Why Starbound Failed

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One of the saddest parts to me was when they completly gutted the original story and lore, only to replace it with the most generic sci-fi plot you've ever seen.

man first time hearing the name starbound in years

I was a moderator on a Starbound multiplayer server during beta through 2017, and one of my favorite moments was at the 1.0 launch: a ton of players sent reports to us that, when they launched the game, they would see the chucklefish logo and then the game would hard crash. It took a few days before that glitch was patched, but I will never forget the feeling that the glitch summarized our experience with Starbound: chucklefish laughing at its playerbase as their game went up in smoke.

I made a mod for Starbound that got super popular in the early days of Starbound (The Avali player race) and a lot of people kept asking if they could be added officially; though the clunky design didn't really make that feasible IMHO, their design was always intended as a proof of concept to bend the game engine in ways it wasn't designed for and so had a lot of issues. At some point, a little after the game resumed development, Brice approached me over Skype about whether I'd be willing to transfer Chucklefish the exclusive IP for them and also help in their implementation in game. By this point though I'd mostly abandoned the project as Chucklefish had been so slow to implement important code hooks on their end, combined with it's seemingly stalled development, had made me think they'd probably given up on the game. Obviously, the first question I asked is how much I'd receive, given he wanted both my labor and the IP rights. His response was basically "You'd be getting exposure in a major title, which is pay enough!", needless to say the conversation ended there and then. I was not shocked to learn some years later that he'd also approached others in the community with similar offers, and had absolutely screwed them over in the process. I'm glad I didn't take the offer; under Creative Commons people have since proliferated the Avali to countless other platforms and games through spin off creations. It's always a pleasant surprise to see them pop up years later in unexpected places.

Bad management was what really killed it. I remember when they had cool temperature mechanics, only to replace it with pass/fail environment upgrades.

You forgot to mention that the game is singleplayer yet has entity and enemy lag. Like a mob is charging at you, you kill it and it still hits you because even dead it keeps charging.

Let's not forget the fact that Finn Bryce used to work on Terraria as a sprite artist, and after doing some scummy(too long of a tangent to explain) stuff behind the scenes, he got kicked out of Re-Logic and founded Chucklefish.

2 more major issues & scandals you forgot to mention are: despite promising KS backers like myself (ugh...) that we'd get to name an NPC in the game, the names never appear anywhere ingame. The names are just hidden in a single file. Also, they got a puppy, kept it in their office to take pics of it and drum up attention on social media, and indirectly killed it due to their own negligence and incompetence after fans kept warning them not to have exposed wires it could chew on right next to its effing bed.

13:00 BRO. IMAGINE getting TOBY UNDERTALE FOX to compose music for your game, AND THEN THROWING IT OUT BECAUSE HE'S NOT IN YOUR IRC CHANNEL ENOUGH????

It's only saving grace today is a huge amount of mods that basically overhauls the entire game. Sad to see one of my favorite past times bite the dust

Early in development, I remember getting to a moon with barely any fuel left and having to dig deep to get to the liquid fuel. I was using ropes and torches and it felt like an actual adventure getting down there. Then they swapped that out for a ghost thing that chases you while you try and grab as much fuel as you can dig up on the surface. Lame, very lame.

There's a fair few bits about the game that I still like, but one thing that really bothered me was that even though you were given an entire galaxy to explore, 80% of all playtime was spent underground because that's where all the resources were

Starbound was a pretty great game, though the devs promised far too much, and ultimately the aesthetic and vibe of the game fell off as the game had a story forced into it. When things were more vague and unexplained is when the game had more charm. It felt more like exploring, less like an amusement park. Now everything feels fairly shallow.

A major killer was the revolving developer door. There was never a single, clear vision for the game – just a patchwork of orphaned mechanics loosely stitched together. The whole mech system is probably the most glaring example of this.

I played this game during beta with my friends. I found an entire moon full of healing glowing water. My entire existence was about collecting and distributing it. We had mods like crazy. My ship ended up with massive tankers of the stuff. I built a mega factory base on that moon, ans my friends came to buy it and use the spas i made to heal and relax. It was awesome. I played it a year later and it was entirely ruined.

Hey there, person who was part of the original kickstarter backers. Me and about 3 other friends decided to back the game way back in the day. It looked cool, promising, and the devs were very active. Despite it's rough edges, me and my friends all thoroughly enjoyed the game. Every new alpha update was a ton of fun to explore, and we loved messing with the new features. The temperature system was also cool, having to sacrifice armor protection for temperature protection, so you could continue to progress. Seeing that go was very sad. We had been having a lot of fun despite some of the weird changes because we trusted the process with the developers. Our only big issue up to that point is the amount of time it took for them to implement the community made race (which was embarassingly long, mind you. Only a few updates before official release.) Then, the game released. To say it was a downgrade would be an understatement. Locking the progression behind the lackluster, cookie cutter, boring as white bread story was the game's largest mistake by far. The missions were often more annoying than interesting, and clearing them usually involved having to planet hop to find a randomly generated legendary weapon, which may or may not even be very enjoyable to use. Certain tools had been entirely reworked, often for worse. Crafting building materials and furniture wasn't improved at all. This made playing the game post-final boss terrible. The only thing that carried the game into any sort of enjoyment was the modding. And modding starbound is actually excellent. *So excellent in fact, that Tiy actually offered to add one of the most popular custom races (Avali) into the game, but refused to pay, so it never happened.* Bryce is by far one of the most insufferable and sorry excuses for a developer the industry has ever seen, I hope nobody falls for his tricks again.

I knew when Eric Barone (the Stardew Valley Creator) was publicly distancing himself from Chucklefish (the publisher of stardew valley), and then when Chucklefish announced they were going to make a Harry Potter esque Hogwarts adventure game set in the stardew valley universe with stardew valley style graphics. And Eric Barone publicly said he had no part in that project and was annoyed people on social media constantly thought that project was associated with stardew valley or was a possible spin off of stardew valley. I knew some shit went down at that point. Had no idea it was this bad.

I loved Starbound, had no idea that all this stuff happened. Never knew it was a Kickstarter campaign. Knew the developers were ass though.

As somebody that player a good bit of Starbound throughout the last 3 years I'm kinda shocked I personally went to it after having a friend recommend me and have spend a few thousand hours in it The time I spend was great but it sucks to hear the backstory of what happened before.