Announcement posted...

[Patience]

http://forums.joltonline.com/showthr...pia-developers

Utopia is currently under critical pressure from widespread cheating, which is both ruining gameplay and swamping the server that it is hosted on. The scale of the problem is immediately obvious by the volume of complaints, and from our increasingly frequent late-night emergency support sessions.

We understand the degree of frustration that many of you feel at these destructive forces being left to tear the community apart. We feel it's time to openly discuss the state of affairs from our point of view.

Before we took it over, Utopia was a game that was in danger of being shut down by Jolt, much like Earth:2025 eventually was. Simply put, the difficulty and cost of running the game exceeded its potential profitability. However, we (Sean and Brian) felt that if we could re-write the game, then we could get around these difficulties and give it a future.

We personally invested in this effort as a project for our own company, at our own personal expense. This, as we all know, took longer than we anticipated, but eventually we got it running again. The game is currently loss-making, and we have shifted our focus onto more commercial projects. Nonetheless, since Christmas, we have been working weekends to keep Utopia running, on a good-will basis.

Our hope is that this would be enough for the moment, and that at some point in the future we would be able to justify further investment in the game to try to make it profitable. This would require promoting it in new languages, and simplifying the game to make it accessible to new players.

Unfortunately, it is beginning to look like working at weekends is not enough. Wide spread scripted cheating is killing game performance, meanwhile moving to more powerful servers would mean that the game wouldn't break even against its hosting costs. Hunting down cheaters, and/or building software to help identify them, is a never-ending war of escalation with both sides constantly improving techniques with no end in sight. There is a limited rate of progress that we can achieve in our fight against cheaters, and we are currently overwhelmed. We know that one of the most prolific cheaters is also one of the most publicly vociferous anti-cheating complainants. We don't know why these people want to kill the game, but they are.

Our plans for the future of the game don't extend past attempting to maintain it. Immediately, we are looking at improving performance of the game, and creating admin tools so that we can devolve responsibility for finding and banning cheaters. To even get this done, we need your cooperation. Many players are being abusive not just in the utopia forum, but in other forums as well. Jolt staff members have received personal abuse on blogs, social networking sites and via PM and email. This is frankly appalling. As a result, the Jolt-run Utopia forum is on the verge of being shutdown completely, since it is too much work to moderate, and it is unacceptable to remain the host of such aggressive content. Meanwhile, we are under pressure to shut down the game itself. To those of you that are responsible: we understand your frustration - please help us keep the game alive by conducting yourselves better. To ensure that you have a reliable point of contact, Thundergore will be in charge of the Utopia forum from now on, and he will be able to pass your concerns on to us.

Like most of you, we feel that we have invested a lot into the game, and don't want to end its long tradition. However the game is at risk from the behavior of part of its own community. Since we are currently unable to properly police the game and forums, we hope the answer will come from you.

The Utopia Developers

[Scavenger]

Hmm... not very hopeful.

Edit: thanks Patience!

[Safri]

Thanks Patience...hmm alot to take in

[Yadda9To5]

I hope it's ok to reply here if not close it/move it so a separate topic.

My first thought are: "Just close the game already". The way I read the post the blame for the failure of the game is laid at the community while at the same time the community can't do a thing to fix the game. It can't administrate the game to delete cheaters, neither can it fix the game's bug and/or performance.

Sure the community is loud, but that's both a result of the state the game is in and the lacks moderation (maybe Thundergore can put the community on a tighter leach). Still I don't see how a more quiet community can stop cheaters, fix bugs, make the game faster.

I know this post sounds negative, but honestly, what's the point of saying "Since we are currently unable to properly police the game and forums, we hope the answer will come from you." The community surely can't police the forums, and certainly not the game, so what answer is expected?!

Nevertheless, thanks for giving a clear signal about the state of the game!

Edit:
Not sure if I understand this. But Omac bought Utopia, then Omac was transformed to Jolt. Jolt promotes Utopia Kingdoms and gave/sold Utopia to Front square / B&S. Call me stupid, but how could this ever go well, its in the best interest of Jolt if Utopia is a failure, because if it were a success it would compete with its own webgames.. So it looks like Utopia never had a fair chance to succeed. (And also explains why the normal Jolt games all have a nice layout while Utopia is ugly and not user friendly (no offense meant, I know how hard it is to create a friendly layout) the development of Utopia simply never had the resources to get a graphical artist / ui designer)

[Palem]

@ S&B

You have a community of people who are desperate for this game to succeed. We do not WANT to launch clones. That's only going to divide the already too-small community.

If you need our help, all you have to do is ask. But stop trying to pull our strings and act like the big 'hot-shot' corporation. We respect people that are straight with us and tell it like it is. Your biggest problem since you guys have been here has been communication. If that improves and you actually get the chance to interact with us, things would be so much better off for you guys.

So S&B, what can we do?

[Patience]

Sure, let's keep the discussion here. We asked for news, and now we have some. It's not great, but there are a couple of bright spots.

1) Thundergore is coming back. YAY!!!
2) There seems to be consideration of user mods, so we could police the game better. That's a huge thing.

I know, I'm planting daisies in a cow patty... but you've gotta take what you can get, right?

[Meeni]

If they can maintain the server with ads, how about av 3-4 person volunteer development group that gets access to the code and another one to moderate cheating/boards?

Assuming there are plenty of players that are still hopeful for the game, it could be a very powerful thing and cost nothing for S&B. Lots of people put so much time into this game, i'm sure there will be someone interested in restoring it to glory. If the owners are willing to put faith in the players, good things should happen.

[noodle]

Any time commercial developers tell you a project is both out of control AND unprofitable, connecting the remaining dots should be fairly simple...

[Fate1316]

We know that one of the most prolific cheaters is also one of the most publicly vociferous anti-cheating complainants. We don't know why these people want to kill the game, but they are.

Name and shame

[Safri]

Sure, let's keep the discussion here. We asked for news, and now we have some. It's not great, but there are a couple of bright spots.

Could you post the announcement in your first post, it would make it easier to reply to, imo?

[Luc]

Their post really pissed me off in all it's ignorance, but I will try to remain civil here.

The only reason this game is still running at all is because the players still left DESPERATELY WANT IT TO STILL RUN. It's a huge advantage to the game owners, but for some reason it has never been identified by anyone at Jolt or by S&B. Also, it should be very visible just by looking at the tools people make for the game that not only are people dedicated to the game, but there's also a lot of coding competence in the game.

Now, as for the problems. The main problem IS NOT cheating. It is a problem, but it's not the main problem. The main problem is that the code is still buggy and the game is as fast that it makes you think you're on a 56k connection. To become profitable again, the game needs more players, and none will come to play a game that barely works at all. You can blame scripting all you want, but I doubt anyone believes that the scripters are causing more strain on the server than 10 times the amount of players used to.

So, to sum up, your advantages:
* Dedicated community that really wants to save the game
* Community has serious coding knowledge

And the issues:
* The game is buggy and extremely slow
* Nobody wants to click, or even see, the ads because they've read about viruses and so on
* Cheating is seemingly easier than it used to be, or all of a sudden the cheating puts much more strain than it used to
* The game is not profitable
* People are pissed because you don't seem to respect us enough to even try communicating on a regular basis

Your proposed solutions:
* Use the dedication of some individuals to attempt to stop cheating
* Throw hardware at issues that are IMO most likely software related

So you're basically inviting higher costs, and the only thing you're doing to increase profitability is to try to prevent cheating. That makes no sense to me at all.

How many provinces in the game are scripted? Shall we say 500? Let's assume that those scripts put as much strain on the server as 10 regular players for each province. That'd leave us at what, 14k players? So if we magically managed to stop cheating and get 5k more players to join, the game performance would suck ass again. You're totally not solving the problem. Giving some ppl admin access to the game in order for them to stop cheating is a step on the way, but it's not good enough.

What I think you should do:
1. Take advantage of the dedication of the community to make more money on ads. Give us a link to click X amounts per day to save the game (and it has to be safe) and we will do it. That should substantially improve your income from the game.
2. Take advantage of the coding expertise by either opening up the code, or at least describe your solutions and design and ask to have them reviewed so that people can suggest improvements. Like "this is, on an abstract level, how we designed the backend/data management for the game. Please evaluate it for us".
3. Start f'ing communicating. Update the blog every week. Doesn't matter if you have little new to report, as long as it looks like you actually care and respect the players.

Then, once you get better performance and less buggy code, advertise to get more people into the game and make it profitable again. Cheating will likely become a lesser problem when people start actually believing the game isn't about to die any time. It's easy to cheat when you think it'll end soon anyway, and people are leaving by the dozen around you every week.

Just try to be more open minded, admit your own faults and believe that the problems can actually be solved, and this game can be saved.

What's happening now is basically just the same as what happened with Mehul. He accepted that everything will eventually die, and just put the blinders up to any new ideas. If the traditional way of doing things don't work, try new things, don't just give up and blame someone or something else.

[ravenx]

I like how there are diehards tracking these people down on fb and such... I love this community. .. from what i read, it's already over. So where does it go from here?

[CheLord]

I am happy to see an announcement. Even if it is not completely the message that I would have liked to read, I am happy to see something.

I am also amazed to see that you guys are putting your own time, weekend time in this game. Thank you for that !! I can imagine very well that when a game is not profitable (enough) your boss wouldn't let you put effort in it anymore. And it is great that you keep fighting.

This said, I do think that indeed above players are right about the dedication of players to the game and the willingness to participate in (part of) the coding. Please take it into account.

[Tipinn]

This announcement really saddens me.

I never thought I'd see the day that Utopia might not be around. This game has been an invaluable friend to me over the years. It has helped me deal with some very serious trauma in my life that nearly cost me my life. It has helped me regain skills that I had lost due to a serious illness & it gave me the opportunity to meet people from around the world.

Utopia is far more then just a text game and far more then just a string of code.

Give us ads that are "safe" to click on and we will click.
Give us the ability to help with the coding and hunting down of scripters.

Communication is a two way street and when that is lost silence is "not" golden. It becomes a breeding ground for rumor, innuendos, blame, and eventually a complete collapse of what people love. Our loud voice is our "fear" and yes our "love" of Utopia speaking. It is our frustration at not being able to keep a beloved friend from dying a slow, undeserved death.

To the Utopian Community I say THANKYOU for 10 incredible years - can we please somehow rally yet once again to keep this much loved
game alive.

To Patience - thank you for opening the door , even if just a crack, for communication to have a chance.

[Coruscale]

"We know that one of the most prolific cheaters is also one of the most publicly vociferous anti-cheating complainants."

My question is who is the major cheater they mentioned? I can't place my head around that, because the only people I know that are publicly voicing against it - don't.

Anyway. Thanks a ton for this response Sean. And thank you Patience!