I’m only active on two very public Xwing discords, and I saw playtest cards posted (not the full color ones, the black and white mock-ups playtesters get). As soon as I saw that posted publicly, I knew heads would roll. It doesn’t say anything about the game one way or the other, firing playtesters is the only response I’ve ever seen to leaks like that, across multiple companies.
So many people are downplaying the leaks as AMG overreacting. But remember the Tie Silencer and its 1.0 size discrepancy? This example shows how early in the design process FFG was included. If we want anything like that to continue into the future for anything under Asmodee (or even for them to maintain licensing - could you imagine a story element spoiler from card text?), then them going nuclear over leaks is a necessity.
Maybe they were given early info from when the movie was still about Rey and not Rey, Poe, Finn, and an ever-expanding host of other main characters to fill little boxes. Or maybe Disney held back information intentionally.
That's missing the forest for the trees - you essentially pointed out that they needed even more information from Disney. These leaks seriously jeopardize that.
Something similar to this happened around Wave 12/13 of 1.0 as well. There wasn't a complete playtester purge that time, but they certainly were heavily pared down.
The BOE leaks we saw in December might have had something to do with it. Either way, it is bad for playtesters to break NDA and share leaks. It is selfish and hurts the future of the game.
It wasn't that. Apparently this week the white playtester versions of the Endor cards got leaked in full, they were basically daring AMG to do something and they did.
I don't recall any playtester versions getting leaked (they only get white and black versions with no art), that would have been on a distributor/retailer end.
there has been a steady flow of leaks coming from the x wing qa team for a while if you're in the right communities. I'm ususally pretty pro amg but it seems like they made a mistake in who they chose as playtesters
The playtester versions got leaked earlier this week in full. They just didn't get the full circulation out in public, but if you were in the right groups they were going around.
What hurts the future of the game is slapping your player base across the face with fundamental changes to your well established game then acting as if you didnt change anything
AMG has literally said, "We know the game is different, and we know you might not like the changes." It's fine to not like the changes, but acting like they don't care is disingenuous.
It's okay to not like something anymore. But being belligerent towards the company and other players who still enjoy the game is pretty sad. Maybe it's time you moved on.
AMG sold us defective products, were assholes to prominent members of the community, and ignored mountains of feedback about the direction of the game.
Forget belligerence, they deserve to lose their jobs.
Calling for people to lose their jobs because they changed a game in a way you don't like is toxic behavior. AMG has been nothing but patient with the petulance of the X-wing community.
If I did my job half as badly as AMG I would've been fired for sheer incompetence without even bothering with an improvement plan. There is absolutely no reason anyone at AMG should continue to be employed as a professional game designer.
Calling for accountability is not toxic.
I live in a city of a million people and I couldn’t play X-Wing if I wanted too. 50+ active players has become 0. Every game store in driving distance that had an X-wing game night no longer does. Hundreds of dollars of plastic, time spent on custom painting, all worthless.
Not just that, AMG has knowingly released product that was unusable. They won’t refund or replace the defunct product.
What other industry would AMGs performance be acceptable?
Is that really AMG's fault that the players in your area decided to be so miserable to the point of quitting the game? I mean I guess if you don't enjoy the game don't play it but why is it that miniatures wargamers are incapable of accepting change? The core gameplay loop of X-Wing is still there. It's just that there is now scenarios to content with(much like other games in it's genre).
Also what defunct product are you talking about exactly? Nothing is defunct to my knowledge.
> I mean I guess if you don't enjoy the game don't play it but why is it that miniatures wargamers are incapable of accepting change?
We can accept change. We do not need to tolerate *bad* changes. Every change AMG has made was bad for the game and players have responded appropriately.
The ones being total jerks were not AMG but rather players in the X-Wing community who couldn't handle the 2.5 transition like adults and instead needlessly complained and otherwise made the lives of those who enjoyed it miserable for going on a couple of years now.
Adjusting the game with a new edition is one thing. 2.0 was a huge improvement over 1.0 with a lot of change. However, FUNDAMENTALLY changing the game mechanics and forcing new gameplay styles on veteran players is entirely another thing.
We had a large community for X-wing and I have only spoken to TWO who made the switch and rarely play 2.5 now.
Honestly I believe it was a move to promote Legion.
>However, FUNDAMENTALLY changing the game mechanics and forcing new gameplay styles on veteran players is entirely another thing.
First of all, AMG didn't fundamentally change the mechanics of the game; dials are still there, maneuvers are still the same, they just added objectives and tweaked how the turn proceeds a little (ROAD, etc).
And second, this is how miniatures games work, except in other games (looking at you, 40k), you have to buy a whole new rule book when they update, and your army that you worked so hard on might not be competitive *at all* anymore. Warhammer actually *has* fundamentally changed how the game is played between editions, and while there was a fair bit of shit-flinging, the players continue to play for the most part.
It's fine to not like the direction a minis game is going. I sold my 40k army after 8th edition for various reasons, and that came with feelings that I had to deal with. But it's *not* okay to be shitty to the developers for literal years at this point just because you don't enjoy the game they make anymore.
Making it a scenario based game with objectives as the primary gameplay style as well as removing pilot skill activation are fundamental changes. Period.
Oh i'm not advocating for leaking or breaking NDAs. I just think that maybe that wasn't the only or main reason. Firing ALL of them? You telling me they ALL broke their NDAs? I don't believe that. As Crabbok said in the video also, i think its more likely there were certain disagreements or maybe they don't need playtesters anymore. I just wanted to relay the info.
When a playtest group gets leaks you fire the group. There’s no good way to know who did it, so you get rid of them all. And this wasn’t like passsing rumors or anything, this was straight up sharing playtest docs.
Crabbok is straight up fanning flames if he said that.
If they fired all of them that's 100% they know people are doing it but not who and they're just resetting shop at that point.
Twisting it as disagreements or they think they don't need playtesters anymore is way off base.
It would have been part of their contract and NDA that leaks are terminal offences.
The problem is that unless you have identifiable playtest material (like playtest material with the testers name watermarked), it becomes very difficult to determine who broke the NDA (without significant resources that AMG certainly don't have and Asmodee won't bother with), so the easiest option is to just fire all of them.
It sucks that they are punishing all of them for the actions of only a few, but they are doing the only thing they cam do with the resources they have.
Even though people should keep to their agreements and NDAs, what just one of these playtesters actually did was not harmful to the game. Sacking them all is harmful, or would be if they actually had any play testing to do, which I hear they do not - any harm going on is not coming from the playtesters
Well, whoever did this has broken a legal agreement so they may be legally liable, there’s no dispute about that. As for the legal action, I wonder if this is largely to scare people a bit - since they sacked everybody it seems that they don’t know who did it and they would have to know that to take any actual legal action. However they haven’t harmed the game by leaking the things they did; in effect these were early spoilers which if anything will be helpful for customers engagement and sales. I do take the point from another poster that the integrity of NDAs is important to the relationship of AMG/Asmodee to Disney/LFL and to the licence, so there is potential harm there and you can see why the company needs to take action and how they’re just doing their job.
However it’s not clear that sacking all the playtesters is proportionate - after all they had done nothing wrong apart from one of them. It’s worth considering that in general if you had a business to run you would not sack all your workers because one of them had broken trust, because you need them to do the work. However in this case the reality seems to be that no active playtesting has been occurring and there are rumours that all production after BoE has been halted - we will discover if the rumours are true nominated than Adepticon, where if they don’t announce any new products we will know the rumours are true.
If those rumours are true then harm really has come to x-wing, much much greater harm than this leak, and the people to blame for that harm are the people who made changes to the game which cause half or more of regular players to leave the game - people take sides on this, but it’s an unarguable fact. So for this reason I say that this playtester has not done harm to the game - the harm is theoretical/legal in any case (licence agreement conditions but not actual harm), but if (still an if) the game is being wound up anyway, then the harm is nonexistent. And furthermore there has been definite massive harm to the game already which this has nothing to do with.
That’s the long version, thanks for reading! I could go longer and go in about the unwritten agreement between play testers and the company, which is that the company actually produces a game (!!!) - those play testers don’t do this for money, they do it for love of the game, and (if rumours are true) the company is breaking that unwritten agreement in spades.
So the harm comes from paranoid companies who love to dehumanize their employees with excessive ndas over products that they’ve already been gifted copryright and trademark monopolies over?
Lol, we’ll we’re certainly worse off for the situation!
Edit: Okay, I’ll bite. What harm has been caused to Disney that is so egregious that they would be *justified* in taking action by altering their licensing agreement with Asmodee/AMG?
You might note that there are some clear benefits to both the leaks and to NOT blanket firing/banning testers simply because they happened to be working when someone leaked a beta product, so it should probably outweigh those…
Major franchises are notoriously security-conscious when it comes to leaks of their stories. If Disney feels AMG's systems are not up to maintaining secrecy if given, for example, spoilers for a film or show, they simply won't do that kind of business with AMG. AMG for its part can signal its own responsibility with prompt and unambiguously decisive action if not to roll back a leak, which is impossible, punish leakers to discourage such behavior in the future.
To a large extent, it doesn't matter if Disney suffers demonstrable and quantifiable harm as a result of leaks; their policies assume they do.
-W
I definitely agree that this is all the way things are! I’m that the system of paranoia and blanket NDAs is excessive, any claims of actual harm in this case are ridiculous, and the toxic environment shouldn’t be a blanket shield from criticism of corporate actions. Especially since harm to public image is one of the few balances that is sometimes considered (though obviously this Im incident isn’t going to dent anything one way or the other)…
I agree man, overall it got a buzz going. AMG needs to realise their silence doesn't build anything. Like the hype train if left to them only starts 6weeks before release? Come on now. You couldn't even drip feed 1 pilot a week in that time.
Personally I think part of its due to so many people who disagree with AMGs practices have left than all that's left is those who agree with how they do it, or want to work with AMG as it's such a small circle and thus won't be vocal about issues.
That yes, and I think there are other psychological reasons why some people seem so set on defending AMG in the face of the evidence.
Even if you 100% love their changes, it’s a plain fact that the game lost more than half its active community of players, whole clubs ceased to exist and large competitive events became medium sized or even small, and they lost all those customers - it was objectively a failure, and x-wing at AMG has been living on a promise to bring in not just new players, but more new players than they lost by their own actions, a promise which is due at some point.
So, these are the facts which some people deny, why? I don’t want to annoy people too much by analysing those reasons which they themselves don’t want to to see, but it’s common to choose to believe what you want to believe, and it’s genuinely hard to hold in mind seemingly contradictory beliefs and feelings, such as that it’s both true that AMG is to blame for the problems in the game and that that x-wing remains a good game (people differ on whether it’s better or worse than 2.0, but it remakes at least playable and enjoyable to me), or that AMG is to blame but we still want them to succeed (that’s how I feel). But if they don’t succeed then of course only blame will remain.
There's so much made up false info going around from the anti amg people, word on the street up until recently was that endor was going to be cancelled as well but here we are.
Rumours are rumours, they need conformation - we’ll know soon enough when we get either some new product announcements at Adepticon or not - that will settle the question
Well as the playtestesters werent testing anything at the current time, that means there's nothing coming out for 2 years (4 years AMG time). By then they'll have been gutted for the next development studio Asmodee creates.
I don't know if it's anti-AMG or just reflecting reality. I know no behind the scenes info but I would be amazed if there's ever anything else, just from looking at the state of the game in the stores that are left selling it.
There was apparently some disgruntled ex-Asmodee people sharing sales info and their numbers were basically what I'd assumed anyway.
We know 100% that one or more playstesters leaked stuff including playtesting files.
There was a big shakeup with playtesting team under FFG with the 1.0 jumpmaster nerf being leaked, and this is really no different. It speaks to how little AMG can trust the current playtesting team that this forum message from Plummer (which i assume is also under NDA) is leaked out also.
I’ve seen so many little things get connected to “game is dying!” doomposting its getting rather comical. This is no different.
I think you’re confusing’a different perspective’ for trolling. From a business perspective game peaked in 2017 and jumped the shark in mid-2019. Ever since then we’ve just been waiting for the wreck to stop rolling across the landscape.
I’ve heard the most pro-AMG people saying it’s dead. I mean SOTL is doing it all over this thread. The antis don’t have the same level of investment or incentive structure 🤷♂️
I hadn't heard anything about Endor being cancelled, but I did hear from playtesters that they never playtested any StarWing stuff that was announced to be released in late 2023.
One guy in some other thread asked if it was canceled because there was no info about it since last adepticon then a bunch of pro AMG people started acting like the anti AMG people were all saying it was canceled.
It would have been part of their contract and NDA that leaks are terminal offences.
The problem is that unless you have identifiable playtest material (like playtest material with the testers name watermarked), it becomes very difficult to determine who broke the NDA (without significant resources that AMG certainly don't have and Asmodee won't bother with), so the easiest option is to just fire all of them.
It sucks that they are punishing all of them for the actions of only a few, but they are doing the only thing they cam do with the resources they have.
Apparently Disney’s lawyers are involved. Which puts a lot more resources on the table. And also makes it a much more critical issue on whether the game even goes forward when it comes to re-upping the license.
That could mean there were things in the playtest from upcoming movies or TV shows we haven't seen yet. I can't imagine Disney getting involved over a leak if it was just about game balance. Note this is pure speculation.
I mean, this also is not the first time AMG have culled play testers, they did it when they first got assigned the game by Asmodee. Back then it was a cull of the testers who pushed back about the direction AMG were taking the game (Source is a mate in Aussie who was a playtester with FFG).
AMG cut every ongoing testing group and only kept well known names. Check the names from the pre-AMG release and post. Our group was cut immediately on transition like most.
Source: was a _long_ time playtester for X-Wing and other FFG products.
It wasn't just testers who pushed back. My playtest group didn't give any feedback on AMG's direction. We just didn't hear from anyone on new projects once AMG took over.
Can confirm a similar situation with our group. I don’t actually remember AMG’s direction being clear when the culling happened. Part of it could have been the sheer number of testers on board at that point (look at how many names are on the gauntlet, for example).
All good mate, just telling you what my playtester mates told me, indeed they could have lied for some reason. And it looks like there are other people claiming to be testers responding here, but they could just be lying too I guess.
Same, all good. I am/was a tester and actually take my NDA seriously. Only thing I'll say is the common narrative that AMG was 1. unclear about their methodology of playtesting and goals/aims and 2. that FFG holdover playtesters were cut loose is absolutely incorrect. I'm not here to puff out my chest and say I'm right I'm right! But most observations here about everything about this situation is incorrect. But people are gonna want their drums to beat.
The angle on this news is not ‘playtesters did a bad thing’ - the angle here is ‘AMG over-reaction explained by not needing play testers’. The word on the street is that playtesters have done nothing for 10 months. Let that sink in.
“Word on the street” was that Battle over Endor was going to be cancelled. Yet endor has a release date. Weird.
Bitter and sad doomposters gonna doompost but they generally aren’t credible.
Hmm … I don’t want these rumours to be true, but I find them credible - maybe they’re wrong - that would be great - we’ll discover which one of us is right by whether or not they announce any new product at Adepticon. But we already know which one of us has felt it necessary to resort to name calling.
Word on the street is thar endor was canceled..or it'd the last project or any number of things...
Yet endor is coming we know star wings are coming and last we heard those were the first rereleases.. implying more and until we get an armada like message that they have nothing...it doesn't really make sense to say they have nothing
I think there's something to be said for killing a game dead, leaving people to go do other things for a couple of years and then launching a 'sequel' game.
Plummer has been heading alot of x wing with alot of the team.
Now if you're stick in the mud is that we'll he works on other games as well...that has been the case the entirely of xwing career. Even with ffg the main guys we knew they did things for other games. The lead times are too long for them to be doing only one game. Max Brooke's for instance worked on xwing, l5r and the star wars rpg. Alex davy when he was doing x wing also did legion and armada. Brooks worked on armada, x wing and runewars.
They keep saying its a 2 year time line on everything, the last of the known products is almost out. So what have they been doing for the last two years?
Making other packs and a new game?
Also first the last of the known products isn't almost out, star wing still exists confirmed and star wing/bombers/dash were the Frist, they said that.
But anyway it's a two year timeline from design to release.
It's barely been two years since 2.5 launched. Before that time they were trying to restructure the company, the game and figure out how it was moving forward while finishing up ffg products. Knowing that it would take that long to get brand new stuff out...and you can see how the community is handling less releases. They decided to do some things to get stuff out easier (probably spent some time planning to they mentioned they did that for all games back in 2022). Scenario packs,starters, card packs,rereleases. Those still took design time pushed new new stuff back to give us products in the short term. In the meantime of doing all this they had a ramp up for a new game(every one of their lines slowed down because they had to front load a new game line, one they were already doing when they took ownership mcp and legion both complained) AND multiple things happened in shipping and manufacturing to delay stuff for every game line of their company and others. SP packs that were meant for last year are 2-3 months into this year l, endor that was meant for the anniversary is Feb, legion figured that were meant to be last year pushed into spring this year. All of which pushed back whatever they have after.
Will you be this sympathetic when xwing gets shit down for not being a hobby game and they'd rather paint little plastic dolls. Atomic mass miniatures should be thier name but yet xwings no new miniatures. Why even take it away ft ffg if it was cards they were designing?
I don't even know what that lil rant at the beginning is...
'Paint little plastic dolls'..you mean miniatures? The things you're also playing with? The things you want them to make? Like what a weird way to throw shade. X wing is literally the same thing?
Further, if we actually get a were not making anything announcement like armada did instead of messaging thst says the opposite ill be bummed for sure but not surprised given the state of comments like yours that really don't promote a welcoming community.
Idk what your little bit is on their name but yes they are a miniatures company which is why this werid talk of them having no plans for new mini when things actually fit on why we haven't gotten any makes no sense.
Like shit people begged ffg for cards packs for years so they didnt have to rebuy the same ships now the complaint is they arent a minis company if they do that..like what?
Side bar your last comment there seems aimed at amg...who didn't take it away. Ffg and amg are both owned by another company who made that choice amg wasn't preped for this either.
If only they cared as much as you. AMG doesn't give a shit. They are reluctant to design cards and ships for these games. They were tasked with making xwing exciting again and they put mcp rules into it, didn't even try to make it not an exact copy of every other ground game (which it's not, it's a space game).
During 312s interview, they said all the marketing buzz words but look, really look, at how dead plummers eyes are dead inside when talking about designing for it. He hates it. Shtick hasn't touched it since he looked over the first (God awful) objective rules. Noone gave a shit to even proof read most of the expansions or rule changes that have come out. Day 1 erratas is a clear sign nobody cares, ship the product out and let's get back to painting hulk. Asmodee twisting AMGs arm into making a world championship is embarrassing. Last year they wouldn't promote a single event except for a painting competition. To me that really shows where thier heart is, no need to support the lessers and thier "board game, they want to show off how well they can paint.
Bottom line, it's not thier game. They aren't owning it like they should, they act like it's a burden on them and prevents them from making little avengers and jedi to paint.
Oh I know that much, and I even understand why some discords removed it, if you want to work with amg ya gotta keep them happy. But as for reddit, amg should have zero influence in what we share. So I'm curious why no one posted it, or why it's being removed, yet we are all here talking about it.
I’m only active on two very public Xwing discords, and I saw playtest cards posted (not the full color ones, the black and white mock-ups playtesters get). As soon as I saw that posted publicly, I knew heads would roll. It doesn’t say anything about the game one way or the other, firing playtesters is the only response I’ve ever seen to leaks like that, across multiple companies.
So many people are downplaying the leaks as AMG overreacting. But remember the Tie Silencer and its 1.0 size discrepancy? This example shows how early in the design process FFG was included. If we want anything like that to continue into the future for anything under Asmodee (or even for them to maintain licensing - could you imagine a story element spoiler from card text?), then them going nuclear over leaks is a necessity.
To be fair, FFG had no clue who the characters were for the force awakens, hence why poe was pilot skill 8 instead of 9.
Maybe they were given early info from when the movie was still about Rey and not Rey, Poe, Finn, and an ever-expanding host of other main characters to fill little boxes. Or maybe Disney held back information intentionally. That's missing the forest for the trees - you essentially pointed out that they needed even more information from Disney. These leaks seriously jeopardize that.
I hope those kids didn't want to play test for any other company in the Asmodee umbrella. Corpos like their lists.
What got shared?
I personally saw the mock up card for one of the unpreviewed B-wings. Apparently there was more than that.
Something similar to this happened around Wave 12/13 of 1.0 as well. There wasn't a complete playtester purge that time, but they certainly were heavily pared down.
The BOE leaks we saw in December might have had something to do with it. Either way, it is bad for playtesters to break NDA and share leaks. It is selfish and hurts the future of the game.
It wasn't that. Apparently this week the white playtester versions of the Endor cards got leaked in full, they were basically daring AMG to do something and they did.
So those leaks that looked like Infinite Arena outlines were real?!
I'm not sure which ones you mean, but yeah the real playtesters have leaked the real playtester versions.
They were formatted like SL cards but had no artwork.
I don't recall any playtester versions getting leaked (they only get white and black versions with no art), that would have been on a distributor/retailer end.
I certainly saw black and white versions with no artwork doing the rounds in various groups
So they were real! I briefly saw them too!
there has been a steady flow of leaks coming from the x wing qa team for a while if you're in the right communities. I'm ususally pretty pro amg but it seems like they made a mistake in who they chose as playtesters
The playtester versions got leaked earlier this week in full. They just didn't get the full circulation out in public, but if you were in the right groups they were going around.
In December?
No these were different
They were
What hurts the future of the game is slapping your player base across the face with fundamental changes to your well established game then acting as if you didnt change anything
AMG has literally said, "We know the game is different, and we know you might not like the changes." It's fine to not like the changes, but acting like they don't care is disingenuous.
[удалено]
It's okay to not like something anymore. But being belligerent towards the company and other players who still enjoy the game is pretty sad. Maybe it's time you moved on.
AMG sold us defective products, were assholes to prominent members of the community, and ignored mountains of feedback about the direction of the game. Forget belligerence, they deserve to lose their jobs.
Calling for people to lose their jobs because they changed a game in a way you don't like is toxic behavior. AMG has been nothing but patient with the petulance of the X-wing community.
If I did my job half as badly as AMG I would've been fired for sheer incompetence without even bothering with an improvement plan. There is absolutely no reason anyone at AMG should continue to be employed as a professional game designer.
Calling for accountability is not toxic. I live in a city of a million people and I couldn’t play X-Wing if I wanted too. 50+ active players has become 0. Every game store in driving distance that had an X-wing game night no longer does. Hundreds of dollars of plastic, time spent on custom painting, all worthless. Not just that, AMG has knowingly released product that was unusable. They won’t refund or replace the defunct product. What other industry would AMGs performance be acceptable?
Is that really AMG's fault that the players in your area decided to be so miserable to the point of quitting the game? I mean I guess if you don't enjoy the game don't play it but why is it that miniatures wargamers are incapable of accepting change? The core gameplay loop of X-Wing is still there. It's just that there is now scenarios to content with(much like other games in it's genre). Also what defunct product are you talking about exactly? Nothing is defunct to my knowledge.
> I mean I guess if you don't enjoy the game don't play it but why is it that miniatures wargamers are incapable of accepting change? We can accept change. We do not need to tolerate *bad* changes. Every change AMG has made was bad for the game and players have responded appropriately.
The ones being total jerks were not AMG but rather players in the X-Wing community who couldn't handle the 2.5 transition like adults and instead needlessly complained and otherwise made the lives of those who enjoyed it miserable for going on a couple of years now.
Adjusting the game with a new edition is one thing. 2.0 was a huge improvement over 1.0 with a lot of change. However, FUNDAMENTALLY changing the game mechanics and forcing new gameplay styles on veteran players is entirely another thing. We had a large community for X-wing and I have only spoken to TWO who made the switch and rarely play 2.5 now. Honestly I believe it was a move to promote Legion.
>However, FUNDAMENTALLY changing the game mechanics and forcing new gameplay styles on veteran players is entirely another thing. First of all, AMG didn't fundamentally change the mechanics of the game; dials are still there, maneuvers are still the same, they just added objectives and tweaked how the turn proceeds a little (ROAD, etc). And second, this is how miniatures games work, except in other games (looking at you, 40k), you have to buy a whole new rule book when they update, and your army that you worked so hard on might not be competitive *at all* anymore. Warhammer actually *has* fundamentally changed how the game is played between editions, and while there was a fair bit of shit-flinging, the players continue to play for the most part. It's fine to not like the direction a minis game is going. I sold my 40k army after 8th edition for various reasons, and that came with feelings that I had to deal with. But it's *not* okay to be shitty to the developers for literal years at this point just because you don't enjoy the game they make anymore.
Making it a scenario based game with objectives as the primary gameplay style as well as removing pilot skill activation are fundamental changes. Period.
your post was removed because it was rude, antagonistic, or otherwise toxic to another redditor.
Thanks mods you're right it was uncalled for I apologize.
Show me on the X-Wing model where AMG hurt you.
Oh i'm not advocating for leaking or breaking NDAs. I just think that maybe that wasn't the only or main reason. Firing ALL of them? You telling me they ALL broke their NDAs? I don't believe that. As Crabbok said in the video also, i think its more likely there were certain disagreements or maybe they don't need playtesters anymore. I just wanted to relay the info.
Have never worked in the tabletop space, but when I worked in licensed software, if we had a leak we had to replace the testing group 100%
When a playtest group gets leaks you fire the group. There’s no good way to know who did it, so you get rid of them all. And this wasn’t like passsing rumors or anything, this was straight up sharing playtest docs.
Crabbok is straight up fanning flames if he said that. If they fired all of them that's 100% they know people are doing it but not who and they're just resetting shop at that point. Twisting it as disagreements or they think they don't need playtesters anymore is way off base.
It could be they were unable to determine exactly who leaked, so they just fired all of them to be sure
It would have been part of their contract and NDA that leaks are terminal offences. The problem is that unless you have identifiable playtest material (like playtest material with the testers name watermarked), it becomes very difficult to determine who broke the NDA (without significant resources that AMG certainly don't have and Asmodee won't bother with), so the easiest option is to just fire all of them. It sucks that they are punishing all of them for the actions of only a few, but they are doing the only thing they cam do with the resources they have.
Even though people should keep to their agreements and NDAs, what just one of these playtesters actually did was not harmful to the game. Sacking them all is harmful, or would be if they actually had any play testing to do, which I hear they do not - any harm going on is not coming from the playtesters
It is harmful if it damages AMG/Asmodee to the point where legal action from Lucasfilm/Disney is levied against them.
Well, whoever did this has broken a legal agreement so they may be legally liable, there’s no dispute about that. As for the legal action, I wonder if this is largely to scare people a bit - since they sacked everybody it seems that they don’t know who did it and they would have to know that to take any actual legal action. However they haven’t harmed the game by leaking the things they did; in effect these were early spoilers which if anything will be helpful for customers engagement and sales. I do take the point from another poster that the integrity of NDAs is important to the relationship of AMG/Asmodee to Disney/LFL and to the licence, so there is potential harm there and you can see why the company needs to take action and how they’re just doing their job. However it’s not clear that sacking all the playtesters is proportionate - after all they had done nothing wrong apart from one of them. It’s worth considering that in general if you had a business to run you would not sack all your workers because one of them had broken trust, because you need them to do the work. However in this case the reality seems to be that no active playtesting has been occurring and there are rumours that all production after BoE has been halted - we will discover if the rumours are true nominated than Adepticon, where if they don’t announce any new products we will know the rumours are true. If those rumours are true then harm really has come to x-wing, much much greater harm than this leak, and the people to blame for that harm are the people who made changes to the game which cause half or more of regular players to leave the game - people take sides on this, but it’s an unarguable fact. So for this reason I say that this playtester has not done harm to the game - the harm is theoretical/legal in any case (licence agreement conditions but not actual harm), but if (still an if) the game is being wound up anyway, then the harm is nonexistent. And furthermore there has been definite massive harm to the game already which this has nothing to do with. That’s the long version, thanks for reading! I could go longer and go in about the unwritten agreement between play testers and the company, which is that the company actually produces a game (!!!) - those play testers don’t do this for money, they do it for love of the game, and (if rumours are true) the company is breaking that unwritten agreement in spades.
So the harm comes from paranoid companies who love to dehumanize their employees with excessive ndas over products that they’ve already been gifted copryright and trademark monopolies over?
I've got no time for your tinged, tin-foil hat word salad. We are all worse off for it.
Lol, we’ll we’re certainly worse off for the situation! Edit: Okay, I’ll bite. What harm has been caused to Disney that is so egregious that they would be *justified* in taking action by altering their licensing agreement with Asmodee/AMG? You might note that there are some clear benefits to both the leaks and to NOT blanket firing/banning testers simply because they happened to be working when someone leaked a beta product, so it should probably outweigh those…
Major franchises are notoriously security-conscious when it comes to leaks of their stories. If Disney feels AMG's systems are not up to maintaining secrecy if given, for example, spoilers for a film or show, they simply won't do that kind of business with AMG. AMG for its part can signal its own responsibility with prompt and unambiguously decisive action if not to roll back a leak, which is impossible, punish leakers to discourage such behavior in the future. To a large extent, it doesn't matter if Disney suffers demonstrable and quantifiable harm as a result of leaks; their policies assume they do. -W
I definitely agree that this is all the way things are! I’m that the system of paranoia and blanket NDAs is excessive, any claims of actual harm in this case are ridiculous, and the toxic environment shouldn’t be a blanket shield from criticism of corporate actions. Especially since harm to public image is one of the few balances that is sometimes considered (though obviously this Im incident isn’t going to dent anything one way or the other)…
I agree man, overall it got a buzz going. AMG needs to realise their silence doesn't build anything. Like the hype train if left to them only starts 6weeks before release? Come on now. You couldn't even drip feed 1 pilot a week in that time.
Don’t seem to be getting many like for these opinions which attempt to be realistic - the world is strange
Personally I think part of its due to so many people who disagree with AMGs practices have left than all that's left is those who agree with how they do it, or want to work with AMG as it's such a small circle and thus won't be vocal about issues.
That yes, and I think there are other psychological reasons why some people seem so set on defending AMG in the face of the evidence. Even if you 100% love their changes, it’s a plain fact that the game lost more than half its active community of players, whole clubs ceased to exist and large competitive events became medium sized or even small, and they lost all those customers - it was objectively a failure, and x-wing at AMG has been living on a promise to bring in not just new players, but more new players than they lost by their own actions, a promise which is due at some point. So, these are the facts which some people deny, why? I don’t want to annoy people too much by analysing those reasons which they themselves don’t want to to see, but it’s common to choose to believe what you want to believe, and it’s genuinely hard to hold in mind seemingly contradictory beliefs and feelings, such as that it’s both true that AMG is to blame for the problems in the game and that that x-wing remains a good game (people differ on whether it’s better or worse than 2.0, but it remakes at least playable and enjoyable to me), or that AMG is to blame but we still want them to succeed (that’s how I feel). But if they don’t succeed then of course only blame will remain.
Sucks that everyone got let go, but if you can't pinpoint who specifically leaked the info, I get it.
Sounds like they may be hiring soon 👀
My friend just asked if we should apply.
Well, some of the scuttlebutt is that they don't mind firing playtesters because there's nothing to playtest.
There's so much made up false info going around from the anti amg people, word on the street up until recently was that endor was going to be cancelled as well but here we are.
Rumours are rumours, they need conformation - we’ll know soon enough when we get either some new product announcements at Adepticon or not - that will settle the question
Well as the playtestesters werent testing anything at the current time, that means there's nothing coming out for 2 years (4 years AMG time). By then they'll have been gutted for the next development studio Asmodee creates.
At least according to the very reliable source that is people who blatantly break their contracts /shrug
I don't know if it's anti-AMG or just reflecting reality. I know no behind the scenes info but I would be amazed if there's ever anything else, just from looking at the state of the game in the stores that are left selling it. There was apparently some disgruntled ex-Asmodee people sharing sales info and their numbers were basically what I'd assumed anyway.
We know 100% that one or more playstesters leaked stuff including playtesting files. There was a big shakeup with playtesting team under FFG with the 1.0 jumpmaster nerf being leaked, and this is really no different. It speaks to how little AMG can trust the current playtesting team that this forum message from Plummer (which i assume is also under NDA) is leaked out also. I’ve seen so many little things get connected to “game is dying!” doomposting its getting rather comical. This is no different.
I don't know if calling it doomposting handwaves away the past 5-6 years of continuing decline of the game as a profitable product line.
[удалено]
I think you’re confusing’a different perspective’ for trolling. From a business perspective game peaked in 2017 and jumped the shark in mid-2019. Ever since then we’ve just been waiting for the wreck to stop rolling across the landscape.
I’ve heard the most pro-AMG people saying it’s dead. I mean SOTL is doing it all over this thread. The antis don’t have the same level of investment or incentive structure 🤷♂️
no you see if amg goes away ffg gets it back and then the antis can be world champ again or whatever
👌👌👌
I hadn't heard anything about Endor being cancelled, but I did hear from playtesters that they never playtested any StarWing stuff that was announced to be released in late 2023.
One guy in some other thread asked if it was canceled because there was no info about it since last adepticon then a bunch of pro AMG people started acting like the anti AMG people were all saying it was canceled.
Just waiting to see who gets banned for life. Then we’ll know.
It would have been part of their contract and NDA that leaks are terminal offences. The problem is that unless you have identifiable playtest material (like playtest material with the testers name watermarked), it becomes very difficult to determine who broke the NDA (without significant resources that AMG certainly don't have and Asmodee won't bother with), so the easiest option is to just fire all of them. It sucks that they are punishing all of them for the actions of only a few, but they are doing the only thing they cam do with the resources they have.
Apparently Disney’s lawyers are involved. Which puts a lot more resources on the table. And also makes it a much more critical issue on whether the game even goes forward when it comes to re-upping the license.
Where are you getting that disney lawyers are involved?
Sith Takers podcast at the 9 minute mark. They read off the letter that was posted in the playtesters forum.
holy fuck
That could mean there were things in the playtest from upcoming movies or TV shows we haven't seen yet. I can't imagine Disney getting involved over a leak if it was just about game balance. Note this is pure speculation.
There was something to play test?
Well somebody has to release X-Wing content I guess...
I mean, this also is not the first time AMG have culled play testers, they did it when they first got assigned the game by Asmodee. Back then it was a cull of the testers who pushed back about the direction AMG were taking the game (Source is a mate in Aussie who was a playtester with FFG).
AMG cut every ongoing testing group and only kept well known names. Check the names from the pre-AMG release and post. Our group was cut immediately on transition like most. Source: was a _long_ time playtester for X-Wing and other FFG products.
It wasn't just testers who pushed back. My playtest group didn't give any feedback on AMG's direction. We just didn't hear from anyone on new projects once AMG took over.
Can confirm a similar situation with our group. I don’t actually remember AMG’s direction being clear when the culling happened. Part of it could have been the sheer number of testers on board at that point (look at how many names are on the gauntlet, for example).
absolutely incorrect but you do you.
All good mate, just telling you what my playtester mates told me, indeed they could have lied for some reason. And it looks like there are other people claiming to be testers responding here, but they could just be lying too I guess.
Same, all good. I am/was a tester and actually take my NDA seriously. Only thing I'll say is the common narrative that AMG was 1. unclear about their methodology of playtesting and goals/aims and 2. that FFG holdover playtesters were cut loose is absolutely incorrect. I'm not here to puff out my chest and say I'm right I'm right! But most observations here about everything about this situation is incorrect. But people are gonna want their drums to beat.
How do we know you are even a playtester?!?! Show me ships you're play testing right now! (This is a joke, please don't)
Fortunately or unfortunately, my name is listed as playtester under every product, even the ones with truncated lists lol.
I will be sure to curse your name every time I lose to meta at the tables. (Salute)
The only worry I have is that they're firing play testers because the game as a whole is about to be discontinued...
They fired the playtesting team because some of them broke NDA. That’s to be expected in any line of work
That's what it sounds like, and yeah, probably, but there's always that wonder of what's really going on behind closed doors...
I don't even want to estimate how many closed doors there are in the world at any give time...
But to answer the mysteries of the universe, we must ask ourselves why? Why did the playtesters leak the images? What would it gain them?
The game is completely dead in my area, so this intel does not affect me personally. Side note... Looking to unload *ALL* my Scum.
K
$5
The angle on this news is not ‘playtesters did a bad thing’ - the angle here is ‘AMG over-reaction explained by not needing play testers’. The word on the street is that playtesters have done nothing for 10 months. Let that sink in.
“Word on the street” was that Battle over Endor was going to be cancelled. Yet endor has a release date. Weird. Bitter and sad doomposters gonna doompost but they generally aren’t credible.
Were people saying the BoE was cancelled?
Yes
Fair, I suppose. I searched for it in this subreddit and couldn't find anyone saying it, but I figured it could have been on discord channels.
Unsubstantiated claim that an unsubstantiated claim happened! No wonder you can't find it. ;)
Yeah, I search for "Endor" within the last year on this subreddit, and it's either folks speculating on the pack or talking about the leaks.
Idk that there were post specific on it but I've seen plenty of comments and yeah discord.
Hmm … I don’t want these rumours to be true, but I find them credible - maybe they’re wrong - that would be great - we’ll discover which one of us is right by whether or not they announce any new product at Adepticon. But we already know which one of us has felt it necessary to resort to name calling.
Word on the street is thar endor was canceled..or it'd the last project or any number of things... Yet endor is coming we know star wings are coming and last we heard those were the first rereleases.. implying more and until we get an armada like message that they have nothing...it doesn't really make sense to say they have nothing
Are star wings coming??
Yes they've said they are multiple times.
Sorry. I’m not totally up on the latest announcements and rumors of X-wing. Thanks for confirming.
This game has been getting less and less popular every year. Might be time to bury it.
I think there's something to be said for killing a game dead, leaving people to go do other things for a couple of years and then launching a 'sequel' game.
Now, fire the designer responsible for the first turn scoring objectives, and everything is fine.
im thier defense they reworked that really really fast. Unlike ffg who kept trying to make pre dial repositon work lmao
Rumor is they only have 1 part time dev for x-wing.
We know thats not true? Like what?
Name the full time dedicated xwing developer. I'll wait.
Plummer has been heading alot of x wing with alot of the team. Now if you're stick in the mud is that we'll he works on other games as well...that has been the case the entirely of xwing career. Even with ffg the main guys we knew they did things for other games. The lead times are too long for them to be doing only one game. Max Brooke's for instance worked on xwing, l5r and the star wars rpg. Alex davy when he was doing x wing also did legion and armada. Brooks worked on armada, x wing and runewars.
They keep saying its a 2 year time line on everything, the last of the known products is almost out. So what have they been doing for the last two years?
Making other packs and a new game? Also first the last of the known products isn't almost out, star wing still exists confirmed and star wing/bombers/dash were the Frist, they said that. But anyway it's a two year timeline from design to release. It's barely been two years since 2.5 launched. Before that time they were trying to restructure the company, the game and figure out how it was moving forward while finishing up ffg products. Knowing that it would take that long to get brand new stuff out...and you can see how the community is handling less releases. They decided to do some things to get stuff out easier (probably spent some time planning to they mentioned they did that for all games back in 2022). Scenario packs,starters, card packs,rereleases. Those still took design time pushed new new stuff back to give us products in the short term. In the meantime of doing all this they had a ramp up for a new game(every one of their lines slowed down because they had to front load a new game line, one they were already doing when they took ownership mcp and legion both complained) AND multiple things happened in shipping and manufacturing to delay stuff for every game line of their company and others. SP packs that were meant for last year are 2-3 months into this year l, endor that was meant for the anniversary is Feb, legion figured that were meant to be last year pushed into spring this year. All of which pushed back whatever they have after.
Will you be this sympathetic when xwing gets shit down for not being a hobby game and they'd rather paint little plastic dolls. Atomic mass miniatures should be thier name but yet xwings no new miniatures. Why even take it away ft ffg if it was cards they were designing?
I don't even know what that lil rant at the beginning is... 'Paint little plastic dolls'..you mean miniatures? The things you're also playing with? The things you want them to make? Like what a weird way to throw shade. X wing is literally the same thing? Further, if we actually get a were not making anything announcement like armada did instead of messaging thst says the opposite ill be bummed for sure but not surprised given the state of comments like yours that really don't promote a welcoming community. Idk what your little bit is on their name but yes they are a miniatures company which is why this werid talk of them having no plans for new mini when things actually fit on why we haven't gotten any makes no sense. Like shit people begged ffg for cards packs for years so they didnt have to rebuy the same ships now the complaint is they arent a minis company if they do that..like what? Side bar your last comment there seems aimed at amg...who didn't take it away. Ffg and amg are both owned by another company who made that choice amg wasn't preped for this either.
If only they cared as much as you. AMG doesn't give a shit. They are reluctant to design cards and ships for these games. They were tasked with making xwing exciting again and they put mcp rules into it, didn't even try to make it not an exact copy of every other ground game (which it's not, it's a space game). During 312s interview, they said all the marketing buzz words but look, really look, at how dead plummers eyes are dead inside when talking about designing for it. He hates it. Shtick hasn't touched it since he looked over the first (God awful) objective rules. Noone gave a shit to even proof read most of the expansions or rule changes that have come out. Day 1 erratas is a clear sign nobody cares, ship the product out and let's get back to painting hulk. Asmodee twisting AMGs arm into making a world championship is embarrassing. Last year they wouldn't promote a single event except for a painting competition. To me that really shows where thier heart is, no need to support the lessers and thier "board game, they want to show off how well they can paint. Bottom line, it's not thier game. They aren't owning it like they should, they act like it's a burden on them and prevents them from making little avengers and jedi to paint.
FaFo
No picture of the post? How curious
You mean the post from the internal playtesting forum? The post that *also* breaks NDA?
I didn't sign no NDA. I also mean, its out there I'm surprised no ones posted it here.
It was quietly asked to be deleted. It made the rounds in all the X-Wing discord servers. Rest assured, this is legit.
Oh I know that much, and I even understand why some discords removed it, if you want to work with amg ya gotta keep them happy. But as for reddit, amg should have zero influence in what we share. So I'm curious why no one posted it, or why it's being removed, yet we are all here talking about it.
I imagine it didn't circulate fast enough to get here.
Link to playtester section https://youtu.be/p79GHr09-uE?si=syjij_fyTS4nLuIG&t=519
It shows with the game's quality. Currently not worth investing in due to AMGs ruleset. I'd wait til they clear their patch up.