UPDATE 2023/02/16
THE GAME HAS BEEN TAKEN DOWN DUE TO A DMCA REQUEST. The issue is described below. You cannot purchase the game at this time.
In short, one of the players who created a guide on how to play the game is now claiming that they own the rights to the game mode (Realistic mode). Thank you for your understanding! We are working to resolve the issue.
Original announcement:
Hello Dear Comrades!
Peter Adamcik, the general secretary of the People’s party 3DIVISION here. Recently we got the first enemy of our Soviet Republic. This enemy is making our life harder and significantly slowing down the development process. He is, ehm, he WAS once a respected member of our community and one of the best party members, but he decided to betray our Republic, our Party and our ideals.
It all began when we started work on realistic mode. He thinks he invented it or made it possible. Well, if he had kindly asked, we would have added him into the game's credits, we would probably do it (together with other guys who made various guides/challenges or contributors), but first we need to finish the game, then we can update the game’s credits! But he decided to contact us as a lawyer, and started to abuse the YouTube report system issuing copyright strikes to one of our most helpful influencers bbaljo, prior to getting our opinion on this issue. As he chose to use extortion and abuse, we became angry about this, and decided to never mention the name of the challenge he allegedly “invented” again, and ignore him.
But this guy reported our website, and the website was taken down. He also reported our video about the last content update where realistic mode wass introduced, and the video was taken down. He was successful because those reports are handled by BOTs, not humans. We will issue our reactions, and hopefully we will get answers soon from human employees of YouTube and Wix, who can evaluate his actual claims and agree that this is nonsense.
We are already in touch with Valve, because for sure he will try to take down the whole game from the Steam store.
The reason for this statement is also, because someone who doesn’t know our game, like some lawyer or legal copyright expert, could doubt whether we did infringe his copyright or not. Well, let’s try to figure out!
Here is the link to his original guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1995764447
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[h3]The Step-by-Step manual![/h3]
What he claims in takedown notices:
"A published step-by-step manual to modify and play video games in an ultra-hard manner for a challenging and realistic game experience"
First, our game was always challenging and provided a realistic experience.
Second, he did not publish any manual to make the realistic mode possible. Thoughts on realistic mode were in my mind very early when I started to work on the game. However, it was just too complicated, and it was not selected as a critical feature, something that Early Access game needs to have at day one. Also, I was skeptical about the game just being too hard, and I did not know how many players would play it in this the hardcore manner. As I say in every interview, I was just surprised how many people used the manual constructions in the game. I was not expecting this.
But let us check on Storpappa’s step by step manual if it contains any game design we could stole!
Header:
Literally nothing!
Who is that woman on the cover?Again nothing
0.8.1.9 Update and direct border purchasesYes, in order for realistic mode to be possible it was necessary to use the custom houses for purchasing resources. This idea came up in the minds of almost everyone who plays the game and wanted to save money by not paying for transportation fees ☺
What is cosmonaut mode?
Just describes the problem that the resources are not going to appear by magic, yes but we need a way how to resolve it in the game, to prevent this, sure I know it’s not realistic, but what other solution is there?
After the patch - SETTING UP THE IMPORTS AREA
So, in his manual is something mentioned about a starter city, well in our Realistic mode, no starter city is needed, it is possible without one, but again one would expect a solution we could implement into the game for this but not...
We implemented free temporary buildings in order to proceed without any starter cityAfter the patch - resupplying IMPORTSI do not know, but this section does not even contain any rules...
Startup screen optionsOur realistic mode doesn’t restrict to any specific difficulty setting, it is only an extra difficulty setting that can be turned on or off with any other settings. So you can play in realistic mode even with fires, fuel consumption or seasons off.
How do I get resources in the game?This just describes features of the game. Yes, manufacturing your own resources and being self-sufficient is mentioned even in the original trailer.
But I cannot find any solution about asphalt and concrete?
Oh boy! We needed to implement foreign workers. Moreover, we implemented that it is possible to set the customs house as source for materials for the Construction Offices, to resolve this problem.How do I build structures and roads?He is just saying how to use existing feature.
How do I build railroad tracks?
He is just saying how to use existing feature again.
BTW To implement our realistic mode we needed to implement disassembled track builders and allow you to transport them to the Rail Construction Office.
My republic failed, what next?Just guidance and advice.
Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov
Literary work there.
Isn't this too difficult?No game design there.
What about Loans?Something about Loans, Realistic mode in our game does not rely on loans to be disabled or not.
Updates and thanksHere it is interesting that he is giving a thank you to all people who helped him or inspired him to write this guide. So, is it your work or not? ☺
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[h3]Conclusion[/h3]
As you can see there is nothing in his work in terms of game design that would relate directly to game’s code, and he does not offer any technical solutions for the development team to use. He literally just created a guide with some possible way to play the game and called it Cosmonaut mode, but it is not helping the development process. Only one thing he was helpful in, is that the popularity of his guide showed us how much people wanted to play the game in a realistic and more challenging way.
So, let us conclude what we needed to develop, in order to create realistic mode with some unbreakable rules and that it would be possible to play for you:
- Purchases in the custom house
- Set custom houses as source for Construction Offices
- Implementation of foreign workers
- Implemented it to be possible to purchase brand new vehicles in the custom houses (just as for cableway)
- Implementation of disassembled rail track builders
- Implementation of checking if road depot and rail depo is connected to custom house and mechanics that this vehicle will come to depo automatically.
- Two icons in the right bottom part of the window which opens beyond the border customs.
- I am sure, I forgot something ☺
For the implementation of realistic mode, I want to thank the whole community, and then to Martin and Michal (the two coders in our Team) and the second Michal who came to visit us and I literally spent like 2 days with him thinking how this mode would be possible. Then to all community managers and moderators who help us, and all the players who help us catch bugs while playing our game. Thank you, you are all awesome!
