Enough Is Enough!!! The Ongoing Saga!!! It's Almost The 3 Year Anniversary

No restriction in the U.S., and the financials were posted fairly early this year:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06751125/filing-history

Regarding the claim sometimes made that dev staff are being let go in favor of marketing, here is the staff breakdown for the past two fiscal years.

 

Yeah, but Metro Rivals was cancelled in April. So the effect of that wont be in the yearly report until next march.

 

Fair comment but all those “Studio” staff doesn’t quite fit with the pattern we are seeing of fewer in house routes being produced or what sort of contract they are on - whether part time, zero hours etc. And without treading on the toes of anyone at DTG it does seem a very high level of staffing for a company that now effectively has just two products in active development (TSW and Sodor) with Catan and Fishing dropped, and TSC on life support. Though obviously we don’t know what other work they might be doing behind the scenes for other developers or professional applications, phone/tablet apps etc.

Of course it is absolutely up to DTG how they run the company and how many and where they deploy their Human Resources. But nevertheless it is not unreasonable to expect the paying customer to raise an eyebrow and at least ponder the matter when faced with a significant price rise on what they are selling, with likely no real improvement in the overall quality.

 

SimRail looks like a more innovative game with greater potential. In essence, this game has embodied almost the entire spectrum of railway environment — the work of a driver, a dispatcher, automated communication- just jump and play. All this together creates a unique living environment, just like in real life, where each day can be unlike the previous one. With single player aspect everthyng is normal. Thanks to the workshop in Steam, we now have a very wide selection for single-player scenarios directly from the community. Just like with TS — one click and the scenario is already in the game.. It’s a massive network! The fact that this is happening in one country is purely a matter of money ( Dev team comsist of 10-15 empl). I always smile at the argument, saying, “Look at how many countries there are...in TSW”. But there aren’t many countries; it’s just short sections without a chance to create a fully-fledged railway network.
What we have with TSW? The product does not represent any integrity in any way. It’s reaching its technical and conceptual peak, with no hint of a further breakthrough in the simulation part. And the cherry on top is the inflated prices that don’t match the quality.

 

But it also only has Poland, which without being disrespectful, doesn't have the appeal of the US, UK and Germany an the general wide country base that tsw has, which is only growing, not to mention a multiplayer focus, which a lot of people, myself included, aren't interested in when it comes to train sims

 

Well said Denis.

 

I think if the technical debt can be overcome and the game had its quality more equally across DLC as opposed to the one or two third party developers who (in my opinion) actualy truely care, then TSW could still make the line go up.
it is just a shame that it seems more about the number of total players and the total yearly sales numbers on a spreedsheet nowadays and not so much about the game, its quality or the players.

shame like

 

It's always been about making money for the company and its shareholders, it just feels more egregious as the differences across different platforms become more and more pronounced.
"Tell them you're looking into it. Now tell them it'll take longer than you anticipated. Now show them the fancy new features we have coming soon. Now tell them you'll definitely look into it."

 

SimRail is the more innovative game but on X|S it's probably the most broken game I have ever played...and due to the fact that I've already had confirmation that our build will never be fixed, that innovation doesn't really count for anything.

It was also mentioned that because it was set in Poland, SimRail is less appealing than the more travelled TSW, but I'm not fully sold on that theory. On a personal level I would take a working 500km network (with a varied selection of trains) in a single country over a few miles of track in multiple countries any day of the week. It's just a shame SimRail is just too broken to allow me that to happen.

 

I've never really understood the need/want of other players to have local routes in their train game as a prerequisite for enjoyment (i.e. being from the UK and only playing UK routes). I suppose it's one thing if you prefer a certain country because of familiarity with or preference for the signals/safety systems/etc. I do admit the differences between countries can be appealing for that reason. I really like the procedural feel of the German signaling and safety systems if I'm in that kind of mood.

However, I play train sims to simulate driving a train, not to look at familiar scenery. The most important part of a simulator to me is having accurate and in-depth simulation. That's the meat. A train sim could be set on the moon for all I care and I would still enjoy it so long as it was immersive and meaty.

I guess another factor would be people who want to drive specific locos, but again, that preference would never prevent me from trying or enjoying something else. Different strokes as they say I guess.

 

I first got TSW during the pandemic when I was unable to travel due to lockdown so it allowed me to travel vicariously. It also allows me to drive trains I was amazed by in my youth, or travel along lines I'm already well familiar with in the case of Manchester Airport Commuter. I do enjoy seeing the Schwebenbahn in Wuppertal, and the experience of driving the LIRR. It's experiences I'm not likely to be able to experience, and new ways of looking at transit routes I used to take for granted.

 

People prefer familiarity, or they want to operate equipment they see on their daily. It isn't surprising this is a barrier for some people to try SimRail, myself included.

 

I enjoy all routes not just UK routes. However I wouldn't stick to just Simrail as it only has Polish routes. The reason I haven't got Simrail yet is because it doesn't have what I want in single player mode.

 

SimRail definitely has its pluses. I didn't think I cared for multiplayer until I tried the signal box mode. I really wish this was implemented in TSW. But the PS5 version is sooo broken and the devs appear to not to care about it at all.

@pinxtonpaws, can you share what confirmation you have that the xbox version won't be fixed, as it's likely the same fate for the PS5 version?

 

Looks like their business model is quite fine from the finance stand point, plus the 4.7M tax break doesn't hurt either.
Interesting spread of ww sales though... I get why UK routes are dominant these days, but I wonder who's their largest market outside Europe (N. America, China?)

 

Glad to see them financially healthy - we all want the franchise to continue and improve. It’s optics and engagement that matter, a happy consumer base on the whole will never grumble at forking out a few quid more. But a player base that is on the whole resigned to more of the same or worse, apathy, will not. Time will tell how this pans out, but I really do see TSW7 and future roadmaps before TSW8 as the final chance to prove DTG can get a large portion of their customers back on side and crucially re-engage them again. Get some excitement and optimism back in the room.

Sincerely, I wish them well. But they need to listen, learn, and act.

 

Fair enough. I suppose I understand the appeal on that level.

I guess for me it's more about just enjoying train tech and operations in general rather than being attached to any particular loco or region. Might just be my lack of growing up with significant rail services in my area so depth of simulation is far more appealing to me than most anything else. I used to be really into MSFS as well, and the parts that were most appealing came from actual operations (fully functional interior for expert level aircraft, accurate screen functions, etc.).

In my experience, any videogame adaptation of a familiar area just ends up being disappointing rather than endearing. When I'm playing something with unfamiliar scenery it's easy to just enjoy it and not nitpick any inaccuracies or what have you.

One of my favorite things when first getting into TSW was all the train tech, things to learn, etc. I especially love the more monitored and "tech heavy" things like what you see with LZB in Germany, or the monitored systems on the NY routes. Ironically though as an American, the US routes are some of my least played.

SimRail got me good with the ETCS implementation especially, but I especially like how functional almost everything is in the cab. It feels meaningful and consequential. Picked up all the DLC while it was on sale and it just hits the spot (for me). Despite all being in Poland I find all the route extensions/map areas have a significantly different look and feel. Haven't bothered to do any multiplayer yet and I've got around 30 hours sunk into it.

I respect that. I think all the big players have something unique to offer, just depends on what you want out of it. I didn't really mean to make my post another "pro-SimRail" thing, but I guess the implication is there anyway. That being said, for me it was/is a nice breath of fresh air as another true simulator outside of the TSW sphere. I have yet to touch the multiplayer myself, and probably won't until I exhaust all of the single player scenarios.

Run 8 is a non-starter for me despite being set in my home country as I don't usually do non-Steam games these days. There's Zusi, but I think the lack of graphical fidelity is too extreme for my own preference.

 

Br 161 for you

 

Well, not really. If you read the entire document then unit sales have pretty much stagnated over the past year and gross profit has fallen by almost £2m. Sure net profit has improved during that time, but that's largely down to a huge drop in overheads.

 

In deference to earlier comments, I will be watching the streams and make an informed (ha!) decision whether to go for the £40 Standard version rather than the free update. It is three routes for the equivalent of £13 each so any Steam sale will be hard pushed to beat that. However I don’t see the value in the Deluxe Pack this time round. The GP49 is an oddity, I’m not a fan of ICE’s and only really the 333 which is needed to round off the Leeds route. So that can wait until it’s going for £7 or £8 in a sale next year.

 

You also have to bear in mind that in 6 or so months time you'll be able to buy the standard edition for anything upto 50% off (with even bigger savings beyond that), which makes it a very tempting proposition if you want all three routes instead of just the one at a bargain price and can let go of the old fomo thing.
The other thing that puzzles me is why on earth sell the DX edition for £115 when you can just as easily buy the TSW6 bundle with exactly the same content for less than £20 and add it to the £40 standard edition later this month.

 

Let’s just say if I do decide to go Standard rather than free, I’ll be using my infamous two hour refund window very wisely. Particularly the Leeds route, paying close attention to the route quality (assuming Rivet are involved),the night lighting and the 331 sounds.

 

Well, I know the Leeds > Ilkley route extremely well (I even 'drove' a class 101 between Guiseley & Menston when I was 4½ years old) so I'm curious as to which landmarks they've missed out. The one I guarantee will be missed is the almost 200 year old milestone marker outside the forge (displaying the exact halfway point between London & Edinburgh) because although it's a famous landmark, it's not really that well known outside of West Yorks. A bit like mischievous night on 4th November

 

Apologies, I never saw your reply.
I got an email from them some time in April stating that a new PC beta build of Simrail launched simultaneously with the X|S version and their primary focus was on further developing that build, with no plans to update the older console version. There was an apology for the game not meeting my expectations (or something like that...I can't remember) and a link for various ingame tips!!
My first thought was that it sold badly enough on X|S for them to decide it just wasn't worth the effort fixing it for the benefit of a very small audience, but that's just my overall feeling.
The PS5 launch was way later than ours so it might well be you've gotten the current build....I really don't know.

All I can really add beyond that is: If (amongst many other things) parts of your train have blurry (very low resolution) textures, the scenery suffers from terrible pop-in, the game's menu forever freezes, the XP system is completely broken, scenarios refuse to load and the game frequently crashes.....welcome to our world

 

Thank you for your reply. Maybe I should email them too and see what excuse they'll come up with. The PS5 build is from early June and the whole Krakow to Tunel section is not included for dispatching and most train traffic. There are so many game breaking bugs with multiplayer though. The in-game time randomly jumps ahead and backwards rendering the server unplayable until restart, and AI dispatcher gets unresponsive if a player was there before, there is a "filter" on the train windows making text on speed limit/radio signs (and water texture) disappear so driving HUD less difficult. Half of trophies are bugged and don't track progress. These are just the major ones, but there are others.. And we similarly experience pop ins (the rendering distance is 500m), low resolution textures and single player scenarios that fail to load. On the positive, at least I don't experience that many crashes, and when everything is working, the multiplayer is fun.

 

I got an email from them in early August basically stating the same but stated due to low player support they have basically abandoned the Xbox version for the forseeable future.

Glad it wasn't that expensive.

I never thought I'd be praising Aerosoft over them but at least Subway Sim 2 and The Bus get frequent updates and DLC for consoles.

 

If they are not going to support it they should just return the money.

 

At release, the state of the game was not good. So people are holding back buying, or refund when they bought it. Then people see after release, it's lacking patches, so they're still holding off. So I can understand it's not a huge succes, but's it's their own fault.

So go fix the game, so more people are willing to buy it.

 

Although I generally support SimRail, it has to be said that their support can be erratic. I posted two bug reports regarding SP scenarios on their forum over a week ago. As they have to be approved before publication, I’m still waiting for them to appear and the view count indicates no one from the dev side has even looked at them.

 

Interesting to read that Simrail has a forum!

 

https://forum.simrail.eu/

It’s not very active though. More discussion on the associated Steam forum and probably their Discord, though I don’t use the latter.

 

Or better still, go all old skool and not release it broken in the first place!

The 'fix it later' mentality is starting to become a lot more harmful than developers perhaps realise because as you quite correctly pointed out, sensible-minded gamers have been burned too many times in the past to just jump in and insta-buy something nowadays and they're now more inclined to wait and see what happens....especially if said developer's reputation is highly questionable.

 

I only trust Firefly right now. Rivet did well with their 377/3 and 171 but that’s it. Firefly produced a beautiful route and the only issue was an audio bug they communicated at all times and were humble enough to apologise for. Can’t fault them at all. Wish they’d take over the entire company tbh

 

They do, but they require you to sign up/in via Steam log in. That's a big no-no for me personally. I've done all the reading about how the sign in tokens work for stuff like that but I'm still too much of an old man to shake my misgivings. Might as well be signing up with my bank account or something as far as I'm concerned, so I'm not interested. Can't even sign up to their Discord without logging into the forum.

It's also super dead over there so not really worth the bother anyway. I'm sure I'm not the only one who isn't signed up because of the Steam log in stuff.

 

Still beats that "age verification" service that Russian hackers had a backdoor into, who were recently revealed to be selling the use of 150 million US drivers licences that people had used to verify their age on websites.

 

Blimey! Have I woken up after my old person's afternoon power nap in some weird alternate universe

 

Well, you clearly haven't done all the reading. Single sign on tokens do not at all mean you are giving somebody full access. And bank identity is literally used as source of authority in many places nowadays and is even accepted as a government ID.

 

I’m with OldVern on this… this is a game.. that’s it.. and you’re buying stuff that sometimes doesn’t work properly which is utterly unacceptable. I totted up what I’ve spent since buying this 8 months ago and there’s no way I can justify another £100 minimum on routes and trains I’d like for a joined up experience.. Euston to Carlisle for example.

I’ve been looking elsewhere to spend my money so a new bass guitar it is.. and if it doesn’t work as it should.. it’ll go back for a replacement with no questions asked. Yep, I’ve exercised my right to not buy here and go elsewhere so I’ll point that out before someone does it for me. DTG should look at their priorities and they’re more interested in posturing than rectifying a faulty product.

The losers are DTG and the winners the guitar shop.

 

A couple of points:
Firstly, I agree with Vern on a lot of things because as a spokesperson for people on my side of the fence there's a lot of common sense in what he says. Sure, not all the time (the "I'm not going to buy xx route...my money is staying in my steam wallet" (and then proceeds to buy it) thing is mighty strange!) but generally speaking his thoughts and opinions do align with my way of thinking.

Secondly, the thing that most concerns me is that this new premium price structure gave me the impression that TSW7 was entering a new era of vastly improved quality levels, but what I've seen and heard so far on the two showcase streams does kind of suggest the exact opposite. I mean how many times did Matt say he'd have to talk to xx team each time something irregular showed up? It was also particularly hilarious (or even particularly disturbing) when he was highlighting how wonderful the live weather thing was...the very second it broke!

Talking of which, I didn't fully grasp how live weather was supposed to work, but I did get the impression that the game looks out of the window, so to speak, and says "right, that's the weather you're getting for the region in question". If that is indeed the case then has anyone else noticed that the system is kinda flawed because the only way it will ever be accurate (live weather) is when the service you're playing ingame is perfectly aligned with real time.
ie, If it's 1pm and throwing it down in the real world and you're doing a 9pm jolly jaunt to Penzance, does that mean it'll be raining ingame? Even though nobody knows what the weather will be like in 8 hours time!!
I'm sure I'm wrong and this new live weather thing is mega-complex but nonetheless, it did make me think (or maybe over-think...who knows) about exactly how it works.

 

Good point indeed. In FlightSim the live weather replicates weather as you’re flying ‘in the moment’. I don’t see how live weather works in a game playing a route based 10 years ago or as you say, current day but at a time in the future.

 

From one bass player to another.

 

Or even weather at an earlier point during the day. If it was sunny at 8am but raining at the time you choose to play TSW, will you be driving in sunshine or rain if you choose an 8am service? If it's the latter then is that really live weather?

 

Matt already confirmed it’s not using historic weather.

I suspect the way it’s implemented is it will use your system time rather than game time, I can’t see they’ve come up with a system that can’t look back in time, but can use forecasting for ahead of time (though let’s be honest, if anyone did come up with that, it would be DTG).

 

The way it sounds like they have set up live weather it shows the current weather at the time you are playing in real life.

So if you were playing TSW in January and ran say Boston Commuter, and the current weather was snow. Even if you set the date to July and used live weather you would see snow in the game on that route.

 

MSFS uses historical data (I forget how many year's worth but it's quite substantial) so you can roll back time and pick up an exact preset for your chosen date. There's nothing wrong with doing it the Dovetail way but it does kinda make it 'live weather' in the loosest possible term. Unless of course you choose a service that exactly matches real time

 

What DTG does here, is exactly what live weather is. It's all in the name, live. It's just representing you what is happening right now irl.

It's not about historical weather, which it not live anyway.

Is this a useful function, not in my opinion and I really don't care about it at all. I choose myself in what kind of weather I want to drive today, it's depending on my mood or what I like to see.

I prefer DTG is focussing on real and overdue issues instead of this kind of stuff.

 

I have been known to flip flop on the odd occasion. TSW is like a little demon poking away in your head with its pitchfork (sometimes) you know you should say no but at the last you give in. Or the bad road accident you drive past before the covers are over and know you shouldn't look but glance anyway.

Even now in the face of all the adverse factor, that bl**dy little demon is whispering, "Standard Version, Standard Version" in my ear.

Well a final decision hinges on the Leeds stream this evening.

 

Can’t wait to have nothing but rain for 9 months of the year in Scotland routes

 

Vide my post from yesterday: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/thats-it-im-done.99370/#post-1146446 I for one have indeed, finally, had enough.

 

Only if the runs are longer than 20 mins otherwise it's going to be clear skies.