blundertwink

Unfortunately it isn't. There is no DU2 in production. They have been announcing what these projects are (sometimes listed on their job postings): a car combat/arena game, an action RPG, and a third, smaller project, with the action RPG being their bigger "AAA" ambition. Because nothing says success like not finishing one game, still charging people a monthly fee and pretending there's any sort of dev going on when there isn't, but thinking you have the ability to work on three other game projects at the same time...? Yeah, these people definitely learned their lesson from DU about ambition, honesty, and focus. For sure.

And it probably is running on one instance lol --- like there's player-run servers for non-MMOs that see more multiplayer traffic than DU. Otherwise I have to object to the phrase "amazing server tech" because as we all saw many times, their tech never scaled. The premise of the tech never made sense to begin with, so of course it didn't work even at small scales. The entire notion of the single shard was amateurish in retrospect. It served no real benefit and if the game had managed to scale, it would have imploded the world even faster. There's a good reason the Enterprise world is moving back to on-prem infra; you can't just throw an MMO ON AWS and expect it to scale without breaking your bank! That very idea is so amateurish it still makes me cringe. A theme-park style MMO would be a different equation, but the only way DU was ever going to work was with about 10 times as much funding, a bespoke game engine, and NQ standing its own metal. DU is almost lucky that the game's core design was so bad that it didn't attract a mess of people. Even if they were successful in attracting a bunch of players, I think the way they built it guaranteed the game would never work at any scale -- and if they could support it technically, they sure as hell wouldn't have been able to support it financially.

100% -- just don't hand money over to any Kickstarter project if you expect something back. Otherwise, it's your call on if you want to effectively donate money to a for-profit enterprise. Kickstarter's customer isn't end users, it's businesses. The other issue here....end users represented <5% of NQ's total money raised. So on one hand you have a ton of people representing <5% of the funds, and on the other real investors you have actual obligations to. Crowd funding doesn't really work for MMOs. DU was one of (maybe the top?) KS game in the year it launched, and you can't build a competitive MMO for 500k pounds! The most successful KS projects ever haven't crossed $50 million in funding, while the typical MMO pipeline raises around 4 times that amount through traditional channels. Even DU raised >$20 million, and this from a guy with zero experience in game dev at all. So, yeah, CrowdFunding kind of sucks. Go figure, and entire model based on the "honor system" doesn't work well with capitalism.

Yet again I'm left with the impression that NQ is not an honest company with integrity -- tell new players the honest state of development It's been months and months that they've been hiring only for new game projects and have shelved DU's dev, but they just don't want to tell people that their "subscription" money is being used elsewhere. For a company that once promised to "do much better" with transparency and communication, they are very committed to the opposite.

@Sethioz Best of luck to you, and I'm very sorry for the idea that DU has caused you more stress. The devs have the money and resources to fix DU, but they have been recently hiring for other (UE5) game projects, including a "car combat arena" IP. To be harsh, they took the promise, funding, and any shred of revenue gained from DU and decided to work on other games that are less ambitious and more profit-focused. They seemingly stopped working on DU almost a year ago (after their last update in Summer 2023) and don't have the integrity to just be honest and transparent about this fact. Games fail all the time but at least most studios are honest enough to admit it, especially charging people AAA sub prices as they invest that money in other games.

Is there a way to set up mail forwarding? At least in the US that will cover you for a year. Otherwise it really is lame that after all these delays they can't be bothered with an address update. If you're feeling vengeful, also consider complaining to Kickstarter. They won't help you get your stuff, but they might at least flag NQ and maybe that hinders them from trying to throw their three other game projects into crowdfunding to take advantage of yet more people.

I did see it was on sale on Steam and rolled my eyes....it crosses the line into being straight-up deceptive when they put the thing on sale saying it's a "great time to join" all-the-while knowing they have zero plans to update (finish) it. As a subscription game, it's just dishonest and shows a lack of integrity. I think I trust Activision-Blizzard more than NQ at this point, because at least they update their scammy products. At least they make something playable, if only to sell absurdly overpriced micro-transactions. They don't pretend that it's a great time to join their subscription game while funneling every last cent into other projects. It's not good when Activision-Blizzard seems like it has more integrity than your company, but that's how I view NQ at this point. This is the same company that whined about how feedback needs to be "balanced" with positive notes to be considered, complaining how "unfair" they are treated in "toxic" reviews even as they present obviously false or exaggerated trailers and pretend the game is still under development to sell subs. It isn't just incompetence that led to where we are, there's at least a sliver of malice in how they want people to keep paying while having no plans to use that money to support the subscription game!

It's really unfortunate -- I can't speak much to physical rewards except to say you aren't the only one that's not received them...and it really is absurd to ask people to wait almost a decade considering they've decided to fund 3 other game projects in the meantime. They had money to hire people for these projects (I've seen the job postings), but not to fulfill the rewards, hmm? Always some "complication" after so many years...really? The other thing that speaks to trustworthiness is the state of DU itself. They've no issues charing people monthly for a sub but refuse to articulate anything about the state of the game and the seemingly obvious reality that there will be no more major updates. That's is definitely "stringing people along" (at best) -- there hasn't been a "major" update since June 2023 and they should at least have the integrity to let people know it isn't being developed anymore. Unfortunately, Kickstarter makes it pretty clear: you have no recourse except to sue them, yourself, and the cost of that lawsuit would likely exceed any damages if you won, which you likely wouldn't because (afaik) NQ isn't obligated to ship anything in any specific timeframe. This is why it's (IMO) a mistake to back anything on Kickstarter, because if they really want to sell me something in exchange for revenue, they can do it under terms that obligate them to actually provide that thing! Too bad that dishonest people ruin it for everyone, but that's capitalism for you.

I guess it's a matter of perspective. To me, an online game that's ostensibly is an MMO is dead when the developer stops updating it. It's like a dead language -- people still speak Latin, but it's classified as a dead language because it is no longer evolving and changing. People might still play DU, but it's a dead game because the developers are focusing on other projects. It's great if people can still play it and have fun, but it is dead in the sense that it isn't going to change, isn't going to improve, and isn't going to grow. The delineation isn't really important if you're still playing and enjoying the game, but it does matter to people that are thinking about buying it. I think the reviews are more than fair in that context. At the very least, people should be aware that their monthly sub isn't going to improve or grow DU...but is likely being spent to further the studio's three other game projects. TLDR: It's not hyperbole to suggest that an "MMO" with no future updates planned and less than a hundred players online during peak times is dead.

It's all about image IMO. NQ's CEO is still posting about how brilliant DU is. They're just using player creations as a marketing tool to make their company look "cutting-edge". From their last LinkedIn post: Sounds impressive to investors that don't bother looking into the product...as they'd realize that Dual Universe has never been an "MMO"...the scam game The Day Before has something like 47 times more players at peak than DU. Web3 sort of people are all the same...they all think they're pushing boundaries when really they're making shit that doesn't even work.

@Castanietzsche I'd suggest you look at a recent announcement about this here: Best of luck to you in getting your stuff!

🤷‍♂️ They've not officially confirmed that the game is no longer under development, but that's the reality. NQ is focused on their three other game projects. The CEO's recent LinkedIn post says: DU hasn't changed much since the wipe because they haven't been developing it and have no plans to do so. Player counts seem closer to around 35-40 peek in recent days -- counts seem to be slowly decreasing still, but I'm surprised they are even this high.

That's 100% fair, and I think some of their ideas are probably a better use of the limited tech than something so ambitious as DU....can't really argue that DU as a product doesn't work and can't work without extreme investment that makes no sense. But it's sketchy that they've (perhaps) decided to prioritize other projects ahead of their obligations to backers. If you can hire new people, you can send people some freakin' t-shirts. Granted KS only represents ~5% or less of their total investment, but it just seems like bad PR, especially if they're trying to release other games. Some people might even think the narrative is "developer used KS money to fund other projects and never sent rewards" (which is not exactly fair but kinda true). If I were them, I'd especially want this cleared up in advance of trying to release any other game to avoid the NQ brand being polluted by DU's many mistakes.

To my knowledge there's no news and this is still the most up-to-date reply: The only news about NQ's development I've heard recently is that they are working on three game projects other than DU, and still have some job postings up relevant to that...one of them is a car combat game. I think it's problematic to keep DU online when they've no intention of making another major update, delay on shipping rewards they're obligated to ship (if that's indeed that's happening, they haven't given an update), all while spending money on other projects? No one seriously believes it takes a year to find a logistics partner. If they have the resources to hire staff to make three other games, they can probably fulfill their physical rewards. It just isn't a priority because they can get away with constantly "delaying" -- delay long enough and they'll have time to launch their other IPs. If those fail, the whole company just goes away and nothing ever ships...not saying that's their plan, it's probably just that no one is working on DU anymore, so no one has taken the time to do this and the next update will be another lukewarm apology and another timeline.

Fair, but my point was that by the time the VC took over, it was too late to implement any ideas other than scaling back. The game's future was crystalized by 8 years of JC's thoughtless dev and the only choice was to scale down features to slash costs. Even putting the horrid tech aside, the game's design was so wildly unfinished they didn't even understand how to fit PvP into the game. I'm not convinced that the VC really had a choice in the direction they took DU. It was either push it out in a lame form or abandon the project. That's reflected in how Andurance hired their current CEO, whose stated purpose was always to focus on other projects (per his own LinkedIn)...since before release. To be honest, I don't think any idea that the VC pursued to fix the game would have worked. We all knew the game was (at best) half-finished even before they started slashing. I'm no fan of their strategy in pretending to develop DU while they clearly weren't, but I also don't believe there's anything anyone could have realistic done to fix this project.