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More than 10 years ago we started creating Planet Centauri, a 2D sandbox with terraria as main inspiration.
We released the EA many years ago and this is our start just before the 1.0 release :
103 400 units solds
138 675 Wishlist
the sells seem incredible but it’s not with so many years behind, when you work for 10 years and have to paid many people helping you with the ten of thousands of monsters frames animations and thousands of pixel art items, you don’t have much left on your wallet at the end.
So we were eager for the release of 1.0 because with so many wishlists, the game’s visibility would be good, we would appear in the new and trending categories due to sales, etc…
The 1.0 happen in december 2024… we sold… 581 units in 5 days.
The game didn’t even appear on page 2; we were invisible; the release was a total flop. And we never understood why until today.
We just received this mail from Steam
Steam Launch Wishlist Email Issue
Hi there, We found a bug that impacted a very small number of game releases (less than 100 since 2015) where wishlist email notifications for the launch of a game were not sent. Unfortunately your game Planet Centauri was among those included. We intend for this feature to work for every game and we’re inviting you to a Daily Deal as a way to help make up for lost visibility from your launch day.
It’s incredible to win the lottery like this: 100 games impacted in 10 years out of the 86,000 games on Steam. And to reward you, we’re giving you 24-hour visibility (which is nothing special; there are 6 slots available for this visibility every day of the year for various Steam invitations).
I don’t even have the strength to be angry. We’ve been so frustrated, disgusted, and in total confusion . Now we know, we understand better, it’s unfair, and we can’t change anything. We’ve started a second project because it’s financially impossible to continue patching our game, and we’re moving forward, because it’s the only thing to do.
This article was my way of expressing my anger, I guess, but also to see all the problems that a platform holding 99% of the PC gaming market can cause when the cogs don’t work as they should.
Have a nice day everyone, may luck be better to you
Comments
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Sad story aside, the reviews for the game aren’t great for something with a decade long dev period
Apparently got 0 updates after release too
Well the dev explained that working on updates for it wasnt possible
It’s getting a groundswell of support in Steam reviews now. https://store.steampowered.com/app/385380/Planet_Centauri/#app_reviews_hash
But yeah, sad story.
I don’t fully get it. If the problem was that the email wasn’t sent. Sending the email on a posterior date wouldn’t have brought all the expected sales?
Well, it is one year later now. Sure if they send it now it can lead to those sales. And the coversge of the bug can lead to sales as well.
But one year has passed now. They have understandibly stopped working on the game, since they didnt get the expected revenue. They are on a very different path now. Sales now wont change the fact that they have given up on the game.
Regardless of how good this game is, it’s true that belong able to play on launch day is better than a week later. Experiencing the release at the same time as everyone else is a unique experience.
Again, in this instance it was a pretty pitiful patch, but I’d still say that launch day would have sold more than a later sent email.
