Indie Dev to Epic's Mark Rein: "F**k Off"

Tom Goldman

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Aug 17, 2009
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Indie Dev to Epic's Mark Rein: "F**k Off"



The one man band that runs independent developer Positech Games had a less than favorable encounter with Epic Games' Mark Rein.

Cliff Harris's Gears of War [http://www.positech.co.uk/] fame) took a shot at Harris and other indie studios during the Develop Conference in Brighton, UK, leading Harris to believe he should "Fuck off."

While Harris was on a panel with other indie developers Robin Lacey (Beatnik), Sean Murray (Hello Games) and Mark Morris (Introversion), the topic of personally responding to customers came up. Harris said how he liked that "someone can email you as an indie dev, and you can reply personally back to that potential customer, and hopefully, that way you have converted that guy to buying the game."

Apparently this was followed by "this derisive snort from this guy in the front row, who said something to the effect of 'one guy? who cares, that's a waste of time'. He then started to lecture us on how that's a silly way to do it." This man was Mark Rein, the vice president of Epic Games. Harris says he "got the impression [Mark Rein] was there to laugh at the little guys, or to just inform us how we are all wrong," and that he's a "jerk," but the language got much saltier after that.

Harris wrote:

He may laugh when me and Mark [Morris] discuss the pitiful money our companies make, and giggle at the fact that we reply to gamers on a one-on-one basis... But fuck him. I would rather earn minimum wage making indie strategy games for the PC, as my own boss, with an original game, satisfying a hardcore niche of friendly customers (the one-thousand-true-fans-philosophy), without a publisher telling me what to do, and without having to leave my house to go to work, without having to do 'crunch time' (because, dude... its like so macho to work until 3AM and never see your family)... Than I would work at epic for megabucks. The sheer overwhelming stench of testosterone would probably give me a headache, combined with the dizzy excitement of exactly what shade of grey our next game's space-marine would wear as he kicked alien butt.

After a few more jabs at how anti-indie Mark Rein is, Harris finished with: "But Triple-A studio bosses trying to lecture me on how to communicate better with gamers? Fuck off." Epic designer and rock star Cliffy B tweeted in Rein's defense with "I've personally seen Mark Rein reply to tons of random people who email him. He blind copies me *constantly*," and "I haven't spoken with Mark today, but I'd wager he thought the comment was silly that only indy devs reply or interact to customers." Rein himself hasn't responded to the indie heckling allegations.

I get the feeling that from a big business point of view, making sales by replying to emails isn't necessarily going to make anyone rich, but it does help a company's image especially when the news spreads that a developer cares about its customers enough to reply. I'm reminded of the situation with Torchlight where Runic Games manually helped a single player get unstuck [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95783-Runic-Devs-Lend-Stuck-Players-A-Hand]. Assuming Rein's comments weren't taken the wrong way, he may have been incorrect about the effect a personal response can have on a player base and the willingness it can create for people to purchase a developer's games, especially in the indie sector, even if an immediate sale of one copy doesn't earn a life-changing amount of money.


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reg42

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Mar 18, 2009
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Judging from the information here, I probably would have done the same.
 

Blue Musician

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Mar 23, 2010
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Interesting. I would have also preferred to be an indie developer than into some gaming company.
 

Ironic Pirate

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May 21, 2009
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Well this'll get interesting soon.

Gears 3 might have some red shirts modeled after this guy.

EDIT: Cliffy B responded fairly well, I have to say.
 

Digikid

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Dec 29, 2007
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ABout time someone told them to bugger off. Epic makes great games but the success have gone to their heads and now are a bunch of A-Holes.....and the BIGGEST one is Cliffy B with Mark as second.

THey need to start co-operating more with other companies and actually LISTEN to their fanbase.
 

TsunamiWombat

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Sep 6, 2008
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The facts are, it doesn't matter what the facts are.

A big time developer mocked a little indie developer, so, the inteir world is going to rally behind the little developer and tell the big developer to fuck off.

So right or wrong, Epic better put on it's PR pants and apologize for any 'misunderstanding', even if it was just that - a complete misunderstanding.
 

DSK-

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May 13, 2010
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Well, judging from the complete and utter piece of crap that Unfinished Tournament 3 is (no! I will not let it go!) I will most certainly side with the Indie developer. Props to him standing up for himself, his business and Indie developers.
 

The_ModeRazor

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Jul 29, 2009
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Is Cliffy B some kinda rapper?

More to the point: yeah, they're indie, which means they do this not for the moneys (I guess they do it for that too, but if that was the only motivation, they would be much better off just joining, say, Epic or some company like that), so they have the right to tell everyone to fuck themselves. /half-sarcasm mode
 

The Ambrosian

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May 9, 2009
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Ironic Pirate said:
Well this'll get interesting soon.

Gears 3 might have some red shirts modeled after this guy.

EDIT: Cliffy B responded fairly well, I have to say.
How'd you know about his response?
OT: Nice move epic, real nice.
 

Roper

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Apr 1, 2010
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I have to admit that having someone personally reply to your problems makes you feel a lot better about them, like they actually give a damn about you, and even if it is just so they look better, at least they try.
 

More Fun To Compute

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Nov 18, 2008
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Some of those comments, wow. It sounds like Mark Rein isn't used to speaking to people who don't have anything to lose by talking about how he behaves.
 

Danpascooch

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Apr 16, 2009
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reg42 said:
Judging from the information here, I probably would have done the same.
I agree, it doesn't even matter how he "supposedly" meant what he said, a "snort and a giggle" makes the intention pretty clear.
 

MrPop

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May 14, 2009
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That "Shades of grey" bit was pretty funny. Although as someone said earlier it is just more brown.
 

duchaked

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Ironic Pirate said:
Well this'll get interesting soon.

Gears 3 might have some red shirts modeled after this guy.

EDIT: Cliffy B responded fairly well, I have to say.
mhmm more or less my thoughts heh

hopefully things don't get too messy. don't need anymore scats in the games industry right now
 

Sebenko

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Dec 23, 2008
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Yay Indie developers.

"Fuck off". That's the sort of straight talking I like.

Also, Epic? Who are those guys? Never heard of them. They can't be very good. Maybe they should take some tips from Taleworlds.


Yes, I've heard of them. Only game I've seen by them is UT3, and that was shit. Why does anyone buy AAA titles any more? I'm not the sort of person who refuses to buy a game if more than three people have heard of it, but all the AAA titles coming out seem to be complete shite.

Maybe the next in the line of three billion identical FPS/ Over The Shoulder games will change that? I think not *snort and giggle*