Dear Jonathan,
My name is Colin Thompson; I manage the Customer Support team for THQ North America. I was forwarded your letter from May 2011, and after conducting a little research on my side, wanted to reach out and hopefully address your concerns .
First, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to serve as a voice for the Supreme Commander/ Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance community. While THQ regularly receives feedback regarding current, past, and future titles, your letter particularly stands out (in my 5 years with THQ) due to its attention, clarity and specificity. I'm also aware the letter was the sum of the input of several other Supreme Commander community members (yes, we read the message boards, too!), so I'd like to pass on my appreciation to your fellow SupCom fans.
On to business - Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, and your request that the unofficial patch 3603 be certified by THQ for distribution. Like I said, this took a little research, as many of the QA personnel who worked on Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance have moved on to new positions, or new companies.
It's my understanding that the licensing agreement between THQ and Gas Powered Games ended in late 2008. When that relationship ended, the ability for THQ as the publisher to provide quality assurance testing for any further patches also expired. However, in my discussions with current THQ QA staff, they recollected that some measure of testing was done on patch 3603, as a favor to Gas Powered Games. But because the relationship had ended, a sanctioned patch by the publisher would not be possible. I believe this was conducted in the late spring of 2009.
Since that determination was made, no further quality assurance testing was performed on Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. There are no current or pending plans to resume this testing, ostensibly leaving patch 3603 in its unsupported, unofficial beta state.
Is this largely a legal issue? I'm not an attorney, but my guess is yes.
When a license to produce a game ends, so do obligations to provide further material testing. The issue is probably also financial in nature, as the resources required to staff a development and quality assurance team to fully test and certify a patch for a several-years-old game would be operationally and financially prohibitive - and the argument could be made that THQ is fully engaged in producing new products tied to new IPs or existing licenses.
So, going back a paragraph, the short answer again is, there are no current or pending plans to produce an official patch 3603 for Supreme Commander:
Forged Alliance. I am not aware of any information that would suggest it's a future possibility.
As an industry professional, I doubt this would surprise anyone who's ever worked for a videogame publisher. I'm sure this has happened many times before, and simply - it is what it is. The licensing agreements, the legal aspects, the contracts, the resource allocations, ROI - at some point a project reaches the end of its viability.
As a fellow gamer, would I like to see a patch produced for a great game
like Forged Alliance? Of course. But again, even we gamers have to dabble
in reality, and at some point have to accept things as they are. Licenses end, resources are allocated to new projects, and the game industry churns ahead with the latest and greatest.
Lastly, despite the lack of any future patch plans, my Customer Support team will continue to support the official versions of Supreme Commander & Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Forget your GPG password? Contact my team. Having a problem installing or reinstalling the game? Contact my team. Game disc scratched/eaten/lost? You guessed it, contact my team at http://support.thq.com, and we can still probably provide a replacement (as long as supplies hold out).
Again, thanks for taking the time to write. I would have liked to have responded sooner, but I wanted as complete a picture as possible on the history of the THQ/GPG relationship before responding with something coherent.
Respectfully,
Colin Thompson
Supervisor, Customer Support
THQ
http://support.thq.com|||Didn't get the response we hoped for, but I think that was a good enough outcome.|||that was a much better reply than i was expecting.
i have to ask though, if
Quote:|||That was a very detailed reply. Many thanks to Mr. Thompson.
This of course leaves the question of who is responsible for QA'ing and releasing the patch. If the licensing agreement with THQ had already ended, I would think GPG is free to release the patch on their own. Unless the agreement with SE made them the owners of SupCom1, in which case another patch request to SE would be in order.|||yes but that kinda going back on what chris taylor said in his chat with me,
said that it was down to THQ and not gpgnet or even SQ as THQ has teh rights to teh game but the IP no longer is with THQ.
Quote:|||Now it is to my understanding that GPG has sole ownership of GPGNet? Or does Sega have a hand in that?
If GPG does own GPGNet, then I suppose they could revive the old idea of a 3603 ladder. GPG produces another unofficial patch (call it 3604 for now), then set up an FA 3604 section for GPGNet with an official ladder. Then use banner ads and such to make people move to the new ladder and eventually unoffically "kill" the 3599 ladder, which will have a place similar to the current vanilla ladder.
Another idea I thought of is to have the 3604 patch be placed on GPGNet as part of the update routine, so that people patching their games via GPGNet would automatically get the 3604 patch and be put in 3604 GPGnet mode. Then the 3599 ladder would be depreciated and eventually could be retired. But there might be legal trouble since people would be running a version of FA not supported by THQ.|||as far as i am aware sega has 0 rights to gpgnet as thats gpg. but the rights to the server behind it they might.
but the problem with the fa is as far as i am aware thq owns the server matrix that runs supcom server on gpgnet and gpg can't do anything aobut it.|||Chris Taylor WILL BE FOLLOWING THIS POST UP WITH THQ ON MONDAY.|||Cool Beans! :)|||reddev33|||whats going to break in fa?
taht thq can do anythink about anyway?
if fa breaks u unistall and reisntall and start all over again
|||The out come is totally as I expected.The tone and detail of the response was not. The fact we got a response at all is to me, astonishing.
So thank you very much Colin!
I think what he's saying is that there is a time to freeze the game, and that time was passed by years ago. Its totally understandable.
We just have to accept it as it is now. The modding community are very tallented and have made this game enjoyable way past its 'use-by' date for me.|||Hmm could have sworn I made a pretty elabourate post here.
Must have been a bit to confronting I guess as it seems to be removed.
Hope the idea it included is usefull.|||I reported it: it was stupid, off-topic, and insulting.|||That may be a matter of opinion.|||Not all of it. We are here to discuss the response to the letter to THQ and what to do about it. You were here ranting on GPG. That is off-topic and useless to our discussion here.|||Back on topic. I don't want to see more moderation in this thread.
Reddev, can you ask CT about anything concerning the follow up with THQ (for the live chat).|||X-Cubed|||Well what is there to discuss?
FA will not be supported and GPG is making different games.
Ah well, good luck convincing THQ to support it somehow ...|||let me put it this way what does THQ support at the moment that gpg does not?|||What you are trying to say is that GPG likes to support but THQ has to coincide.|||BulletMagnet|||My computer makes these double posts on purpose... I swear.
|||The other option is to strip out 3rd party code, and release it under some form of FOSS license. GPG and THQ would earn massive brownie points from the entire gaming community for that.|||BulletMagnet
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