...and I've just informed Kickstarter that, since they seem to be silently ignoring my request to weigh in on whether Stoic has violated their terms of service with such a large disconnect between the "reasonable person" and "letter of the law" interpretations of their promises, I've added them to my "products, services, and companies not to trust" blacklist.

From now on, until a game is available DRM-free on GOG/Humble/etc. and getting good reviews, I'm not paying one red cent. (Given my policy on waiting for sales, that'll probably save me money anyway.)

Those numbers are indeed telling. To be fair though, how long has it been since BS2's launch? About 10 days? Is it possible for us to compare BS2's numbers the first 10 days with BS after it's first 10 days?

That is truly an astonishing level of ignorance, to immediately equate DRM-free with piracy; they may not be directly saying it, but it's all but implied. That developers, big or small, still seem to think that DRM is this magic bullet that will solve all of their piracy woes is still amazing to me. Oh well. That just means I can spend the money on other developers that actually do listen to their customers and offer DRM-free versions of their games.

Of course, you can't expect 600 000 copies of BS 2 sold in ten days,but you have to know that, generally, most of the profit made on a game comes from the sole first week.

30 000 copies sold after 10 days, preorder included, is very poor. It's around what a little studio like Iron Tower Studio was aiming for with age of decadence. For a sequel to a very succesful game like Banner saga, with a lot of press coverage, it clearly is a disaster... In theory, they should be able to count on a massive base of already conquered customers.

After ongoing conversation with them, I decided to leave my GOG review for the first game.

Given how their "Who cares if you're spoon-feeding us advice up to and including literal examples of how to be more diplomatic. Your dissatisfaction is entirely your own fault and we're certain of that." attitude has started to contaminate my impression of TBS1, the review is titled "Good game soured by terrible devs".

Since everyone else is either praising the game or commenting on ways in which some people may not like design decisions, I decided to focus on the bad backer relations relations to bring at least a tiny amount of balance to things.

Profit maybe. Copies not necessarily.
How many of those customers paid full price for the first game and didn't get it with some level of discount? What guarantee there is that they would be willing to buy it for full price instead of getting it again discounted?

What garanty have you that any gamer will buy your game ? None of course.
I'm speaking by what they should have been aiming at, considering the amount of copies they sold for the first game. That would be pretty obvious that they are doing the same, in particular with their comment about the pirating of their game ===> ie it didn't bring the amount of money ther are considering to be entitled for.
It's pretty self evident but every business is doing some kind of projection for their sales, and in particular for sequels. I mean it's the very definition of the business model of big publishers : you are doing a sequel because it's less risky than doing an original IP and having to conquer a new audience. You are building on your previous audience.

But how many copies did they sell the first week for the first Banner Saga and how many did they expect to sell for the second one?

And if your userbase mostly consists of people that thought that your first game was good for a fiver, don't expect this to be any different for the sequel.

Again I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you -- as I said before, those numbers are very telling. But it would be nice to have some kind of point of comparison with another similarly sized studio and game for their first 10 days. I tried looking for similar sales figures for Age of Decadence but didn't get much apart from a post about their conversion rate and Early Access sales.

Still though, no matter how you slice it, 30,000 copies sold after 10 days, preorders included wouldn't qualify the game as being a roaring success. I don't necessarily think that their DRM stance is the primary driver though (though it certainly added to their low sales, I'm sure).

On the first point, I obviously have no idea. I'm just going by what most indies, like the age of decadence devs, expect from their game, and it does seem to be on the lower scale of what a dev whith a previous title in the same series have. Shadowrun hong kong for instance sold around 100 000 copies at the exact same price point around ten days after their release. Dragonfall had a harder start, but that was a dlc at first. They also had GOG sales with them though :P
On the second point, I completely agree with you : the banner saga devs sure sound like people vastly overestimating themselves. In particular when reading the thread I pointed on steam : come my little gamer, spend 2 dollars for each hour I graciously give you. Didn't seem like it work as intended...

Updated for Great justice : Shadowrun HK sold 70 000 copies after its first ten days :
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-sales-of-incline.98915/page-8#post-4100929

EDIT 2 : Just to be very thourough with this (and because this is interesting :) ), age of decadence needed to sell 30 000 copies (on top of the 15 000 copies already sold) in its first year to secure the future of iron tower studio. That's the kind of sales performance expected and wished for a little indie studio of around 5 people :
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/vault-dweller-age-of-decadence-needs-to-sell-45-000-copies-to-be-successful.103562/
According to steamspy, they have sold (only on steam...) as of today around 33 000 copies for now.

They're now offering GOG keys to backers who PM them.

I'm glad for that in one sense but, as another commenter on the backer-only comments pointed out, that means they flat-out lied about having no plans for a DRM-free release because arranging a contract with GOG and getting an installer built, uploaded, QA'd, and available for download doesn't magically happen overnight.

I fully agree with said backer (haven't asked if they'd be OK with me mentioning their name) when they say that, fundamentally, it is and always has been about trust... so I'll be waiting to see how Stoic handles TBS3 before I decide to take them off my blacklist and "all transactions mediated through Kickstarter" will remain on my blacklist for the foreseeable future since they remained disturbingly silent when I asked them to rule on whether this violates their terms of use.

Assuming the timing lines up enough to trust that they're not bending the truth, it looks like it takes less than 8 days from start to finish to arrange with GOG to sell a sequel to an existing catalog item... "not that any of [us] need to know that".

Looks like you were right: -
Look on the above quote, ye of Mighty GOG rep, and despair!

Here's a radical suggestion for them: Try not to act like passive-agressive condescending dicks towards your potential customers and accept the fact that piracy is going to happen, regardless of any precautions you take. Look at Hotline Miami or (if I recall correctly) FTL, where the devs EMBRACED piracy as a means of free promotion.

Despair? Disgusted is more fitting, me thinks. Stoic sure seems unable to forget where they've come from, and what their position in the game industry is today.

I thought it made it here pretty fast, and said as much in the release thread. But if it really takes this little time, then the time it took for The Banner Saga to be released here is pretty telling as to what was behind the long delay.

Funny, in a not funny at all way, how they keep ignoring that The Banner Saga 2 was up for pirating the moment it got released, and insist on painting DRM-free as the culprit. And using that to justify a possible more aggressive DRM approach in the future. Which seems to imply that they've already made up their minds, and again have no intention to bring The Banner Saga 3 here on release, or ever. Unless their sales stink again.

It's a real big shame that a good game as this one is associated with developers of such mentality. They need to take their heads out of their collective arses and take a lesson from indie developers that do things right, for their backers and in general. And they sure need to hire a people's person to do the talking with their customer base.

As for Kickstarter - it's nth new that they won't take any position that may jeopardize their 10% cut. When something's going astray, it's always the users/backers fault. This played a big part in my decision to never again back anything on their platform.




That would require them to be able to grasp and accept that not every pirated copy is a lost sale.

I believe you are talking about me. No issue in quoting me, and unfortunately KS doesn't have a message system to contact backers so I could have missed your request for permission). Thanks for the suggestion of posting in the new update comments area. I read you blog and while I found your approach to Stoic a bit extreme its good you took a stand. There are really a lot of crowdfunded projects that ends with authors "reinterpretation" of what was previously stated or made believe at the expense of the backers.
Anyway I tryed to not questioning them about business strategy (previous approach was a bit to aggressive from my perspective) and focusing on what they were communicating but I cannot say I'm particularly pleased with their reply. Maybe it's how I worded it but clearly I was not the only one that found their way of communicating a little off.

About the time required to bring the game on GOG, maybe things are easier than before, but I saw too many devs excuses about delayed GOG's release blaming it on the effort needed to prepare the build to believe that suddently is something that could be done in a week. Or they are working very efficiently producing codes that doesn't require much changes, or all the other devs are not capable of doing it.

This is what's really annoying me about the whole saga (hah). If the original game wasn't as good I'd just say screw 'em and not bother with any of the rest of the series or any other games they might make.
But they've made a really good game and now the choice becomes depriving myself of seeing it through to the end and the enjoyment of that or putting up with their pretty awful attitude and treatment of fans, and to some extent letting them away with it by buying the game anyway...

I want to see what happens (and just enjoy the game in general as I loved the first) but I can't see myself picking this up till it's reasonably discounted (or until the third one comes out and is definitely here perhaps..).