PINNED COMMENT TLDR: Not the best take, game wouldn’t be here without shameless behavior and I’ll be back to see if 0 players is enough to sustain Early Access.

I’m coming back to this far too late to say that in hindsight, I was too SOFT on these guys and I should’ve done better to lay down the harsh truth of how any of this was even possible.

I’ll stick by my word that it’s redeemable IN THE WAY that they stuck with it and gave out refunds. They tried to turn it around and mend some bridges instead of weaselling out of their responsibility to provide something. The game is decent UE slop and that’s about it, which I still believe is a massive achievement considering who’s behind it and what the alpha was like. The bar of expectations was in the negatives and they brought it a couple points above 0. That on it’s own should say enough.

However, it’s by no means fully redeemed or forgiven, I mistakenly thought that this was implied in the video, but implying such a big point isn’t good practice, at all. As a result the video brings too much unwarranted praise, to what is actually quite an underwhelming product, considering the funding and time spent on it. I should’ve nailed down the caveat that this will ALWAYS be a story about two tech bros getting funded a large amount of money, to LEARN game dev.

They already secured funding, then sold an overexaggerated idea to get more, lied about some things or at least “stretched the truth” and when quizzed on anything, responded like politicians being asked a simple question. Would they be here without any of that? No + Enums.

Many genuine and well meaning developers fund their game through the holes in their pockets and can only dream to have such an opportunity. It’s fair enough if a developer makes some misjudgments and underestimates the challenge ahead of them. But Dreamworld is in a different boat.

I’m happy that DreamWorld has come to this point, I won’t say it’s a terrible game, but I can’t say it’s a good one either. Decent slop, yet nothing as grand as they made it out to be and I guess that “millions of players” promise can slide when - I kid you not - they’ve got 0... ZERO players as of writing this.

This comment should’ve been pinned much sooner and I should’ve taken a step back before posting the video. I do try my best, but as cliche as it sounds, I don’t have a team, it’s just me and I will have the odd bad take. I can only apologies for not doing better and try to do better.

I will revisit this game later down the line to see how well it can hold up in Early Access, as the funds run thin.

"The last game you'll ever play" sounds more like a threat than an enticement.

5:17 I will never get over this story because it feels like a joke: Entrepreneur who keeps getting hit by cars is confused as to why people stop and look around at intersections. Must be because they like his product

Props for actually sticking around without running away with the money but it's still hard to take it seriously considering how they promised "everything" and all they did is a base building exploration game that are a dime a dozen in the steam slop section.

Tech bros will be the end of us.

Promissed five star meal, delivered cold BigMac.
To be honest, it still kinda looks crap...

I would like to add that a while back they went on a astroturfing campaign. There were people, or bots, who flooded Reddit, Steam, Facebook; etc, to paint the game in a better light. Which is an extremely deceptive practice

Of course it's a YCombinator thing.  They might as well replace their logo with the 'As Seen On TV' sticker for all the credibility they have anymore.

They graduated from being a scam mmo to being a terrible one. It's an improvement sure but it's a far cry from being redeemed.

That's a lot of drama and effort to make a deeply broken version of Valheim ~Sloy

Tech bro is the modern snakeoil salesman.

This was peak COVID popcorn entertainment.

I disagree that they redeemed themselves. They made a promise to produce a product. They are only now just starting to fulfill that promise. That is not 'redemption.' That's just follow-thru. It should be EXPECTED, not celebrated.

Well, this certainly has aged in the last 3 months, with it being taken off steam

For millions of players, but SteamDB says 10 in game

So it has graduated from potential scam to regular crappy alpha openworldsurvivalcrafting slop, cool!

there will never be an everything game. even the most arguable, Roblox, is more like a game storefront.

This game feels trapped in a time where every MMO was called "The WoW Killer"

They approached designing an MMO as if it was some kind of problem to be solved as opposed to finding a really fun gameplay loop and building from there. Using language like "the last game you'll ever need to play" just really puts me off.

The bar is set so low if this could be considered redemption. More like getting a little closer to achieving the bare minimum so they can’t be sued for fraud.