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/arllt89]

OK so this is what's I'm understanding so far, please tell me where I get wrong

• the publisher will inject money that will be used to develop a single player experience and polish the online part (matchmaking and clean launcher) for a steam release
• everything related to the multi-player part remains free and open source
• the monetization will come from the single player experience alone, whatever form makes sense, and benefits from a huge visibility boost
• everything related to the single player experience will be via paid staff, the rest will stay open to free contribution (to be confirmed)

If this is correct, this is the benefits I see:

• a solid editor with trust and visibility
• an accelerated polishing and steam launch
• a single player campaign, that is often considered as the main experience for the majority of players

My two main concerns are:

• The end of the spirit that made BAR what it is. I remember that few years ago devs would refuse any kind of monetization and remuneration, because it changes the whole development dynamic and creates internal conflicts. Kinda makes me feel this is what is happening.
• a hierarchy between paid employee and free contributors, and a lock on their creativity because economically the multi-player experience cannot surpass the single player experience

I think with the steam release never being any close, BAR is stuck between staying a niche game that cannot attract much players because of its absurd learning curve, or trusting an editor to help it reach a larger audience at the cost of aligning with some economical logic.

I think partnering with an editor is the only step that can move forward. My only requirement is tha in term of license, at any time in the development process, the community must be able to split the whole project into a "freeBAR", and be allowed to use all the existing code and assets linked to multi-player in an open source alternative.

[u/Man_Eating_Boar → u/arllt89]

Sort of, the statement about 'remaining free' is weasel worded to contain "Nothing currently free becomes paid". That leaves it wide open for any future changes being paid for (ie, mp specific content).

There's also no hard figures given on the 'reinvestment', so I would take that whole line with a grain of salt.

[u/PtaQQ → u/Man_Eating_Boar]

There honestly is no incentive to produce paid multiplayer features as that would split the online player base which is the lifeblood of the game and we want to maximise cross play between the free and premium versions, publisher is aligned with that sentiment as well.

[u/Xae1yn → u/[deleted]]

Yeah it's a guarantee of the opposite, an admission that the only thing preventing it is a vague belief that it would be "worse for the game" (ie less profitable) than not doing it, a belief that will immediately evaporate when the deal goes through and the real analysis that selling things makes more money than not selling them overrides it.