Currently the /r/Transverse channel is in lock-down as a ‘temporary emergency measure’, because of ”some extreme clone account” drama. Piranha has also revised down Transverse goals.
The ambitious funding goals for the MMO have been hacked to bits, with a new goal of $500k, instead of the crazily ambitious millions they wanted to begin with.
It seems Piranha Games got a little carried away what with the mouth-watering budgets of certain other major space sim titles like Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen. The problem is Piranha certainly doesn’t have the reputation behind them to whip up enough of a frenzy to draw in those millions.
$1 million was just to get space flight itself into Transverse, with $1.5m ‘unlocking’ customisable ships. Naturally the space sim crowd were less than amused with their previous generosity being so openly taken advantage of. Now the developer has lowered the bar with $500k securing an alpha with ship construction, flight, combat and harvesting.
This pledge campaign is being run directly by Piranha Games and so it was also dubious as to what ‘protections’ backers could expect, which is why the studio has promised to refund everyone if they don’t make it to $500k.
As for the Reddit nuclear meltdown…
”Due to some extreme clone account presence by a few people who feel an overwhelming need to be negative on all of our official channels, I’ve had to add a few temporary emergency measures,” posted community manager Niko.
”Reddit is going to be on an approved poster lock-down until we get a few more discussions going as well as have some good standing Redditors to handle the brunt of moderation. For now, any negative swarming and spamming behavior has been removed, and the lockdown remains.”
How did this debacle happen?
”When I set up the r/Transverse Sub-Reddit, my intent was to have a spot where players could go and find any official information regarding the game on Reddit. We often note that some players cannot visit our forums or sites at all hours due to work or school network policies, which is why we had hoped to create a place on Reddit not unlike the Dev Corner.”
”Based on the reddiquette guidelines it seems possible we over moderated. With this in mind we are going to focus back intently on our own forums for each product, I look forward to interacting with you there.”
”I apologize personally and sincerely from the bottom of my heart for anyone who has taken this matter as a personal offence, and hope we can move forward together as a community as we introduce bigger and better announcements more directly related to our games.”
That ‘over moderated’ remark is referring to the butchery of almost everything within the first 24 hours of the sub-reddit opening. The community reacted to this bit of censorship, further condemning Transverse’s chances. There was some concern that Piranha Games’ sci-fi project was in fact EA licensing out Wing Commander for an online version.
So far the Transverse sci-fi MMO is just 1% funded with 27 days left to reach $500k.
