A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

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A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Abula »

Today a guy named ZeeZee started a really interesting discussion in #across:

Code: Select all

134402 < ZeeZee> Guys whats your thought on adding elastomania on Steam, I was thinking of buying it from Balasz, I even got a offer from him
134434 < ZeeZee> to buy copyrights of elastomania (pc/mobile)
He also gave some proofs being serious:
I've emailed Balázs to confirm the offer and also to tell him that the community is very interested in and worried about the deal. I'll inform here when I get a reply.

We had a really long discussion in #across where many relevant people were actively involved (Smibu, milagros, Kopaka and many old-schoolers). ZeeZee appeared to be a nice guy who is willing to hear our opinions and co-operate. He didn't have a clue how active community we had.

So, after hours of talking and as I understood it, ZeeZee's idea is to buy the source code and copyrights of the official Elasto Mania (v1.11a), hire a programmer to make some improvements to the code and release a new version in Steam to gather lots of new players and revenue.

My personal opionion is positive: it would be great to get more players. Is the biggest risk that we end up with different versions which is confusing? We the community can always keep on playing the version we like best? ZeeZee promised to not sue us from developing the copyright violeted version. He can of course change his mind but pirates will win, yarr!

The most important points which were discussed in #across today:

1) Because EOL and Elma2 have lots of new features compared to v1.11a, it would be waste of time to start developing the new version from the original code base. Smibu also mentioned that the code base is very old and bad.

2) We showed some Elma videos to ZeeZee to get him to understand the vast versity of Elma and the community. For example he advertised that he could bring automated records lists to the table. This statement underlines the fact that he doesn't know much about the game because the automated lists have been available since 2002 or something. No manual work is needed nowaways except with some rare cases (bugbounce judgement etc). It would be great if someone could collect a tiny collection of Elma stuff to show him where we are (WCup7, Meetings, Zebra's combined levelpack, Videos, documentary etc). ZeeZee should test the EOL himself too.

3) Cheating has been a huge problem in the past. This must be considered from day 1.

4) The records history is important. At least for the most official levels: internals is a must but probably world cups too and other big events. Maybe some of the lists can be frozen if this is a problem? To beat a WR requires so much time and talent that the lifelong tribute must be taken very seriously.

5) ZeeZee asked us to make a wish list of the features we wanted to have implemented in Elma v1.11a. I'm not sure if this is reasonable yet but maybe there are some lists available already? And what EOL/Elma2 contains more than 1.11a? It's not an easy job to cover all the details right now but instead we would need a dedicated group of active community members (Smibu, Kopaka, Markku etc.) being heavily involved in the project to make the right choises during the development process.

Some up-to-date lists are:
40:02,71 (151.) | WCup4: 8. | 3x WR | 3x GAA | 11x FEM | KOM | The History of Elasto Mania (1995-2018)
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Re: A shady guy wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by skint0r »

While this guy seems nice enough while talking in #across, and maybe there is genuine intentions behind this idea, I can't help but feel some dread as a gut reaction to all of this. I don't know if I'm just being overly pessimistic, nostalgic or protective, because it seems a lot of people were eager and positive about all of this talk.

This is a game dear to most of our hearts, presumably if you are here reading this. It's a game a lot of us in the community have played for half of our lives, as in 15+ years. While Balazs may have abandoned the game and not been very eager to work with the community, resulting in current patches and development of Elma 2 a bit in the greyzone and in limbo, at the very least there was always this known factor that he was not minding it. The community and people with a passion for the game is the reason most of us are still here playing it (along with the fact that Balazs made the greatest game in the world).

We had talked in discord about proposing some sort of arrangment for license or purchasing the rights of the game and source code already, but now this seems a bit in jepoardy. Now you risk this unknown factor owning the game and its future. He has not even played EOL or has any idea about the scene, community and the history of this game, nor what it entails and the effect features and everything can have on it.

It seems more like he wanted a pet project to test out financial/market/gaming stuff with, while being in charge and having a voice in everything. While knowing nothing. So, maybe I am just being negative nancy but it seems strange to take everything at face value and believe he will still care about the game if it flops on Steam, as his idea was. What happens if he abandons it? Maybe he will see EOL as some threat to income of the game when he realizes people are going to play that over this not-up-to-parity Steam version, cease and desist EOL site/server? It's not to paint this guy in super negative way or that I would have a real reason for thinking that, but I wish maybe people would consider the worst case scenarios here, compared to current ones, and what the upsides really are.

I guess a risk would be that there is some bidding war if we/someone opposed this and talked to Balazs (if anyone even agrees with my negative stance), but I really feel like begging him to make the community and the people actually playing the game have an option to buy the rights so we can do what we actually want with it, instead of relying on someone else with a completely different view and goal. Not to mention an agenda to make it a succesful financial deal, even if maybe it would only recoup the costs of the license for him at best. I guess I would have some hope that despite "money talks", Balazs would still have some romantic connection to his game and consider that the community has better interests for it in the long run than some quick cash.

I'm sure I forgot many thoughts while writing this because reading #across today gave me a lot to think about and consider, and maybe it's really a good thing... but everything I read of this guy's ideas and thinking just strikes me as completely contradictory to our own and I feel it's a bad idea to help out with this somehow.

</end incoherent ramble duno if made sense>
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by pawq »

I could go on trying to express all my thoughts about this, but they overlap with what skint said (in a very coherent manner) so much, that I'll spare you the reading.

The key point for me is that this guy apparently has absolutely ZERO idea about the game, the continuous 15+y growth and development, the community, and anything else related to the game. It's summed up with these extracts from his business plan:
ZeeZee wrote:-Multiplayer experience as a new feature
- Achivements
New????
ZeeZee wrote:world cup every month with 150 participants
I can only quote this in return:
8-ball in 2013 wrote:You are now aware we haven't had a World Cup in 8 years
Discuss.
To put it lightly, I'm not convinced that with this sort of understanding of what's happening with the game and the community, the chances for a successful and sustainable development of the game on steam are anywhere near the feasible zone.

Trying to convince Balazszzs to sell the game to the community (how exactly does a "community" own something...?) sounds like a much more promising idea to me, and I'd feel that my dear Elma is much safer in the hands of Smibu, Kopaka, etc., rather than under egoistic control of some wannabe-businessman.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Kopaka »

I would have to say I have the same feelings towards this as skint0r. As I see it there's two scenarios if he ends up buyng it.

1. He release some 1.1 version on steam
- Best case: It doesn't really affect us, we keep playing eol, maybe a few people who discover it on steam will bleed over to eol
- Worst case: He eventually decides to try and close down eol/elma2 efforts.

2. He incorporates eol featues and releases that on steam
- Best case: It's better than current eol and we move over to using this, but it can only be modified by his programmers, so any new features require him to take up the pocketbook, which means they'll only happen if he likes them.
- Worst case: It's not quite up to snuff, eol keeps being played, and will further confuse and divide the player base, with two versions being played.

While the development of eol is stagnated, and elma2 is going slowly, scenario 2 may seem good, but I don't feel like the rewards are worth the risk. The matter of copyright has always been a bit up in the air, and would be nice to have solved, but if it just goes to another unknown person, we have no idea what will happen. Given the budget he suggested I doubt it'll be "good enough", especially as he'll probably have to start from 1.1 for legal reasons.

So from the perspective of this scene I have a hard time seeing the positives in this.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by milagros »

i add one more option:

3. nothing will happen, he will see it's not that simple and gives up
Last edited by milagros on 9 Mar 2017, 03:30, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by insane guy »

I also get a very bad feeling deep in my guts about this. Probably most long timers kinda want everything to stay as it is.

eol and the current scene are so nice that I can comfortably see myself growing old with it. I mean, very old, like Ded old. I don't need a new wave of noobs to flood the server(s?) with shit levs and disappear after a few weeks or an even worse scenario as mentioned above.

Buying elma from Balasz would actually be like the best thing ever. I want to come with whoever signs the deal and record everything for the documentary. Someone less lazy plz make funding thing so we can collect $$$ to buy it :)

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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by pawq »

I'm not that much of an oldschooler but I feel exactly the same way.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Schumi »

Do I see right, that the e-mail exchange happened in 2015? I can just hope, Balázs said no to him since then.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Tisk »

If someone buys Elma from Balazs, i think would be good idea to also include Action Supercross in the deal.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by kuchitsu »

I think this is a great, possibly once in a lifetime opportunity for the game to become something bigger. It is also a chance to get "Elma 2" earlier than in 2040, which is very exciting. The overwhelming negativity in this topic is both disheartening and pointless. The thing is, the guy is going to do this whether you like it or not. He doesn't need a permission from the community or anything since we don't have any legal rights. So unless a bunch of kuskis actually gather a big sum of money and buy the rights from Balasz before this guy does (which I find pretty hard to believe, and remember that ZeeZee supposedly already has the money and possibly can arrange everything any day now), the only sensible course of action is to cooperate with him to the best of our abilities to ensure that the end product is as close to our ideal of "EOL 2.0" or whatever as possible. Understand that we are incredibly lucky he is talking to us at all because he doesn't have to. And yet he tries to do research, he went to #across and talked with us for hours, he is interested in understanding what the scene is about. That is so cool of him to do. So I think people should use this amazing opportunity instead of acting like grumpy old farts (sorry). No, the result probably won't be 100% like you imagine, but there is a good chance to get pretty close to that, to expand the community into something much bigger, and maybe even ensure that it won't die with time since Steam can be a good source of new players (which are currently almost nonexistent, let's be completely honest). Not using this chance will be a colossal waste unless, again, you guys actually somehow manage to get the rights from Balasz first. Will be pretty funny though if we buy the rights and then don't get any updates in another 20 years since everyone is busy\lazy\etc. The cool thing about this businessman is that he's going to make people actually work.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Orcc »

I think I should read three hours of #across logs to get a better grasp of the whole situation. But here are some quick random insights:

* The guy doesn't quite strike me as a businessman. Looking at his Steam profile he has 7000 hours of Dota2 played and 35 hours of gaming during the last two weeks. For someone who works those are really high numbers. Also things like "IM A VERY SICK BOI" and "fuck off" in profile do not seem very classy. Just a casual gamer I wander?

* EOL is so far better than Elma 1.1 that it would take a long time for $8-per-hour coder to reach anything like it. During that kind of progress us scene guys would stick to EOL and randoms would take over Steam Elma and create their own online rules etc. Then if Steam ever reaches EOL level it would be hard to combine the scenes.

* If legal issues arise I think a closed group underground EOL server should be easy to have. However that would pretty well seal the doors for newcomers.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Bjenn »

I'm positive to the guy wanting to buy elma, it will mean some change in the near future, and change can be good sometimes. If this means that the player base would grow excessively it's a big win for us in my opinion.

It's nice with our small community and all, but I would feel that being part of a much bigger elma if would be awsome!

Someone please invite him to this topic so that we can hear his own thoughts and what he thinks about EOL and us.
And he could integrate EOL into Steam instead of normal elma.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by ville_j »

I somewhat agree with kuchitsu and I think some people are being quite unfair and rude, but that's kinda understandable considering the history we have with this game. Clearly, this guy doesn't have much information about the current state of the (unofficial patched) game or the scene, but it doesn't make his plans ridiculous or evil or anything like that. If you think the latest official elma version would be the thing, and eol and this dedicated scene wouldn't exist his plans make perfectly sense, obviously. And that's where he has based his plans so far, he didn't know any of this exists when he asked about buying the rights. It's not really right to judge him by that business canvas he quickly created based on the huge amount of new information he just learned and rushed to finish it because people were bombing him with questions in irc, it was pretty chaotic.

I agree that what really would be the best is that we (the scene) buy the copyrights and sources of elma in some way (form a company and people invest money for example), but yeah we have had years and years to do something like this but we just haven't done it, instead we have been staying on the shady gray zone. And currently we lack of people who would actually work on the new version, the drive is not very strong at the moment. Now this guy appears out of nowhere and has that stuff (almost) sorted out, clearly he has something that we don't (money? character?). For us it isn't an optimal solution of course because he does not know what eol is now-a-days and what we want from it, and he is not doing it for the scene or to develop the current eol (at least not yet). So, it's going the be hard to work with him because our views are very different, but who knows maybe it can change if things really go further. Whether or not it would be wise to get a share of the company (or whatever) if this guy ends up buying elma depends on many things, I think it needs much more discussion.

I guess we just have to wait what Balazs answers, then we can weigh different options better. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't want to sell at all anymore, or if ZeeZee didn't buy it after all, realizing eol, our views and his just contradict so much it's gonna be too rocky path to take. But this has been a very good wake-up call for us that something like this could happen. I would really like if we could obtain the rights to elma one way or another, then we could basically do whatever we want, there are so many talented and dedicated people in the scene.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Chris »

I tried to follow the convo on irc and my biggest issue with that dud is while he appears to have good intentions, he didn't seem to be interested in trying eol. He just insisted on bringing original elma experience to steam. For him EOL was more like: hmm you have chat and some leader boards, right? That worries me, because while really he wants to listen to us, he isn't interested in even trying to see how this game is played nowadays. With such a approach new Elma most liekly won't be game anyone here would like to play instead of EOL. For us online is reason why we are all here, for him it was afterthought.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by onlainari »

Because it seems like a real possibility that ZeeZee is going to call the offer Balazs had given him, and someone or some collective in the elma scene may not be able to have a say in that (e.g. higher bid etc.), lets consider the scenarios where ZeeZee is going to be part of it:

1.
In #across yesterday he didn't reject the possibility of sharing the revenue or even him being under 50% stakeholder.

Afaik in the case *"Elma scene party" is the majority stakeholder the best scenario could be something where every patch and update the community wants have just as good of a chance to be implemented as it would if the community bought the whole thing, if the roles in the partnership/company are defined appropriately(?). Also the longevity of development seems secured.

2.
Are the above scenarios true, even if ZeeZee was the majority stakeholder, if the roles where defined as in the above case? With a quick search with some related terms, things may depend on jurisdiction and corporate bylaws and whatnot, though I understand very little in the subject and might have been misinterpreting. It could be relevant to highlight meanings of different percentages of ownership and what they can do in here, so more people can start pondering the possibilities.

What would be the worst case scenario if "elma scene party" was the majority stakeholder? And how about if ZeeZee was majority stakeholder? There even exists some supermajority requirements in some systems, which seem to imply that 51% owner wouldn't have as big role as in some other system. Maybe someone who has read more about these subjects could chime in here.

3.
Then the most uncertain (for the future of elma) option: The "elma scene party" is going to have a very minimal stake or no stake at all. So this option has been already discussed in this thread.

There is an open question here about the worst case scenarios. Can he actually affect (try close the server etc.) the EOL / Elma 2 being played like it is now? Like skint0r pointed out on irc, eol server does not have any elma code in it per se etc, so we could just keep playing like we have played thus far, and keep developing our own things just like always.

The other side effects from that would just be the confused and divided player base, but overall still more elma activity.

Third thing that could happen is that if the elma community would have been able and wanted to buy it from Balazs some time later e.g. for making elma 2 official, it could become harder. In the hands of a new owner, if he wasnt agreeing with our elma 2 and didn't want to implement our features or didn't want to sell the rights to us, or just simply abandoned it like skint0r said, we couldn't get our elma 2 official.

--

Now there has been so many posts in a row concentrating in the negative, I'll try leave here in something positive.

The guy seems to be active and into know-how in the exact area that deals with making a computer game more known/popular. This guy could be the best person so far to make Official Elma 2 eventually happen. Afaik the scenes efforts with Balazs has not achieved much of anything in this department. Now we may see elma take leaps forward in the future. I leave couple of his quotes from irc.

17:14:15*ZeeZee I made good connections in digital video game market area over the past 4 years and distributing the
product would be the least problem

17:12:31*ZeeZee yes I think I can make money with it, I am working in a retail market of distrubuting video gameswhich are delivered digitally, my retail site is almost 80% done. You can check it here: http://www.rottconn.com

9:40:51*ZeeZee My name is Bosko, I am from Serbia, was former Dentist college student ( 6-7 years), moved to steam
trading as a hobby and made a awesome business out of it in the last 4-5 years). Here is the link to my steam profile:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/tomenezanima/

19:42:01*ZeeZee Now I am freshman on new college and I really love what I do. Wholesale of my company is done via
Skype, retail site is 70-80% done, you can find it here: http://www.rottconn.com/


---

The details of the possible steam implementation is another matter that I didn't touch in this post. I think that ZeeZee wanted that we would discuss this also among the scene'ers. He said that take your time, for example 7-10 days. So when we get over the shock of all this, it might be a good idea to start sketching how elma should look in steam. We did that a bit in #across, but might be better to do it here, or in another thread in lauta. ZeeZee himself wanted it to have the "Original year 2000 feel with green menu and 54 levels, like he mentions in the canvas. Adding EOL stuff is not a problem for him, although the actual adding or implementing may be, since there may not be many people capable or willing to do it though. Could be good idea to start collecting all the details related to this somewhere.


* elma scene party = some trusted scene veteran or their collective
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Polarix »

Some thoughts.

If eol was incorporated into Steam, there would be a necessity to have several servers with a standard server list in game. The mopo scene server that is in eol now would be a locked server from new comers. If this would not been done, it would tear apart the whole mopo scene imo, because almost everyone is new nabs. Also, this forum would need to be locked so that not some thousand new nabs could come and spam.

If some new nabs would become good enough, maybe they could get permition to join the mopo server.

However, would be cool that some cups, like Wcup and W Battle Cup would be a cup for all of the servers and the server results would match up.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Kopaka »

onlainari wrote:Afaik in the case *"Elma scene party" is the majority stakeholder the best scenario could be something where every patch and update the community wants have just as good of a chance to be implemented as it would if the community bought the whole thing, if the roles in the partnership/company are defined appropriately(?). Also the longevity of development seems secured.
But how would the development actually be done in that case? Elma scene have to pay majority of development costs? Or people from elma scene does majority of development? For the former would require a lot of money and for the latter we may not be able to keep up.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by onlainari »

Kopaka wrote:
onlainari wrote:Afaik in the case *"Elma scene party" is the majority stakeholder the best scenario could be something where every patch and update the community wants have just as good of a chance to be implemented as it would if the community bought the whole thing, if the roles in the partnership/company are defined appropriately(?). Also the longevity of development seems secured.
But how would the development actually be done in that case? Elma scene have to pay majority of development costs? Or people from elma scene does majority of development? For the former would require a lot of money and for the latter we may not be able to keep up.
I was just thinking that we continue like we have thus far, slow, almost stagnating development by elma scene, and we implement whatever we want and at the pace we want, voluntary team effort type of thing. If the power of choice and schedule is in the hands of contributors, it should become cheaper for the company. Teh_mila pointed out this difference yesterday in irc. Why we have done patches for free earlier, but why we wouldn't necessarily do same patches while getting paid, choice and timetables. In this case as the model is a bit different, the contributors could even get small compensations from their work too, even if they can set the timetable themselves.

At the initial phase a special effort is needed to push the current status (EOL) to the steam version, and this coding work would be paid at least as ZeeZee outlined. Although like many have pointed out, implementing EOL features to Elma 2 and otherwise make it look like Elasto Mania from year 2000 could require more working hours etc. that ZeeZee planned in his canvas.

edit: So in this model Elma scene may look more like a modding scene that the game officially supports. I think there are examples of such in the gaming world. Of course it may seem like a free or cheap work force, but if the scene itself had a decent stake in the company, the situation would be much better than with some other games where modders make stuff for free and have no share in the stakes.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Lee »

Though the possibility of the community buying the rights to the game has been discussed, I get the feeling that most of you think it's a bit far-fetched; that not enough people would be willing to make a contribution (or enough of a contribution) to make it a reality. I am curious however in the level of interest on this topic. I myself have pondered this idea for some years.
It could be wise for some man to start a new discussion or poll here on mopolauta in order to gain insight before we start outright denying the idea as a feasible option?
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by culinko »

I am skeptical as well (see skint's post), but if the community decides to back up the steam thing, there are many more things to consider. What happens with moposite times? What happens with battle statistics from EOL? Will battles still exist? How much will elma cost on steam? Does it have the same (or any) mods? What will lauta become? Pretty sure there are many other things that I forgot to mention. This matter is not to be taken lightly, so there's need to be a lot more input to be assured what community wants.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by ofta »

seems fake. serbian steam trader roleplaying 50% philanthropist & 50% business man. too many contradicitions in his behaviour. he will 100% lose alot of money if his plans are legit.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by gimp »

I don't think this is going to end up happening in the first place, but I agree with kutchitsu and onlainari 100%. I'm surprised at the negativity and would also love to see the game grow. I have seen the worse case scenarios that others have brought up but instinctively I feel they are paranoid and impractical, sorry for no real reasons or logic that's just the way they seem.

I have always wished for the game to get bigger and more populated, I think it would add more talent, contests, battles, and just competition overall which is what fuels us in the first place. Try to work with the guy, not against him.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Tigro »

Maybe offtopic:
This project is die? viewtopic.php?t=9155
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Sunshine »

i agree with ofta it seems a bit fake but if its fake its pretty good one (probably picking existing small business to pose as and impersonate that dude as everything seems to check out). his behavior seems little schizophrenic, saying he will put it to piratebay day one because he wants those that cant afford it to get it and at the same time saying this is a project for him to learn business but obviously EOL and elma2 would compete with his product and if they are better+free why would anyone buy his version? its not good business to allow those to exist. also he just seemed to agree to balazs first offer? balazs probably highballed really hard and this dude just accepts straight up?

i think milas option 3 will likely happen as he seemed to underestimate the scope of things, not knowing about EOL and all features it has and to compete with that he would have to go way over his budget for coders etc
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ley
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Re: A shady guy wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by ley »

skint0r wrote:I would have some hope that despite "money talks", Balazs would still have some romantic connection to his game and consider that the community has better interests for it in the long run than some quick cash.
I share this hope. After all, Balazs once said about Elma that
Balazs wrote:I consider it the main creation in my life.
Couldn't there also be the possibility that Balazs sells the rights for the game to ZeeZee, but with conditions? For example, under a contract protecting "us" in some way. (So that things would continue to be done according to the experience of reasonable kuskis.)
All bounces are equal, but some bounces are more equal than others.

i've just made head through poly; thought i'd share:
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Re: A shady guy wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Lukazz »

ley wrote:Couldn't there also be the possibility that Balazs sells the rights for the game to ZeeZee, but with conditions? For example, under a contract protecting "us" in some way. (So that things would continue to be done according to the experience of reasonable kuskis.)
I don't really have the feeling that Balzs gives a damn about "us".
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Mats »

I did some research. Its very real to say the least, the company is legit and its based in Dubai. The man himself seems very wealthy and respectable.

Im very unsure about the situation, but atleast he seems very open for inputs. Afterall we are the biggest source of income for the project so I think we could have good impact on it.

By the looks of it he wants to keep the game original which is most important. But then again as other mentions how good will the result be compared to eol.

My biggest question is why would he want to code something from scratch that already exists?

From eol it basicly needs:
- Implemented eolconfig ingame
- server selection and password servers
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by ROKKEBOL »

IMHO That ZeeZee is just an troll like berh or Badmist or wategak else who i don't even want to know
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by BlaZtek »

I hope he will not sell to this person. Will probably ruine the scene and the game.
ZeeZee sounds familiar tho, some early kuski with WR's?

But if he really consieder to sell, maybe WE should buy it?
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by farnsworth »

Very cool idea:)
Anyone saying you can't keep playing here while everything adjust during the launch of the new "elma platform"?:)

Which is like keeping the cake and eating it too!
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by ArZeNiK »

BlaZtek wrote:ZeeZee sounds familiar tho, some early kuski with WR's?
He doesn't have a user page on Moposite. But there is ZeiZei, he had uphill WR on table #107 till #111, WRs on quickround, one on steepcorner (#92-134, 43:56), one on WTH, expertsystem and one on tricks abound. But I don't think they are the same person, his last login is in 2003.
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ley
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Re: A shady guy wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by ley »

Lukazz wrote:
ley wrote:Couldn't there also be the possibility that Balazs sells the rights for the game to ZeeZee, but with conditions? For example, under a contract protecting "us" in some way. (So that things would continue to be done according to the experience of reasonable kuskis.)
I don't really have the feeling that Balzs gives a damn about "us".
I cannot tell... but I definitely do not have the feeling that he does not give a damn about us. This is because I've emailed him many times over the years, for example about "releasing the game for free" in 2006, and "free-licensing the logo over at wikipedia" in 2016, and each time he replied within a day or two.

I agree that this does not necessarily mean that he gives a damn about us, though...
All bounces are equal, but some bounces are more equal than others.

i've just made head through poly; thought i'd share:
http://mopolauta.moposite.com/download/file.php?id=323 http://mopolauta.moposite.com/download/file.php?id=324
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Kortsu »

What is the price and why did this person wait so long to come forward with this info (2015 email) and how did he/she suddenly find a place to write about this?
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Chris »

Apparently someone else will porbably buy elma and future of EOL is uncertain,
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Sunshine »

mila said in #across that he made an offer (4k) and balazs said someone else other than zeezee is also trying to buy the code and that he is probably going to sell to him and that he havent heard of zeezee since 2015 and only communicated with him briefly
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by pawq »

Is Balazs aware that mila and Abula are on the same team? :D




Or are they...?
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Lousku »

Pawq wrote:Or are they...?
No, mila made his offer separately, probably just to keep it simple for himself.
then again i don't know anything
maybe easier not to think abouut alöl things thought than not things thought ... or something..=?
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by pawq »

By the same team I meant the same community and the same priorities. But I may be wrong.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Zweq »

Mila is basically the father of modern elma. It is possible that elma would be dead by now without belma and EOL (Of course it's possible that someone else would have made an online version later, like domi, but that's just ejaculation). Mila has done many amazing improvements for the very core of the game, including detecting cheaters, giving us online play and latest but not least saveload utility (what test tube is for chemistry, saveload is for elma science). He has proved time and time again to actually take the projects to (somewhat) the end. Based on this crap I hope mila will get the rights and code, because I'm certain that if the code was in mila's hands, that would be the best outcome for future of elma.
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by kuchitsu »

Hmm, my impression was that he did all that stuff quite a few years ago and atm he isn't really interested in doing anything? Or is that saveload thing relatively new? Are we sure that elma won't just stagnate if he gets all the rights, etc?
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by pawq »

Would be coal to hear from mila about this =)

Also agree with every word from Zweq
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Sunshine »

best would be to make code open source so you dont have to rely on people to finish what they started
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Re: A stranger wants to publish Elma in Steam

Post by Sunshine »

so this was just some troll? was supposed to be 3 buyers and zeezee didnt make any appearance like he said he would and then dead silence everywhere
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