiade reblogged this from janestrider
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  4. angel-of-double-death reblogged this from gloriousporpoises and added:
    Honestly this is why I got so pissed anytime the fandom got mad at Hussie for the game taking so long.
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