Disappointed with Game Insight

[Dave]

As you know, back in April the forum celebrated its 10 years anniversary. Quite a big occasion and one I am very proud of.
What better way to celebrate then to get Game Insight involved - As when Ivan, the legendary Free2Play was around, for our 5th anniversary he very kindly released a special code giving everyone a free QL - without us even asking!

I began talks with Game Insight in January so there was plenty of notice. Unfortunately all I got was promises of the developers getting in touch until a few weeks before the anniversary asking if we would like to arrange some contests etc and Game Insight would offer the rewards. So behind the scenes the moderating team and I worked hard to think of some great contests and then sent these to Game Insight.

Silence. Nothing, nada, zilch. All communication went dead, and it still has to this day.

Now as you know, this forum is not associated or connected to Game Insight in anyway. I don't expect anything from Game Insight, however when they offer to take part in the celebrations and go back on their word, to me that's just not cricket. Wouldn't it have been nice for them to offer a little something for 10 whole years this forum has given the game a platform for people to talk, create alliances, join space launches together, view the most amazing and upto date wiki and generally improve peoples game play.

Just makes me feel saddened and frustrated. So there was some amazing plans behind the scenes, and now you know why sadly they never happend.

Let's see if Game Insight can sort something out for the 15th anniversary in 2027!

 

[Navigata07]

As you know, back in April the forum celebrated its 10 years anniversary. Quite a big occasion and one I am very proud of.
What better way to celebrate then to get Game Insight involved - As when Ivan, the legendary Free2Play was around, for our 5th anniversary he very kindly released a special code giving everyone a free QL - without us even asking!

I began talks with Game Insight in January so there was plenty of notice. Unfortunately all I got was promises of the developers getting in touch until a few weeks before the anniversary asking if we would like to arrange some contests etc and Game Insight would offer the rewards. So behind the scenes the moderating team and I worked hard to think of some great contests and then sent these to Game Insight.

Silence. Nothing, nada, zilch. All communication went dead, and it still has to this day.

Now as you know, this forum is not associated or connected to Game Insight in anyway. I don't expect anything from Game Insight, however when they offer to take part in the celebrations and go back on their word, to me that's just not cricket. Wouldn't it have been nice for them to offer a little something for 10 whole years this forum has given the game a platform for people to talk, create alliances, join space launches together, view the most amazing and upto date wiki and generally improve peoples game play.

Just makes me feel saddened and frustrated. So there was some amazing plans behind the scenes, and now you know why sadly they never happend.

Let's see if Game Insight can sort something out for the 15th anniversary in 2027!

To be honest, this doesn't surprise me. Ever since Ivan left, communications between the forum and GI has been dismal. Ur-quan seemed like he wouldve been a good communicator, but that honeymoon ended quickly.
As far as empty promises, also not surprising. From the beginning of 2021, Ur-quan stated that they were going to be improving communications that year, and that there was supposed to be an alliance overhaul. To this day, neither of those things have happened.
The message Ive gotten is that the relationship between developer and player is no longer as important to them. Besides MrWaltPilot trying to keep us in the loop, there is nothing else coming from them, and sadly, I don't expect that to change anytime soon.

 

[Tom-SUB]

I am not surprised about it - it is G.I. standard. How many times I asked G.I. support (after I got a problem, what happened this year TOO MANY TIMES!) to create a chat opportunity for alliances , to support alliances more active. I also ask to create a chat for a launch of a rocket between the people who wanna launch together. Every time the answer was like "...great idea , we will forward this and discuss it with the developing team ..." and no action at all, like everybody knows. And that since years!

 

[ac huang]

why did you don't leave from this game to others?

 

[Stupor-Duck aka Cassandra]

why did you don't leave from this game to others?

Dave isn't leaving the game. Dave and Cosmic Blue are admins of this website you commented on. They created so much for the players as GI info sharing like we do here, wasn't happening as well as it could, on facebook. ACGame.com was 2nd in line when it came to any sort of forum. Again they have done so much along with many others from the community.

Sad though I've sad it before . Need for Speed World was a MMO/online game too and our go-between guy was Drew, same kind of person like Ivan.

Eventually what we would have liked done was no longer goin to happen. They even had contests regularly and the day of the last contest, they picked a winner, told him his racetrack design. a course thru various towns and cities, was going to be implemented in the game.
A big disappointment when they never did reward the guy.

We also had something similar to discord a cross between it and the forums here. That's where Drew would intro new things/events/liveries etc and have Q&A session.

Eventually it comes down to money. GI has proven that every time a new version and even updates roll out; something else costs greenies/more greenies than last week and or cash

Yes very disappointed with GI also

 

[Chazzy999]

@Dave Even if GI don't do anything for us you can be assured that everyone on this forum is 110% appreciative of what you have done in both creating this forum and maintaining it, adding to it, updating it and moderating it. So a million thanks to both you and your team!🤩🤩🤩

 

[Navigata07]

@Dave Even if GI don't do anything for us you can be assured that everyone on this forum is 110% appreciative of what you have done in both creating this forum and maintaining it, adding to it, updating it and moderating it. So a million thanks to both you and your team!🤩🤩🤩

Sidenote....welcome back Chazzy! 🎉

 

[Chazzy999]

Sidenote....welcome back Chazzy! 🎉

Thank you @Navigata07

 

[Bob69bob]

@Dave , not sure if you’re aware (and I rarely look at FaceAche), but GI asked longer term players to post on their FB page with the best advice they could offer to newer players. I was delighted to advise, that my best advice would be to come straight here 😁. I thought I’d add to the promotion with this…

 

[BobbinsPilot]

The invasion of the Ukraine has caused a lot of Russian based developers huge huge problems. Although GI has been registered in Lithuania for some times, the biggest majority of their developer pool was / is from Russia and due to sanctions imposed by the UK and other governments around the world, it is now almost impossible to pay salaries to those developers who have nothing to do with this war, i know this because i have recently had to part company with a number of out sourced developers who were based in Russia.

The current event is delayed for this very reason, there was an announcement recently that GI have parted ways with up to 600 sub contractors who either worked directly or in-directly with GI because most of them were based in Russia or Belarus.

Although i am too disappointed with GI and the lack of support both on the forum and through their official channels, we need to give them a bit of slack right now as it is genuinely a difficult time within the technology sector if you had any reliance at all on Russian resources, whether that be FTE or services provided by third parties.

On a side note, keep up the great work Dave, i don't come to the forums as much as I want or should due to the birth of my first child, however WE DO appreciate what you do for the gaming community of Airport City.

 

[Free2Play]

Hi all,

I was contemplating a few days ago if I should chime in at all, or not. Airport City and all things related were a huge part of my life for 8 years, but then my last day at the company was Dec 30, 2019, so this is kind of 'none of my business' anymore. I did keep in touch with some team members ever since, so I was aware of team's plans and ongoing work. And even though I might have disagreed with a direction / feature choice the team took after my departure, the game was in good hands of people who cared about it. (And of course you have to keep in mind development team doesn't always have a say in these things, as F2P games are very much dependent on marketing pricing / influx of new players regardless of the 'core audience' size which means if the market is bad some feature decisions are mandated by business executives, not nominal project leads / game designers).

Unfortunately, the discussion of 'dev team should focus on feature A instead of B and C' is no longer relevant because of the large-scale invasion Russia started in February. @BobbinsPilot has nailed it all. To give you a little more insight, mobile game development was something Russian game studios (or European ones with large Russian presence for the sake of having actual laws protecting your IP and reputation) were really good at, and were competing with established US/European studios while not borrowing a cent of state money - which is something you can't say about Russian gas/oil companies, or Russian movie industry. This is all destroyed now overnight because of the crazy ambitions of an old man armed with nuclear weapons who completely lost his touch with reality. Here's an article that provides some details on the scale of trouble for game developers with offices in Russia. This is not a full list by any means, too, many other companies are doing massive layoffs, while some smaller ones disappear without anyone noticing.

For Game Insight specifically, and for legal reasons I'm citing here public Twitter accounts of former employees, all offices were shut down overnight with no advance warning. Moscow-based Airport City team (game designers, engineers, community / operations) was let go in its entirety, Novosibirsk art team responsible for most buildings and planes was let go in its entirety, with some employees having trouble right now to get paycheck for the last month of work. The servers are on for the time being, but the best you can expect in the coming months is rehash of the older special events, if the new Russian-based IP owner assembles a skeleton crew to do that. We're talking 2-5 people max to keep the game running 'as is' instead of 30-40 members AC team had previously (that's my estimate). As I've mentioned, entire community team was let go, too, so don't be surprised no one answers on AC social pages, there're no new posts on Facebook page since June 13, etc. As they're under NDA, most can't talk about these matters in public, as well.

Overall, I think Airport City had a great run with 11+ years in live operations, so I hope a lot of people had fun time with it. I certainly did, and have fond memories of our development efforts. And last but not least, we were very lucky to have the vibrant and engaged community on this forum, that certainly helped our team make informed decisions while I was there. Long live the memory of exciting adventures in Airport City! ✈️

 

[Robbie Laker]

Free2Play Thank you Ivan for sharing your thoughts with us.

 

[Navigata07]

@Dave , not sure if you’re aware (and I rarely look at FaceAche), but GI asked longer term players to post on their FB page with the best advice they could offer to newer players. I was delighted to advise, that my best advice would be to come straight here 😁. I thought I’d add to the promotion with this…
View attachment 66389

Well that certainly would convince me. Well done 🤣

 

[Navigata07]

Hi all,

I was contemplating a few days ago if I should chime in at all, or not. Airport City and all things related were a huge part of my life for 8 years, but then my last day at the company was Dec 30, 2019, so this is kind of 'none of my business' anymore. I did keep in touch with some team members ever since, so I was aware of team's plans and ongoing work. And even though I might have disagreed with a direction / feature choice the team took after my departure, the game was in good hands of people who cared about it. (And of course you have to keep in mind development team doesn't always have a say in these things, as F2P games are very much dependent on marketing pricing / influx of new players regardless of the 'core audience' size which means if the market is bad some feature decisions are mandated by business executives, not nominal project leads / game designers).

Unfortunately, the discussion of 'dev team should focus on feature A instead of B and C' is no longer relevant because of the large-scale invasion Russia started in February. @BobbinsPilot has nailed it all. To give you a little more insight, mobile game development was something Russian game studios (or European ones with large Russian presence for the sake of having actual laws protecting your IP and reputation) were really good at, and were competing with established US/European studios while not borrowing a cent of state money - which is something you can't say about Russian gas/oil companies, or Russian movie industry. This is all destroyed now overnight because of the crazy ambitions of an old man armed with nuclear weapons who completely lost his touch with reality. Here's an article that provides some details on the scale of trouble for game developers with offices in Russia. This is not a full list by any means, too, many other companies are doing massive layoffs, while some smaller ones disappear without anyone noticing.

For Game Insight specifically, and for legal reasons I'm citing here public Twitter accounts of former employees, all offices were shut down overnight with no advance warning. Moscow-based Airport City team (game designers, engineers, community / operations) was let go in its entirety, Novosibirsk art team responsible for most buildings and planes was let go in its entirety, with some employees having trouble right now to get paycheck for the last month of work. The servers are on for the time being, but the best you can expect in the coming months is rehash of the older special events, if the new Russian-based IP owner assembles a skeleton crew to do that. We're talking 2-5 people max to keep the game running 'as is' instead of 30-40 members AC team had previously (that's my estimate). As I've mentioned, entire community team was let go, too, so don't be surprised no one answers on AC social pages, there're no new posts on Facebook page since June 13, etc. As they're under NDA, most can't talk about these matters in public, as well.

Overall, I think Airport City had a great run with 11+ years in live operations, so I hope a lot of people had fun time with it. I certainly did, and have fond memories of our development efforts. And last but not least, we were very lucky to have the vibrant and engaged community on this forum, that certainly helped our team make informed decisions while I was there. Long live the memory of exciting adventures in Airport City! ✈️

Great to hear from you again...hope you're doing well. Thanks for giving us such in-depth insight. It makes sense, and we just have to wait and see if there will be any new developments from them. Thanks again.

 

[flyhores]

Thanks Dave for creating this site. I really appreciate it. The reason is too complicated and too long.

 

[Bigglesbaz]

It's great to see the website colours reflecting Ukraine. The quicker a certain despot dictator is consigned to history the better and then the civilised world can all get on with the good life once again.
Slava Ukraini!!!!!!!!!

 

[Nayeon]

Hi all,

I was contemplating a few days ago if I should chime in at all, or not. Airport City and all things related were a huge part of my life for 8 years, but then my last day at the company was Dec 30, 2019, so this is kind of 'none of my business' anymore. I did keep in touch with some team members ever since, so I was aware of team's plans and ongoing work. And even though I might have disagreed with a direction / feature choice the team took after my departure, the game was in good hands of people who cared about it. (And of course you have to keep in mind development team doesn't always have a say in these things, as F2P games are very much dependent on marketing pricing / influx of new players regardless of the 'core audience' size which means if the market is bad some feature decisions are mandated by business executives, not nominal project leads / game designers).

Unfortunately, the discussion of 'dev team should focus on feature A instead of B and C' is no longer relevant because of the large-scale invasion Russia started in February. @BobbinsPilot has nailed it all. To give you a little more insight, mobile game development was something Russian game studios (or European ones with large Russian presence for the sake of having actual laws protecting your IP and reputation) were really good at, and were competing with established US/European studios while not borrowing a cent of state money - which is something you can't say about Russian gas/oil companies, or Russian movie industry. This is all destroyed now overnight because of the crazy ambitions of an old man armed with nuclear weapons who completely lost his touch with reality. Here's an article that provides some details on the scale of trouble for game developers with offices in Russia. This is not a full list by any means, too, many other companies are doing massive layoffs, while some smaller ones disappear without anyone noticing.

For Game Insight specifically, and for legal reasons I'm citing here public Twitter accounts of former employees, all offices were shut down overnight with no advance warning. Moscow-based Airport City team (game designers, engineers, community / operations) was let go in its entirety, Novosibirsk art team responsible for most buildings and planes was let go in its entirety, with some employees having trouble right now to get paycheck for the last month of work. The servers are on for the time being, but the best you can expect in the coming months is rehash of the older special events, if the new Russian-based IP owner assembles a skeleton crew to do that. We're talking 2-5 people max to keep the game running 'as is' instead of 30-40 members AC team had previously (that's my estimate). As I've mentioned, entire community team was let go, too, so don't be surprised no one answers on AC social pages, there're no new posts on Facebook page since June 13, etc. As they're under NDA, most can't talk about these matters in public, as well.

Overall, I think Airport City had a great run with 11+ years in live operations, so I hope a lot of people had fun time with it. I certainly did, and have fond memories of our development efforts. And last but not least, we were very lucky to have the vibrant and engaged community on this forum, that certainly helped our team make informed decisions while I was there. Long live the memory of exciting adventures in Airport City! ✈️

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such an in-depth and comprehensive reply. I don't think that many people were aware of these details, I know I certainly was not, of the extent that the company was dependent on Russia based resources.

 

[BobbinsPilot]

And there you have it folks, Free2Play has also nailed it, but I didn't want to be as honest as he / she was - The game is pretty much dead now or as we say in England, its on its ass.

The servers that the games connect too are based in Russia, however at the moment they are being routed through a proxy in Estonia (A proxy is like a gateway in between the game and the internet that routes traffic to where ever it needs too, just in case you didn't know) and this is one of the main reasons I have recently had to spend 22 hours a day re-building my development team with Ukrainian Developers who I didn't even knew existed until the old man did what he did and I have to say, I for one am grateful that this great talent pool has now been unleashed as they are the most intelligent and diligent developers I have had the pleasure of meeting.

Anyway, back to the context of my post - In the last 3 months I have lost and had to replace 22 developers, rapidly remove servers from Russia and not without losing tonnes of data because our hosting platform of choice was shutdown almost over night and all we could access was our remote backups.

Now I was very very fortunate in the fact that I had some insurance in place that has covered around 60% of the cost of this and means that hopefully, within a month I will have a crack team of Ukrainian developers all up to speed and can continue with business, but alas, for those companies that were heavily engrained in Russia ( I also have 21 developers in the UK of various guises) the time is now over and I genuinely would not be surprised if within the coming quarter, GI are forced to declare bankruptcy or whatever the process is in Lithuania and put their assets up for sale, because as Free2Play alluded too, this has been catastrophic for them and a lot of innocent companies who placed their faith in the labour market available in Russia, which lets not forget, are just ordinary people like me and you, trying to earn a living.

RIP Airport City

 

[vayka1]

Free2Play and @BobbinsPilot, thank you so much for taking time to inform us in this crazy world we are living in today. I understand now what's really going on with AC. Thanks again and be safe!!!

 

[BobbinsPilot]

@vayka1 indeed we live in a crazy world, but together we can beat this and move on