Copyedit: the game is being copyedited in full; that process can take about a month.
Pending release: we’re waiting to release the game
Pending assets: we’re waiting for the author to give us something we need to publish it
Pending Submission: we have the assets, but there are still internal production tasks to do before submitting.
Submitted to Apple: we’re waiting for Apple to approve it.
Pending external approval: we’re waiting for someone to do something
The word “production” is from the Greek for “hurry up and wait.”
To give more detail, “Submitted to Apple” means we have packaged the game into an app and submitted it to Apple. Apps do not magically appear in the iTunes Store. After submission you may wait a day, you may wait a month until the app is approved for sale. We have no way of predicting how long the review process at Apple will take.
This is also one of the many reasons why the question “When will my game come out?” is a bit like asking “Exactly what day will we land a man on Mars?” We’re going to Mars, we know we’re going to Mars. Your game is going to come out, we know it’s going to come out. Many things are impinging upon us being able to say what day it will be.
No, it’s not officially released. If it hasn’t been blogged about, and if you don’t see it on the Hosted Games page, then it’s not officially released.
Submitted to Apple means we have packaged the game into an app and submitted it to Apple. Apps do not magically appear in the iTunes Store. After submission you may wait a day, you may wait a month until the app is approved for sale. We have no way of predicting how long the review process at Apple will take.
This is also one of the many reasons why the question “When will my game come out?” is a bit like asking “Exactly what day will we land a man on Mars?” We’re going to Mars, we know we’re going to Mars. Your game is going to come out, we know it’s going to come out. Many things are impinging upon us being able to say what day it will be.
Apple has a(n often greater than) ten day approval process, and they reject ~15% of the games we submit, often for stupid reasons.
Google and Amazon have < 24 hour approval process. They’ve never rejected a submission.
Getting a game released simultaneously on all platforms, therefore, is dependent on Apple. Once it’s submitted to Apple, it’s in the hands of the Apple gods. It is never (to date) in the hands of the Google or Amazon gods. That’s why “submitted to Apple” matters.
How long is the steam process? And how come more games aren’t on steam. There are so many more products on steam that shouldn’t be games but are, so how hard can it be to get a COG on it? Just curious/ hoping for more games.
The answer to the last part of that question can be found here, as well as on some other places on the forum, but this was the first one I managed to unearth:
Contrarily, everyone can take a chill-pill and relax. The games are coming. The community’s still here, and there’s no need to harsh your mellow. If there were a significant issue, I’m sure that the CoG staff would let us know. As you’ll read above, release dates depend on clearance by the fun people who runt he app stores, as much as anything else.
Trying to compare CoG to a AAA publisher is like apples and oranges. You’ve got a small staff who are quite limited in what they can do versus a large staff with a significantly larger following and a hell of a lot more media presence and a lot more rabid users with torches and pitchforks coming to burn their metaphorical house down.
So- bottom line: remember that there are no hard times for release, and just enjoy it when it comes out.
I tend to work at small companies with under 10 employees. Even if we’re all going flat out with urgent/emergency work we still have to take the few seconds it needs to update customers on situations.
A few words to your customers goes a long way no matter your number of employees or workload. There is no reason CoG can’t drop a few words on the thread or update the first post
We’re edging awfully close to what I said in this thread last year at about this time: If ya’ll get shirty about how often we update this thread and we are perfectly happy to take it away.
Well, I won’t speak for @jasonstevanhill and @RETowers, as it’s something we’ll need to discuss, but speaking for myself: I see more than a few bad apples. I see a lack of understanding of issues and procedure that we’ve explained over and over again.
I suppose that’s fair; I’m on the ground floor looking in, you guys have the macro view. I don’t know if you could lock the thread and leave it pinned, but that may alleviate some of the issues you’re seeing with it. At any rate, thanks for taking time out of your day to do what you do.
Please could you as a Cog worker don’t call us clients Bad Apples? I find it insulting. It is like Mac Donalds call their clients Fat pigs or something.