Looks like Spintires is dead

[Raduque]

The dev, Pavel and his publisher are having a fight over money. Apparently, Pavel coded in some timebombs to kill the game once he started having difficulties with Oovee. Spintires now crashed almost immediately when you try to play or load a new game.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/03/02/spintires-sabotage-timebombs/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Spintires/comments/47m5ju/psa_timebomb_present_in_spintiresexe_community/

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1192735&page=1

Sad end to a great concept. :'(

 

[Sabrewings]

Ack! No! My buddy and I used to play this together a lot and were talking about getting back on it.

It was a lot of fun in MP.

Edit: After reading, this isn't the first time this happened with Spintires. I remember when we crossed from 2014 to 2015 the game would crash and you had to reset your PC's time to 2014 for a couple weeks to make it work. I suspect it'll be fixed in short order like it was last time.

 

[Markbnj]

It doesn't really matter what issues he's having in his business relationships, that is still an incredibly immature (and possibly actionable) response.

 

[Fallen Kell]

So from what I read, it looks like Oovee doesn't like paying Pavel (the developer) on time with his cut of the proceeds from the game. Because it happened often enough Pavel put in the coded timelocks and told Oovee of them so that they would get their act together and pay him what he is owed on the proper timeline that was originally agreed upon. Oovee had been better at paying Pavel the last few times, and Pavel had updated the timelocks after each of the payments, but this time Oovee went back to not paying on time, and thus the timelock expired without being updated.

So in other words, Oovee seems entirely at fault in this, and is not properly handling the income from this game by setting asside Pavel's portion of the income into its own account and instead is mixing all their income together with their general funds, possibly overspending on other projects, and then cutting Pavel a check when they feel like it.

 

[sandorski]

Wow, glad I didn't pick it up then. That has to be illegal though, right?

 

[Raduque]

Possibly a refundable action if you want to go that route.

 

[Elixer]

So in other words, Oovee seems entirely at fault in this, and is not properly handling the income from this game by setting asside Pavel's portion of the income into its own account and instead is mixing all their income together with their general funds, possibly overspending on other projects, and then cutting Pavel a check when they feel like it.

No, sorry, if he was paid to do a job, then he should do that job, or quit.
If he inserted kill code into the project for future royalties, then, he basically said screw you to the community that plays this game, since he don't care one bit about all those people that paid for it.

I expect legal action soon.

 

[Subyman]

Was it through a patch? Maybe steam can roll it back.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

No, sorry, if he was paid to do a job, then he should do that job, or quit.
If he inserted kill code into the project for future royalties, then, he basically said screw you to the community that plays this game, since he don't care one bit about all those people that paid for it.

I expect legal action soon.

Agreed assuming he sabotaged it that's incredibly short sighted & immature. I thought about buying this last steam sale, now I doubt it even if it gets patched.

 

[Elixer]

From reading more, the code was inserted from the get go, as a bargaining chip for future payments.
Which means, this is pure blackmail, no way around it.
If you don't pay me, then it is scorched earth policy, and I will ruin you.

Looks like there is a patch made by some crackers to disable the timebomb.

 

[Fallen Kell]

No, sorry, if he was paid to do a job, then he should do that job, or quit.
If he inserted kill code into the project for future royalties, then, he basically said screw you to the community that plays this game

But that is just it, he isn't getting paid... Oovee said, screw you, we have your game, we may or may not pay you the royalties that you are owed. The timelocks were to force the royalty payments to happen on time as agreed to for development of the game.


Think of it this way, you go to a car dealership and you buy a catering truck for your business, and you agree to pay X amount up front, and Y amount every month for Z amount of months. You then go take the truck and after 2 months of payments decide that you arn't going to continue paying for the truck anymore but keep using it to support your business. Well, the dealership is going to come and repo your truck (which is what Pavel did for his code).

 

[Fanatical Meat]

But that is just it, he isn't getting paid... Oovee said, screw you, we have your game, we may or may not pay you the royalties that you are owed. The timelocks were to force the royalty payments to happen on time as agreed to for development of the game.


Think of it this way, you go to a car dealership and you buy a catering truck for your business, and you agree to pay X amount up front, and Y amount every month for Z amount of months. You then go take the truck and after 2 months of payments decide that you arn't going to continue paying for the truck anymore but keep using it to support your business. Well, the dealership is going to come and repo your truck (which is what Pavel did for his code).

You're entitled to your opinion, I do feel that it would be fine for him to stop supporting the game for new drivers and such if he isn't getting paid but to insert a bomb into the game that destroys it for people who supported you doesn't feel right. Who would buy a future game from this guys assuming its true? Protecting your reputation is very important.

 

[Elixer]

But that is just it, he isn't getting paid... Oovee said, screw you, we have your game, we may or may not pay you the royalties that you are owed. The timelocks were to force the royalty payments to happen on time as agreed to for development of the game.

Then, he should take them to court and let them settle this.
Instead, he had the code in there from the start, this wasn't just added as negotiations broke down.

Think of it this way, you go to a car dealership and you buy a catering truck for your business, and you agree to pay X amount up front, and Y amount every month for Z amount of months. You then go take the truck and after 2 months of payments decide that you arn't going to continue paying for the truck anymore but keep using it to support your business. Well, the dealership is going to come and repo your truck (which is what Pavel did for his code).

Heh, that is the wrong way to look at this, since we don't know what Y or Z was, or if even there was a Y or Z. It is all speculation. We need to see the contract.
But, I'll play along, here, the dealer puts in a bomb in the trunk of the truck, and doesn't mention anything to the truck buyer.
Truck buyer goes on their way, and sells food.
Dealer goes, hey truck buyer, I know you paid for the truck and everything, but you guys are making a killing, so I want more. Pay up!
Truck driver says we paid you full.
Dealer goes hahahahahha instead of going to court to ask for a renegotiation of the contract, and says take that!
The truck explodes.
You can bet the catering company would sue the pants off the dealer.

 

[sweenish]

I wonder when the internet will tire of overly complicated analogies. If ever.

This one isn't even that good. Is the truck driver the customer or the dev? The dev would really be the truck OEM. The driver is the customer. The issue is between the dev and the publisher (dealer), and customers are caught with some unforeseen consequences.

 

[Qbah]

So... seems the crashing is due to an error in their internal pirating check. It was not a timebomb. I wonder if all the people talking shit about the programmer will apologize now? I guess not...

http://steamed.kotaku.com/spintires-steam-clusterfuck-explained-1762498563

“There is in fact a time-related bug (a self-check uses time functions to see if game wasn’t cracked by pirates) which was not fixed in time (because we have little to no communicating with Oovee). The bug was fixed a day ago and should be uploaded to Steam - I don’t know what actually prevents Oovee from going with it now.”

 

[Stuka87]

Yeah, this was never intentionally done by Pavel, Spintires is his baby. It is his game entirely, Oovee is just the publisher.

He has already fixed it, just up to Oovee to upload that fix.

 

[Raduque]

So... seems the crashing is due to an error in their internal pirating check. It was not a timebomb. I wonder if all the people talking shit about the programmer will apologize now? I guess not...

http://steamed.kotaku.com/spintires-steam-clusterfuck-explained-1762498563

If any of it's true. No telling what actually happened. It's been pulled from Steam - can't buy it anymore.

 

[Sabrewings]

Like I said, this happened before just over a year ago. I imagine they're telling the truth here since there's no solid evidence to the contrary, only keyboard jockey speculations.

 

[Stringjam]

So... seems the crashing is due to an error in their internal pirating check. It was not a timebomb. I wonder if all the people talking shit about the programmer will apologize now? I guess not...

http://steamed.kotaku.com/spintires-steam-clusterfuck-explained-1762498563

Yeah, I can't imagine any developer actually doing something like that - they would be hammering nails in their own coffin.

No publisher would ever touch them again.

 

[Elixer]

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/dev-denies-sabotaging-pc-game-with-time-bomb-code/1100-6435309/

"Well, I don't understand who and why started the rumors of sabotaging--apparently they are based on reverse engineering Spintires code?" he told the site. "Anyways, publisher (Oovee) have the source codes so they know (they should) I didn't sabotage Spintires--there is no such code!"

"But there is in fact a time-related bug (a self-check uses time functions to see if game wasn't cracked by pirates) which was not fixed in time (because we have little to no communicating with Oovee.)"

So, he is claiming that this is DRM on top of Steam's DRM, and AFAICT, it was never mentioned on steam's page to back that up.
As for the "time-related bug" itself, this was already patched out by some crackers, so, again, legit people paying for this gets the shaft.

Sounds more like a PR move than anything else so far, so, we will wait and see what comes of this.

I also noticed this http://www.oovee.co.uk/forum/topic/12612-recent-crash-issue-fix-is-now-released/

We are pleased to say we have now released a fix for the recent crash onto Steam.

In the next few days we will release a full and frank statement regarding the cause of the problem and how we plan to avoid this happening again, as well as details of the next update we have been working on since the start of 2016 which we plan to start testing next week.

So, we will get to compare stories...

 

[Raduque]

Just saw that over on Neogaf as well. Haven't tried playing it yet since it started crashing as the beginning of the week.

 

[Blue_Max]

Just saw that over on Neogaf as well. Haven't tried playing it yet since it started crashing as the beginning of the week.

So THAT's what's going on! My kids and I play this regularly but the recent instabilities have made it impossible.

Three copies of this once-fun game. I feel extremely cheated out of that money.

Not cool. Fix the game or offer Steam credit... (Yeah, yeah, pre-release game, roll the dice, etc...) *sigh* :'(

 

[Dankk]

For those who haven't realized it yet: the game is fixed now, and you can play it again.

 

[Craig234]

Wonder what the story is on the fix.

 

[thesmokingman]

I almost bought this a while back, whew glad I saw this.