...and many more?
XD

Well, I chuckled...

Though, maybe you shouldn't.

Seeing as you know, they used youth labor, unpaid contract work, and stole work. Including from Toby Fox. Here's a 40 minute video on the matter.

If we still had them, Pathway would take the top spot on my "God, if only it wasn't a roguelike" gogmix.

Why isn't the Eastward Bundle discounted, if all its parts are?

Why isn't the Pathway Official Soundtrack discounted, if the main game is?

A) You can't compare US-conditions, where people have no health-care, no benefits, no paid vacation, employers are allowed to lock their employees in a warehouse, and are permitted to limit their toilet breaks to 7 minutes a day, to the UK--or any other place in Europe.

If you are talking about a 16-yo trainee, then not receiving (full) payment is normal, when in return they get free private schooling and training. Even when technically "unpaid", they typically still get full government subsidies, are entitled to vacation, their health-care is paid for, and their insurances are paid for.

B) How does this surprise you at all?

The "investment game", as invented by the US and exported to Europe, works like this across the entire industry: First, they spawn a dozen companies in an "incubator", each as a financially independent unit. Then, hire a couple dozen people at sub-market rates through promises of a bright future and fancy titles, like "CEO", "CTO", "manager of toilet affairs". Next, declare "crunch-time", because you are so hip and innovative, and you are the next Apple, and everybody does it, right? So, you work them to the bone for 1-2 years, promising a payout at the end, until half of them drop out from burnout and exhaustion. In the meantime, you hire contract work, offer "free" internships, and don't pay your suppliers in anything but promises. When 18 months or so are up, your workforce starts to get suspicious, and your suppliers begin to ask more impertinent questions like "where the hell is my money", you check which one of your dozen start-ups is making a substantial enough profit. Then, you declare the other eleven of them bankrupt, lay off the entire work-force, DON'T pay your suppliers, and sell the remaining successful company to a third party for a profit. Rinse, and repeat.

That was YOUR idea, my dear American neighbors. Your folks have turned the economy into a Casino, and these investors are playing a game of poker. This is a systematic problem, not something isolated to a single company.

Quite frankly I am disgusted American companies started chasing short term gains versus long term respectively. They ruined Japanese companies and lifelong employment because of that stupidity.

Oh dear. I was almost at the point to look past Starbound's flawed game mechanics. Now the story got even sadder.
*throws Starbound out of the shopping cart and into the infinite abyss (of doom)*

Starbound being so broken, kind of puts me off buying it. Wonder if the devs will ever make it functional.

Current opinion continues: Probably better to buy from Steam or epic store. Or humble or anywhere else for that matter.

Seriously? Is this supposed to be an insult?

You really consider paid vacation and health-care Marxist? Wow. A) "child labor" is de jure defined as a (forced) employment suitable to keep an individual from achieving education, and/or damaging its academic development as an individual.

Somebody who has already finished school, or is doing a side project in their spare time, is not at risk of being prevented from pursuing education.

B) What "proof"? That "publisher" you are talking about was a kiddo in his early twenties himself at the time. That guy wasn't a "cunning bastard", he was a "clueless moron".

All I see is a naive, juvenile dude who wanted to make a game with zero experience. He found a bunch of like-minded individuals, who equally had no idea how to make games, told them straight up that they wouldn't be paid, then proceeded… to not pay them? And that is the outrage?

He also failed to get, in writing, that his team would grant him the express permission to publish (and make money off) their work. Meaning, that he is in legal limbo, where he cannot prove that he has sufficient rights to make money off the intellectual property he is using in the game, while the other parties can't prove the opposite either. Sure that sucks!

But, the same is practically true for every single rookie gaming project I have ever seen. They ALL forget the paperwork. This is how these projects normally go.

If it is real human scum you want, this dude isn't it. But, if you want to be outraged about something, I could easily point you in the direction of CEOs with a long track record of actual exploitation of customers and employees, copyright violations on an industrial scale, systemic violation of data protection laws, tax fraud, fraudulent delay in filing for insolvency, legally throwing your own employees under the bus while making off with their money, scamming taxpayers out of their money, physical and verbal abuse, sexual exploitation, and harassment. I have been working in the field for 30 years. I can fix you up with as much outrage as you want.

No, but there's OpenStarbound.

Nice but how long till they receive a cease-and-desist for using Chucklefish's trademarked name?