So like many others i fell pretty heavily in love with project zomboid, it was a weird mix of game types with a functional visual style and a 'more realistic than lets get shotguns derp' view of a zombie outbreak.

So today whilst broswing the net i came across this little titbit from the developers twitter feed

Now this leaves people in who have paid (like myself) in a weird situation. im imagining refunds will be in order, however more pressingly im gutted about how terriblly unlucky this whole thing is

I heard about this game, thought about how cool it could be and was fully supportive of it. I didn't know people were already paying for it. If I were him, I'd set up a system where you could opt for a refund, or not and have your money possibly go towards new laptops or something else to help the project get back up and running. Hell, if that were set up, I'd totally give them some money. I'd like to see this thing not sink.

You say this leaves you in an odd position as someone who has "paid."

What exactly do you mean by that? Did you buy a copy of the finished game, or were you making donations toward its development?

You paid for a game that wasn't even finished? Why would you do this?

Edit

He also said. They will carry one. They might get the laptops back...

@End_Boss: Think of kind of like how minecraft does its business, you could download a free demo, or pay 5 quid (not a lot) towards it that would basically give you the full 'as it stands' game and help push any further updates.

In all honesty im not too fussed about the money, and as such would much rather they kept it and put it towards recovering their losses or getting a new project up.

the 'awkward position' was more aimed towards the attitude of the unpredictable internet in general, who may feel entitled to reimbursement in some way or form.

Update saying he'll continue. I was going to say give him a few days to get over the shock, but it didn't even take that long. There's the long shot chance they get the burglars, but I wouldn't be holding my breath there.

yeah guess that makes this kind of redundant then - Glad to see they aint getting beat down over this!

In lieu of changing the title feel free to lock up mods, at this point its just misleading now that they've decided to plough on

@HandsomeDead said:

You paid for a game that wasn't even finished? Why would you do this?

Because it was 8 Bucks, and the game so far is damn cool. I've had more fun with it than I do with most 60 dollar releases, besides, videogames.

Still, that's a HUGE bummer.

Wow that really blows. Hopefully they can get those laptops back without any missing data, highly unlikely though.

@Mikemcn said:

@HandsomeDead said:

You paid for a game that wasn't even finished? Why would you do this?

Because it was 8 Bucks, and the game so far is damn cool. I've had more fun with it than I do with most 60 dollar releases, besides, videogames.

And to help support the game's development, ala Minecraft.

@OmegaPirate: What's the "Tbis" he's talking about?

@FunExplosions said:

@OmegaPirate: What's the "Tbis" he's talking about?

This.

@LordXavierBritish: @HS21: I'm not the fastest hammer in the fridge.

And now looking at his twitter. People are after him calling him a con artist. He seems to be getting really really harassed right now.

@The_Laughing_Man said:

And now looking at his twitter. People are after him calling him a con artist.

This dude should maybe lay off the twitter for tonight.

Thieves are old school.

@Melvargh said:

@The_Laughing_Man said:

And now looking at his twitter. People are after him calling him a con artist.

This dude should maybe lay off the twitter for tonight.

Yeah... sounds like he's really depressed and possibly drunk. He really needs to stop tweeting.

EDIT: Just saw his previous tweet. Yep, he's drunk.

DUDE THIS GUYS TWITTER FEED RIGHT NOW IS AMAZING.

And thats it. Hopefully he will sober up and calm down.

That or

http://twitter.com/#!/lemmy101/status/125400972028690433

Sad. >:

Wow, this guy needs to get off the internet until he sobers up right now.

He 'deleted fucking everything', as far as his twitter goes.

Good move really.

@syzygyeolith said:

He 'deleted fucking everything', as far as his twitter goes.

Good move really.

He fully removed his twitter account. Hopefully he sobers up in the morning and calms down. This game had promise.

There is a more 'balanced' post made on their main site too. http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/10/project-zomboid-burglary-statement/

Interestingly enough it acknowledges that a certain someone has been doing a little bit of the drink-posting. I can only imagine how stressed out this bloke must be trying to calm Chris down, while keeping the PR face on.

So much indie drama. It's fascinating to watch.

Also, they had to expect this. They've pushed out updates at a speed that makes Notch look good. I understand that they're indie developers and all that, but when you're taking money for a product you should at least try and be professional, not leave all your code on a laptop with no off-site backups.

DUDE THIS GUYS TWITTER FEED RIGHT NOW IS AMAZING.

@HandsomeDead said:

You paid for a game that wasn't even finished? Why would you do this?

3,805,747 people have paid for Minecraft... and that's not finished.

I feel sorry for everyone involved in making this game. That truly sucks. However I played that public beta "demo" they had. I didn't care for the no saves and one life you die and start over. So honestly I'm not really affected by this. However this is pretty bad. What happens to all those people who "bought" the game and were waiting for a final release?

EDIT : I see some of the "con" posts. I can see why people would think this. He has their money and now the "game" is gone. *shrugs* This is why I don't buy beta games. I guess this is gonna hurt any games in the future that want to go this method.

@HandsomeDead said:

You paid for a game that wasn't even finished? Why would you do this?

3,805,747 people have paid for Minecraft... and that's not finished.

This whole thing went from depressing to incredible.

As a person who "paid" for Zomboid alpha access, I just want to clarify. Nobody asked anybody to pay for the alpha. The Project Zomboid alpha test was offered for free for anybody that purchased one of their two other completed games.

I'm so confused; did this guy turn into a zombie? =/

Wow, what a terrible time they've had with this, the game had tons of promise. I think it would be better for them to cut their losses and start over. One bad thing after another, so depressing.

Hope they get their stuff back, :(

This really sucks. Amazing that they weren't using proper backup for something they were already collecting money for though.

lol @ backup plan. IMA PUT IT ON THIS LAPTOP RIGHT BY THIS OTHER LAPTOP MLARRR.

That's pretty dumb. Also, mildly funny.

That's terrible, from what I played of Project Zomboid it was awesome and showed great potential.

Any updates on this? Since you know, he doesn't have a twitter anymore?

@drew said:

This really sucks. Amazing that they weren't using proper backup for something they were already collecting money for though.

Indeed.

His motherfucking twitter profile is gone y'all.

@TheDudeOfGaming said:

His motherfucking twitter profile is gone y'all.

Yep!

The guys that work on this game handled this situation extremely poorly. Something like this happens and you reveal you don't have a recent backup at a remote location? People are going to be upset because that is just stupid. I keep all of my school projects in a Dropbox folder that updates every time I save. Dropbox is free.

Absolutely no excuse in this day and age for this kind of incompetence. I'm sorry that their laptops were stolen, but attacking their playerbase for being rightly upset was a bad, bad move.

Will Project Zomboid return from the dead!? 
 
HA! I MADE A FUNNY!

"Hi everyone,

Will here, the Project Zomboid writer-guy.

I won’t beat around the bush. The Indie Stone have just suffered a major set-back. The Newcastle flat where Lemmy and Binky live and work was burgled this evening, and so far the clearest things taken are two computers and Lemmy’s credit card.

Project Zomboid was regularly backed up from machine to machine, but rarely – sadly and infuriatingly – externally. We have lost an awful lot of work. Mash and Binky don’t even know this has happened yet.

Chris (Lemmy) is quite distressed to be honest – we’re still dealing with something that was discovered little over an hour ago. After his tweets on the subject we both agreed it’d be best if I wrote a blog here to calm fears. He clearly isn’t able to currently. (It’s also probably worth saying that there were no PZ player personal details etc. on the machines).

This will clearly severely delay the next update, which was very near completion. I personally only just finished my work on it today (one of the final things on the ‘to-do’ list) and had it ready for input tomorrow.

Project Zomboid, however, will come back stronger.

I was going up to Newcastle on Monday for a milestone meeting in any case, but that’s clearly now taken a much more serious turn. In the coming days we will be getting in touch with everyone here, on Facebook, via Desura and wherever else we have tendrils to let people know what’s happening.

During this time we will clearly be asking for the understanding and patience of our community. We are gutted, we are despondent and – most of all – we are sorry that this has thrown yet another bump into the road towards PZ completion. We also REALLY want to wring the neck of the arsehole that did this to us.

More as it happens,

Best,

The Indie Stone"

Hey, they're from Newcastle. Maybe it was my Dad who burgled them.

@Ramone said:

Hey, they're from Newcastle. Maybe it was my Dad who burgled them.

Let's be honest, if they're in Newcastle then it could have been anybody. It could have been his dad.

How the hell do you not have a reasonable backup?

@Toms115: In all honesty Will was the only one who showed any kind of professionalism and they're damn lucky they had him. Unlike the other two, he wasn't a moron who went spewing vitriol on Twitter and Reddit the moment this happened. After one of the devs disappeared the other pretty much took his place, and has gone so far to write a blog piece on how it's okay to react negatively towards your fans and paying customers because you're "indie and that's what indie means." I couldn't disagree more. People used to shit all over Notch when he was in his early phases of development and I've never seen him lose his cool or publicly berate people. I'm sorry they got their shit stolen, but it was damned stupid to have two laptops (one of which was less than a week old) be the only place where they kept their code.