I posted the following on the audiogames.net forum. While not the ultimatum
talked about, I do hope it'll get a result, sinse I'm sick of this
stupidity!
Hello.
After a recent discussion of your work on the audeasy list, I felt it was
extremely important to bring certain urgent issues to your attention.
Both of Your games have been very much appreciated in the past, and during
the immediate time after release. however, increasingly, the opinion among
members of the community is that bavisoft's behaviour and practices have
been less and less reputable, and indeed it has now come to the point when a
newcomer to audiogames is advised to steer clear of attempting to perchice
your games.
there are several reasons for this. firstly, is the business of people not
receiving orders. There has been a long history of people not recieving
their games on cd, or indeed having to wait periods of time upwards of 6
weeks to get them, (doubly bad in todays' world of high speed net
connections).
What makes this situation far worse, is the lack of any sort of contact
method for bavisoft. For at least the last three to four years, the E-mail
address sa...@bavisoft.com has consistantly bounced e-mails, thus leaving
customers who wish to know the status of their orders with no way of
contacting the company at all, (I in fact originally attempted to send this
enquiry via E-mail myself, but my message produced a "this address has a
fatal error" warning).
then, there is Bavisoft's lack of even acnolidging the release of windows
versions later than xp. With the release of windows Vista in 2007, and
windows 7 a year later, people are experiencing extreme compatibility issues
with games written for earlier versions of windows. This situation is only
made the worse by the fact that all other developers of audio games,
even those such as bsc games and Vip gameszone who are no longer actually
producing titles (though they stil support their old games), have made the
upgrades to their programs necessary to run on later windows versions.
this brings me to Bavisoft's final, and most serious problem. The company
has released no news, no word, not even a season's greetings for the past
six years.
Indeed, the only times Bavisoft has responded to any enquiry is when people
have suggested your games should be made abandonware sinse you seem no
longer to support them. This happens roughly once a year, in august of 2008,
then in June of 2009.
As players of audio games, we are all familiar with the amount of time it
takes to develope titles. There has been a gap of two years betwene Gma
games last three releases, and Usa games' title Mysteries of the ancients
has been in developement for the past five years, while Draconis haven't
released a game sinse 2006.
We are also well aware that life, desasters or unforseen circumstances can
very much get in the way of developement, as in fact it has in the case of
usa games.
however, in the cases of most audio game developers, there is at least some
news, or at the least an occasional happy Christmas or halloween, to let
people know that the company is stil selling and supporting their games and
may, time permitting be able to produce a new title in future.
In the case of bavisoft however, there is none of this. the company website
has not been updated sinse 2004, and Bavisoft have said nothing to their
players at all beyond "please don't pirate our games" and that only once a
year.
While I (both personally and in my capacity as moderator of audiogames.net),
in no way condone game piracy, I do rather understand the feeling which some
players have that if they cannot obtain Bavisoft's games by any other
method, owing to unprocessed orders, and no company support via E-mail
or similar, the games should be made abandonware so that people may play
them.
it is for this reason that i AM WRITING THIS APPEAL.
It has been six years sinse the community at large has heard from bavisoft
officially, people have not been able to obtain the games on cd nor to
contact the company.
so, please! give us some word, even if just "happy christmas" to let us know
the company is stil running.
It has also been suggested that Bavisoft strongly considder the following
points:
1: While in 2000 and even 2004, 160 mb for a game was a large size, given
modern connection speed this is no longer the case (sarah from pcs games is
120 mb already). Therefore, Bavisoft's games should be made perchiceable by
download instead of cd. This would stop dead all problems associated with
unfulfilled orders.
2: Bavisoft should obtain a working E-mail address and address any technical
support or sales related questions. While gameplay questions are able to be
handled on audiogames.net or similar forums or mailing lists, it is
essential to build trust and maintain a good relationship with their
customers that bavisoft make themselves contactable, as
