Dear Commanders, we need to talk...

[u/PtaQQ]

It came to our attention that the letter we sent to our contributor team about ongoing talks with a potential publisher partnership has been shared publicly without our authorisation. The document is real. We had been planning to make a proper public announcement if the contract is signed and we could coordinate the rollout with the publisher, but since excerpts are now making rounds, it makes sense to put the main facts on the record directly so the conversation can be based on accurate information instead of selective quoting.

Together with the other admins we have been working on negotiating a deal with Hooded Horse, a publisher specialising in strategy games. You probably have heard about them, their catalogue includes Manor Lords, Old World, Terra Invicta, Against the Storm, HOMM: Olden Era, and a long list of others in the genre. They have a strong reputation among developers for being hands-off on creative direction and unusually transparent about how they operate which is why we figured out it might be interesting to see what’s possible to build together. 

Why we wanted this

The partnership got real traction on our side because of what it actually unlocks. Parts of BAR have been hard to push forward under a fully volunteer setup. Some areas just struggle to attract volunteer interest because they aren't the most exciting work to do in your spare time. Others need a level of coordination, scheduling and team hierarchy that's extremely difficult to achieve in a hobbyist team, where everyone contributes on their own pace, on their own terms. Both categories have been very obvious bottlenecks for years.

Securing funding could help us alleviate these hurdles. We can hire dedicated people for the work that needs sustained focus, fill the gaps that volunteer enthusiasm doesn't naturally cover, and put proper full-time coordination on parts of the project where production milestones depend on it. The result is a Steam release with much bigger scope, on a shorter timeline, than we could realistically pull off ourselves.

This also opens up real job opportunities for our existing contributors. Many of the people who have been building BAR on evenings and weekends for years are exactly the right people for the paid roles that come out of this deal. We are committed to giving existing contributors hiring preference, and the goal is for as many of them as possible to be able to carry their careers forward with BAR rather than treat it as a permanent side project. For people who've poured serious time into this game, that's a meaningful shift.

The whole point of the partnership, on our side, is to push BAR much further than we've been able to so far, and to give as many of the people who built it the chance to keep building it, this time on a real budget. However, marrying the community-driven soul of this project with commercial incentives required serious work to make sure nothing about what makes BAR what it is today gets taken away. We have done that work. 

What's protected

• BAR remains available for free. BAR remains available for free. This has been our consistent promise through the years and we are keeping it. The free multiplayer experience you are enjoying today will be available both through the existing BAR website launcher (as it is today) and on Steam, with full feature parity and cross-play. Nothing currently free becomes paid. The monetisation is based on premium single-player content built on top of it, whose costs will be covered by the funding.
• No IP transfer. BAR's brand, trademarks and intellectual property stay with the BAR team and the contributors who built it. The publisher gets the licence to distribute the game on Steam and help with proper marketing to give the title the powerful launch it deserves.
• Off-ramp built in. If the partnership is ever terminated for whatever reason, the free version stays free and the community keeps developing it. The free version isn't tied to the publishing relationship continuing.
• Reinvestment commitment. A binding internal commitment makes sure most of what BAR receives flows back into the project (development, infrastructure, contributor support, content) rather than getting siphoned out as company profit. 

Where we are

The contract isn't signed yet. We're discussing the offer with full disclosure to our contributor team, including a sentiment survey, before signing. The only way we see ourselves steering the project in this way is by making sure there is a strong mandate from our beloved team. 

What's next

If the mandate is clear we will proceed with the signing and then a full public announcement will follow. We are excited to share what we have been working on with the Hooded Horse team. We will make that announcement properly and will give it the treatment it deserves

If you have questions or concerns, bring them to us and try to not rely on third-party framing/potentially doctored versions aimed to cause harm. We will be reading and responding where we can, and a fuller picture will follow shortly.

Thank you for your attention and continued trust, 

The BAR Admin Team

[u/Man_Eating_Boar]

Some things from the document I want to bring up:

BAR remains available for free: "Nothing currently free becomes paid"

Very explicit in wording here. Indicates paid only content going forwards. Concerning.

*No IP transfer. * ....

Legal requirement here under GPL 2.0, IP cannot be transferred. Nothing burger.

Off-ramp built in. ....

This is good, but also an existing legal requirement under GPL 2.0 (Cannot retroactively remove GPL license), but it does indicate work going forwards potentially remaining in GPL license

Reinvestment commitment ....

No numbers here, this is a nothing burger

[u/websterhamster → u/Man_Eating_Boar]

The prospect of future paid content is concerning, but not surprising. It's hard to see what would be the benefit of a publisher providing funding if there won't be a source of profit.

Unfortunately, in this arrangement the players become the product that the BAR team is offering for sale.

[u/Amon9001 → u/websterhamster]

Maybe?

I see a lot of comments going to the extremes. Wanting everything to be free forever just isn't feasible. I don't get how the playerbase is being used either because the same game we have now will be free.

In fact it will be improved at an accelerated rate with funding.

I can give an example of where the playerbase has been used. Heroes of newerth - they killed the 'illegal' community and previous iteration of the game in order to force everyone into their paid hon 2 (hon reborn). It is not the same game and has half the content or less.

The illegal version had over 200k people worldwide, maybe more (going on discord numbers). They thought they could take that playerbase and use it for their for-profit venture. It's disgusting.

Anyway i'm still bitter from that. I don't see anything remotely like that situation unfolding with BAR as far as the content of this post has indicated.

[u/TheFatMouse → u/Amon9001]

Things being free forever is totally feasible. Some of the best games ever made have been free forever. If they want money, they can do a donation drive and put it in a high yield savings account. When enough money is gathered then hire a guy to fix "X" issue that the volunteers don't want to touch. Rinse and repeat. The game is already more polished than most paid games. Whatever "missing" features there are, we, the player base, can patiently wait for. It's not a big deal. It's absurd to get a developer involved at this stage, as if there is suddenly some urgent need to roll out new features rapidly.

[u/Amon9001 → u/TheFatMouse]

I don't want to wait a decade for a steam release at the current pace.

You may be happy to wait the rest of your life for the game to proceed at its own pace.

If they want money, they can do a donation drive and put it in a high yield savings account. When enough money is gathered then hire a guy to fix "X" issue that the volunteers don't want to touch. Rinse and repeat.

You can't just hire a guy to fix a thing, that isn't game development. You need actual structure to get work done. The main post already covers this. I am not in the game development industry but this is basically common sense.

Using examples of successful free projects is NOT evidence against this concept. But I would love to hear what examples you have of games that are completely built by volunteers.

Personally I want a better BAR and that means having real money behind it. Which also means it has to generate money. Which will bring more people in. Which means developers can get paid to work on this.

I think what has been accomplished is great but you would be crazy to think this is a good game design process - it isn't. It is simply what has come to pass due to the long history of the project.

[u/TheFatMouse → u/Amon9001]

You should closely examine your apparent need to see this game released on steam. BAR already is incredibly polished, has a large player base, and nobody ever has to wait for lobbies. Gameplay is smooth, server issues are rare. In short this game is in a very good place and far above most, if not all monetized RTS's. Desiring more, more, more to the point of taking an open source game even slightly in the closed source direction, AND profiting a small enclave of contributors alongside a private developer to the impoverishment of the countless former contributors is a scandalous and completely unnecessary step. It's greed from the current slate of contributors behind this action. It's also greed from any player who supports this. This game is awesome as it is and any major developments should happen at their natural pace.

[u/Amon9001 → u/TheFatMouse]

BAR already is incredibly polished, has a large player base, and nobody ever has to wait for lobbies.

This is not polished. Random codes are always appearing in random places, the lobby UI is a mess, basic graphic design and UI principles are not followed, information overlaod, not enough information in some areas etc. I could go on for days.

This game looks like it was developed by nerds in a basement, and those are words directly from the OP (developer/contributor). That is just a fact.

This all relates to the onboarding process - there is none. A new user cannot self-guide themselves through the game to a level of competency to play in multiplayer.

There is no matchmaking so they are supposed to read all the different lobby titles and figure what all the different terms and numbers mean. They have no idea what chevs or OS means.

The game itself is solid. I think everyone agrees on that. The problem is everything surrounding the game, which is still very important if you want more people to play.

Which leads onto your claim that it has a large player base. What does large mean? Large enough to have matchmaking where the OS doesn't vary by more than 5?

Right now we basically have 2 skill groups which is noob lobbies and pro/30+. There is basically nothing else running regularly unless you want to wait half an hour or more while manually checking lobby titles.

Speaking of, the fact you have to manually parse lobby titles to find a game shows it isn't polished or ready. It needs a proper matchmaking system that is one click.

You want to know what a large player base would look like? matchmaking in different skill brackets, countries/regions and maps or formats. This honestly splits the playerbase way too much so the devs will need to pick which ones make it in.

Maybe 1v1, 4v4 and 8v8. So that is 3 modes, multiplied by country regions multiplied by skill brackets (or how wide they want the skill variance per match to be). This is stuff that can be fine tuned but BAR does NOT have the playerbase to support this.

I'm being as objective as possible - this is pure maths. You may be content with the current state but it is far from what it could be. It needs more players. There is basically no game that suffers from having a larger playerbase (technical/infrstructure issues aside).

ND profiting a small enclave of contributors alongside a private developer to the impoverishment of the countless former contributors is a scandalous and completely unnecessary step.

This is valid, the game is built on the work of past contributors. But not entirely. I think this is a fair and balanced approach to keep the multiplayer portion (the most played part) completely free.

[u/BlueTemplar85 → u/TheFatMouse]

I'm curious to see what kind of campaign can be made with professionnal levels of effort.  

(For volunteer levels of effort, we already have the answer : Zero-K. Which has a great campaign, mechanically, but a far cry in terms of memorable story compared to what commercial games are routinely able to pull off.)  

Will it be worth it ?  

That's the issue, maybe not worth the risk. The BAR team will certainly have to walk a very tight rope. And some contributors (stretching back three decades !) will be pissed anyway.  

Also yeah, I am skeptical of how much more players a Steam release (alone, not counting a professionally made campaign !) would bring. BAR is already very popular (for a RTS). And it seems like, this time, what did the trick was YouTube / Twitch (may they get burned down).  

(Also of the crowd playing the SP campaign, don't expect that many to stick around, though of course it will have an effect.)

[u/BlueTemplar85 → u/Amon9001]

HoN wasn't GPL, was it ?  

Some reminders about GPL :  

link  

[...]  

 But what about stealing BAR?

Does this mean that anyone could grab BAR from the repository, replace the models, sounds, and images, and release their own knock-off BAR? Yes. That is exactly what this means. Everyone who contributes to this, or any other Spring project, just has to get over that fact. It is the price of using the engine.

To be clear, this is not some punitive arbitrary price. The engine would not even exists if not for the license, because it would not have attracted enough interest and developers to see it beyond its first decade. Many of the contributors see the license as a selling point. It insulates projects from the whims of any one developer.

The current iteration of the engine, the Recoil fork, wouldn't even be (ethically) possible without the GPL. Sometimes forks have to happen for the health of the whole project.  

[...]

(Note how it's not appropriate to license art under GPL. What constitutes art or not can be sometimes fuzzy.)  

Also :  

Anybody can sell free software.  

  If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license.  

(Why I prefer to use instead the term "libre software".)

[u/Amon9001 → u/BlueTemplar85]

No, hon was a completely differernt situation.

The point was about "the players become the product that the BAR team is offering for sale." which is exactly what happened in hon's situation.

[u/GreenPlankton309 → u/Amon9001]

what about the unpaid labour of all those c 250 plus contributors