Hey hey, is there news about Relics 3?
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No release date yet
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Not yet (itās in copy-editing apparently, but I donāt have a date). Will let you know when I hear.
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OK, so here it is.
Relics 3 is not going to be released on the Hosted Games label.
I just sent an email to Jason revoking my permission for the company to publish the files. Iām just so fucking sick of this company, the shitty way they conduct themselves and their unacceptable approach to managing the Forum. I donāt want those people to make another cent off anything that I make.
And so Iāll be putting the game up for free for everyone to access on Dashingdon. Itāll be a little while before I put it up. Since there will now no longer be a save import function, Iāll have to reimplement the āenter your choicesā thing at the start so that people can continue their adventure with the same character from Relics 2. Iāll be rediverting my focus from Neon Fire to get that implemented over the next few weeks, and will let people know (prob on Tumblr rather than on this awful Forum) when itās up and ready to go.
Iām sad that I wonāt make any money from a game I worked super hard on, but thatās still preferable to letting this company make money off me. Iām one of the tens of thousands of UK academics on strike this week. That probably means that Iām in a particularly anti-authoritarian mood right now, so this is me sticking it to the man.
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Based
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I knew something like this would happen after things got heated. I am sad that you suffered such treatment because CoG cant stand any criticisms of their darling VtM:SoTS. I hope this doesnāt discourage you from writing more amazing games. Neon Fire is an amazing read and never having known anything about Shadowrun I am excited to see more about it.
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Best thing about it? I didnāt even criticize SOTS (which I quite liked). Just the obvious bias of the people who run things here.
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I feel bad for you that you have to do something like this but you have my support. I know I havenāt said much about your works but I have rather enjoyed the Relics just because I can live out my Indiana Jones fantasy
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Is there any possiblity of publishing it elsewhere? I know the Arcadie author chose to pull her game as well, and got it on Steam.
Itād be a real shame if you arenāt able to get anything for your work, when there are lots of people that want to support you.
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That SOTS thread was really something else. Iāve supported this company for a long time, but at some point you have to acknowledge that the majority of people would consider SOTS to be a subpar title and take that into consideration. Donāt mean that you have to think itās one, but yeah. Terrible thread.
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He might not be able to because the first 2 Relics are already HGs so posting it for free on Dashingdon makes sense this way.
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Commercial release isnāt going to happen, unless the game gets ported to twine or some other system
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For me, itās not about whether you like it or not. Clearly a lot of people on the forum donāt, but itās also clearly been well recieved in other places, which is great. I personally have no issue with the game.
I feel like the problem is that this forum exists as both the largest forum to discuss these kinds of games, and as a promotional tool for the company that publishes them. I think that what a lot of people are chafing under is the sense that moderation is weighted in favor of protecting the ābrandā rather than discourse more broadly, which makes sense from a business perspective, but makes this a less interesting place to read and post.
I come to the forum when a new game is published to see how it was recieved, but now I worry about whether the reaction is representative, or if negative views are being discouraged.
I have nothing against CoG deciding that this forum is a promotional space. They have that right, but it makes me less likely to spend time here.
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Ya I hate that, @Schliemannsghost put in so much work in the trilogy only for it to end up free. Only other solution I can think of is doing something like Shepards of Haven where they are publishing on own after buying some license, I dont know if I am correct so someone can tell me, but there is still 25% split to CoG
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Yeah, maybe I didnāt make it clear enough in my post, but I agree with everything you just said.
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From what I can tell, shepherds is just getting Patreon released chapters, but the full game is still going to be published by COG, and itās not 25%, COG takes a whole damn 75% of the cut and the author only gets 25%. To this day, I have still never seen them find some way to justify that using an argument that actually makes sense
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Probably because there isnāt one and theyāre too greedy to offer at least 50% but Iāll shut up or else this thread will be shut down.
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What a bad wave what happened to you. 
I hope that the issuance of this title has at least given you the satisfaction of having created it and I wish you my best wishes for your next project.
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Are there actual publishers (not self-publishing) who offer 50% royalties? In traditional book publishing, royalties seem to be firmly in the 5-25% range based on format, with 25% being pretty normal for ebooks. Are the numbers really different in the gaming/software industries? I admit I donāt know much about that.
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Series was a great ride, my friend. Looking forward to Neon Fire and whatever else you put your talents towards.
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