I find the timing odd of after 6-7 years Gems of War always having a bridge between players and staff. Now NOT having a community manager weeks before EVERYONE (and their mother respectively) was conned into believing that Arachnaean Weaver was in Event Chests for 4 days that it was (now confirmed) very much not in event chests.
When the game first rolled out @Sirrian was the community manager according to paintings on the walls. @Nimhain took over as the company continued to grow according to sea scrolls.
And then they hired @Saltypatra who did the gig for years and I have no idea what the circumstances of her departure was.
Meanwhile no new community manager has been announced in her wake.
I don’t believe any of the developers actually KNEW that Arachnaean Weaver wasn’t going to be in event chests and just tried to save face after the fact. So should any of us assume that they know that they haven’t saddled any of their current staff with the community manager responsibility?
Or do our millions in revenue gifted to 505 Games and Infinity Plus 2 annually not warrant such a position?
To be fair to them, it’s extremely difficult to manage a community when you can’t even manage your own game properly. If that sounds unfair then I ask any of you with any semblance of business knowledge to review the Arachnaean Weaver situation and tell me any part of it has been (still very much a present issue) handled properly.
I imagine people spent thousands of event keys trying to get the mythic, still one of the best mythics in the game, believing they were just having bad luck. And event keys are the hardest ones to obtain – rightfully so, they are very powerful, because you can save them for specific mythic chances. It’s sort of like having the mythic on release week, you can only get that one.
Everyone who spent their event keys trying to get that mythic should in fact either have all their keys returned to them, or better yet, sent a free copy of the mythic.
I used to do IT work for CVS pharmacy. A while back they bought out a company called Brooks, more pharmacies. I led a team that went to all the new stores in the SW, Arizona, etc and set up new network hardware and computer systems. My brother is currently a regional manager for CVS.
My point is this. Between information provided by my brother and talking to the Brooks store managers, it was clear that CVS wanted their own people managing the stores and areas.
What happened was they asked many CVS managers to relocate. They also told the Brooks managers that they could reapply. 75% of them were not hired back.
I feel Salty was a victim of this same BS. 505 wanted their own people in key roles and Salty was replaced. I have no doubt behind the scenes she spoke up for players and that may have been the reason. I’m sure there were others replaced, but with Salty’s position she is the only one we know about.
With regard to the AW situation, if that happened at a casino it would be fraud. You cannot remove a jackpot and still advertise as it being present.
The new mods are in that honeymoon phase where they are pretending to be helpful, but they will soon realize that the players of this game aren’t dumb peasants and will call them out and show proof when they repeatedly lie.
Best anyone can do is call them out, report violations to app stores and it may seem dumb, but contact your reps about that loot box bill. We all like this game, but I would rather see them out of business than have carte blanche to scam people over and over.
I see no evidence that Salty was pushed out; she seemed very happy on her final streams to be moving to a new job where writing/narrative design would be her primary role. (I suspect also, reading between the lines a little: probably also happy to not be community-facing and, y’know, receiving frickin’ death threats, any more.)
100% agree though that the Arachnean Weaver thing has been very poorly handled.
In short: No, not if it’s not going to generate more profit.
Given that the community is willing to keep dishing out money after being repeatedly shown the concerns brought up are not worth dev attention/time/effort because they don’t have the desired ROI, they’re probably saving themselves a huge headache by not backfilling the role.
Literally every decision this company makes is guided by the almighty balance sheet.
If she’s still on Twitter or any social media then I disagree.
I am just a civilian and I can’t even post a controversial opinion on here without personal attacks being levied my way. So Salty is aware that her position unfortunately came with that shit. Doesn’t make it right, but it wouldn’t be cause to leave a job over.
not so sure… death from 1000 cuts could still be possible. I know that being customer’/community manager reaquires some thick skin to survive, but still… sometimes it’s just that one extra straw…
We just moved into a new building at work and I don’t like the taste of the water from pipes. So if I left my job one day I hope they say it’s because I didn’t like the taste of the water there.
Meaning… Yeah it could be a reason… Or it couldn’t be a reason. But you say it’s the main reason she left… Well only she can say otherwise.
However, there’s no Community Manager that is taking over her gig as far as we can see. Which tells me if they didn’t terminate her… They at least chose to end the position after her. And until a new community manager is announced I don’t see how that fact can be argued against.
The lack of communication between the playing base and 505 Games and Infinity Plus 2 sadly can be unfortunately summed up in its cards. Its become a Sluagh of a game; in both their communication and their poor response to the AW debacle ; it has left everyone playing in the Void Portal. Well they deserve; what’s coming; a player base financial void for their sluagh recent performance.
Sorry, we thought this was made clear in Salty’s goodbye post.
Our CX team handles all things front end now, including Community Management.
So instead of one person we have myself, Jeto and OminousGman.
This has enabled us to spend a lot more time in the community, social, forums etc.
You may have noticed an increase of responses to threads in the forum from sometime before Salty left as we transitioned the CX team to this role.
Between the 3 of us we have a lot of experience in support, community and social media.
In the background, now that we have more staff on the team, we’re working on some cool new stuff, like video content and our stream format. The Archproxy Yvendra video is an example of that.
We’re also reviewing our internal reporting etc. to make sure we’re representing players in house as effectively as we can.
Fortunately, we had already started this transition to the CX team handling the bulk of community/social as Salty was actually promoted to Associate Producer for Puzzle Quest 3 before she left us.
Regarding Salty, it’s bittersweet as we are very sad she’s left us and hope we’ll work again with her in future but she left to pursue her growing career as a writer after being offered a senior position at another games company where she can specialise in narrative design
It hurts to read this, given that in the past 8 days since you wrote it, there have been exactly TWO “CX team” posts that were not automated announcements of events. ZERO posts from GMan. ONE Post from Jeto asking a question and never following up, and ONE post from you feeding a troll
In the meantime, the community has been clamboring for responses, or feedback, or even acknowledgement of numerous bugs and issues and there has been no reply whatsoever. Not even a peep. Not even a “we’re looking into this.” Nothing.
I would not say that I have “noticed an increase of responses in threads.” The opposite, if anything.
…and what a rousing success that was! 3 posts that demonstrated that he has no idea the depths of fraud that is occurring due to their inability to update code, that he was not even aware of the “half price AW” solution being in place, and furthermore that he is not in the office much if at all, so things are not likely to get better due to his participation.
I felt like it was worth a shot. If you feel like you have a better idea than contacting the creator the game about a major game issue. Then by all means…
Just seems like shaming the devs for not talking enough in hopes of having them talk more is an interesting strategy cotton.
