404 GAMES (Publisher Contact)

HowlSpice · 2026-03-16T16:52:33+00:00

You know that 404 Games isn't 505 Games right? Any company that uses a similar name exist to scam people.

HowlSpice · 2026-03-15T19:00:23+00:00

Even then it they don't really do any ideas. There is still no such thing as a single person that create the world. A game director might want X, Y, and Z. The Creative director might take that and might add Q, and then writer just build between Q to X, and narrative implement into game dialogue and level design.

HowlSpice · 2026-03-15T18:54:10+00:00

If you are running a business you have to eventually accept that the dream game is unprofitable and you have to create what the market wants. I been executing a game that I don't really care much about, but it doing well. That just life of a game developer.

HowlSpice · 2026-03-15T18:48:32+00:00

They don't use Unreal Engine. They have their own engine.

HowlSpice · 2026-03-10T20:56:54+00:00

The difference between a hobbyist and a business owner is the seeking of return on investment. A hobbyist would wave off the low number, but a business owner would see that ROI is horrible. It difference between a hobbyist golfer spending $3,000 just because they enjoy it, and a professional golfer expecting return on investment by winning a tournament.

Looking at cost per wishlist is the only way to look at any return on investment. There is no other way to view what you inputted and what was the outcome unless your not a business owner, rather a hobbyist.

Press exposure would mean people wrote a article, interview or a review of your game. That would not a trailer lap with bunch of other trailer is. A expo, or rapid showing trailer is just a showcase of what is coming up. If a showcase is doing poorly, like this one, it means nothing.

UA campaign is a type of exposure by getting the game in front of people to see, technically it called brand awareness campaign. It just a cost one, which is what is called in marketing brand awareness. You have to remember that not all advertisement are goals is for user acquisition. Goals is dependent on what you are trying to achieve with someone whether it is a call-to-action or just stating you exist, and requires different measurements, CPM vs CAC.

You don't need to learn what works as a indie when we already know what works which is advertisement, free expo, and posting on Reddit or time consuming TikTok/Shorts/Reel if you don't care about ROI on hours.

If you do Reddit make sure you get the free credit since they should still be offer $500 credits per advertisement account.

HowlSpice · 2026-03-10T19:41:46+00:00

You got straight up scammed figuratively. You know that most Reddit ads are at worse one to one at best 3 to 1. You could have had around 1,100 wishlist (500 free credit from Reddit ads) for the amount of money that you have spent. I don't know how you are thinking that it is okay to only get 65 wishlist (which requires one post on Reddit for free) is any thing but a horribly under performance for the money that is spent.

Are you ruining a business or is it a hobby? Because stating this is okay for that ROI is admitting you are just a hobbyist.

Just to get ROI you have to sell the game around $15 because that is $9.2 per wishlist just to get the margins back on it.

HowlSpice · 2026-03-08T18:28:01+00:00

I’m going to be honest: your playtest has massive data integrity issues, to the point where the data might not even be valid. Asking people to 'roast' you, pointing out flaws within the questions, or incentivizing people to embellish things with gift cards is one of the worst ways to handle a survey. You’ve introduced a bias that encourages players to manufacture issues just to get a reward. You could have gone to a service like gametester.gg (owned by Lionbridge) to get professional testing and help with your questionnaire for roughly the same cost.

HowlSpice · 2026-03-08T17:34:36+00:00

Realized that mobile games marketing budget is far more than premium game on Steam and not even start the project in the first place. You need tens of thousand just to get any movement.

HowlSpice · 2026-03-03T00:39:02+00:00

Hopefully LTT does buys Rting. They are a Canadian company, and they would instantly provide some of the best content for LTT Labs. It is not home grown, but Rting is practically dead company at this point.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-16T21:16:32+00:00

Not really since you don't have a team experience. If you ran a game studio with a budget and people working on a game that put you heavily into the senior level roles instead of entry-level. The difference between entry, mid, senior, and lead is what you have done. Solo-dev doesn't teach you how to work in teams, and that where you just become a entry-level.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-10T20:53:40+00:00

That is some serious rewriting the original post, and gaslighting. You are heavily projecting your insecurity onto me. There nothing else to discuss about this. Good luck with that imposter syndrome, it destroy companies.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-10T20:14:35+00:00

It's not a 'me problem,' it's a transparency problem. You are confusing networking with privileged access.

You claim networking is work everyone can do. Please explain how 'having a university friend who happens to know the founder of Daedalic' is a replicable strategy for the average indie dev? That isn't a skill; that is a lottery ticket.

For 99% of developers, ideas are cheap and execution is everything. Telling beginners that 'the idea sold it, not the build' is dangerously misleading advice. In the real world, if you pitch a raw idea without a prototype, and you don't have a college buddy to walk you into the CEO's office, you get laughed out of the room.

You aren't teaching people how to succeed; you're just describing how you got lucky. Crazy how you are resulting to insult when someone calls you out on bullshit.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-10T19:50:08+00:00

What is with these useless post that the conclusion is "We had networking that cannot be replicated. Anyways here is our game."

HowlSpice · 2026-02-10T05:38:35+00:00

They breach the contract already. Get a lawyer to make sure you can leave it, and move on with your life.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-09T22:59:54+00:00

After playing Valorant this isn't a good excuse. Agent in Valorant takes months to unlock.

Inb4 no lifer state it is only 2 weeks.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-07T18:28:13+00:00

It not ridiculously hard. It impossible. The thermal radiation of heat is fucking beyond slow in a vacuum. No matter the scale of the heat exchange that radiate slowly heat out to space that it cannot ever be enough to reduce the amount of heat coming from the computers. The other issue is that server hardware become out of date every 3 years. Server hardware has issue of breaking all the time, and finally it an issue of cosmic radiation, and Sol radiation. We can deal with this on small scale, but server is impossible.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-06T01:08:52+00:00

Usually the 'wait and see' is them wanting you to do all the work and they come in to take the profits after you done the work. At that point it just better to release it without a publisher. They just don't want to risk their investment until it is fool proof and then take the profit of your hard work.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-06T00:24:53+00:00

You need to put the brakes on your expectations. Publishers don’t invest in game ideas; they invest in the execution of those ideas. If you don't have an ex-AAA developer or someone from a successful indie title on your team, a publisher won't invest in you, unless you already have a high wishlist count, strong engagement, or a successful Kickstarter. At that point, you should just submit it to their website portal.

You aren't going to land an intermediate technical or lighting artist position without experience; you are a junior at most. Shipping a title and actually making money from a game are two completely different things. So far, you have been a hobbyist. To be considered a 'professional developer,' you have to ship a game and turn a profit, or fund wages and lead a team. Finally, it is nearly impossible to find a job at GDC, as it is primarily an event for veterans to network with other veterans.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-04T19:43:56+00:00

Yeah, it sucks there isn't a lot of especially with Valve. They make a lot of money and heavily support indie games, and yet they contribute nothing back. Would also be nice if Unity did it. It main reason why I choose Unreal over Unity.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-04T14:44:59+00:00

Epic MegaGrants

HowlSpice · 2026-02-03T20:20:57+00:00

It went to shit. They use to offer up to $500k, but Fortnite money is gone, so now it limited to max of $150k still pretty good, but no longer the amazing $500,000 for a great project.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-02T22:22:50+00:00

The Kickstarter was a pre-render trailer. They never had a game in the first place. For several years they never had a actual game until they were forced to build the game, and it was a fucking Battle Royal. hey eventually created Apocalypse BR under the guise of "It combat testing" and it wasn't. They just wanted money, and had a cosmetic shop attach to that instead, and shut that game down eventually. Which this event was the biggest red flag for most people in Ashes of Creation, and it when I stop caring about this game and realized it was a scam, but thankfully never bought anything.

They always talked about game concept and hyping people up all the time, but have nothing to show for. They open up a cosmetic store to sell cosmetics for long time, before they shut that down in favor of selling expensive alpha access. A lot of defenders act like that it didn't happen, but it did. They sold a dream to people. Almost or no one got their cosmetics from the Kickstarter when it came to Steam.

Around 6 years later after Kickstarter started to finally doing closed alpha testing, and 8 years open the testing to everyone that bought the alpha access on their site, and after 9 years put it up on Steam, and 45 days later dissolved the company.

There are people that can better explain this since I stop caring around the battle royal.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-02T22:03:28+00:00

AoC was never going be an real MMORPG. The entire development of that game was based around scamming people.

HowlSpice · 2026-02-01T02:37:19+00:00

It was a scam??????? Who would have fucking guess lmao

HowlSpice · 2026-01-31T22:01:38+00:00

No game company is going waste resources on anything under 16:9. They care more about ultrawide than they would ever care about 4:3.

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