Deep Silver community manager here! Q&A

Hi everybody!

I'm Maurice Tan, the International Community Manager over at Deep Silver (@Pewology on Twitter if you want to reach me there).

As you will probably all know by now, Deep Silver will be publishing Metro: Last Light. Some of you have already reached out to us on Twitter, Facebook, and the Deep Silver forums. Many thanks for that, this helps me a lot!

At the moment, the information I have/have to share is very sparse.
Only one working day has passed since the THQ auction ended on Wednesday evening CET, and we first have to set up our communication with 4A Games, find out what THQ had already done for M:LL, etc. It is going to take some time before this transition has been completed and we are all up and running over on my end.

I also do not know exactly what will happen to the THQ reps that were present on this forum in the past.

But! I'd like to address some things just to give you a better understanding of Deep Silver and how we will be approach community.


Deep Silver
I've seen Deep Silver being referred to as a developer in other threads. We are not a developer but a publishing label. Koch Media is a company which publishes games, and which also distributes games for other publishers (SEGA, Tecmo Koei, and others) in different European countries.

Some games we publish as Deep Silver without interfering with the creative process and production methods of the developer (like Catherine or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.). For those games, we just take care of marketing, making sure the games end up in stores, and other stuff like that.

Other games we create from scratch together with a developer (like Dead Island or Risen). Those games also fall under the Deep Silver label.

At the moment I have no information about how this will work for Metro: Last Light. However -- and this is only personally speaking -- since the game has been in development for a while now, and was once scheduled for March 2013, chances are that our involvement will be minimal. It might also be part of the agreement THQ had with 4A Games that 4A Games retains creative control. I don't know!

But as a Metro 2033 fan myself, I would not worry too much about the new publisher destroying what 4A Games has worked on already. If we had no interest in 4A Games' work on Metro 2033, and on Last Light so far, we would just not have bid on Metro at the THQ auction.

Again, I have no information on the specifics of the deal so please be patient until more information will become available.


Deep Silver and Community
I have no intention of closing down this fan forum whatsoever. If you were worried about that: don't be.

Instead, I'll be present here to communicate news, developments, etc. Having said that, I'm the only Community Manager who takes care of all the English-language fans of Deep Silver games and was already pretty busy, and we suddenly added Saints Row and Metro: Last Light to that. Let's say I won't be bored this year, but I'll check the forums as often as I can . If it takes some time for me to respond, please be patient or kindly send me a PM if you feel I am taking too long.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube will probably all transfer over to Deep Silver, and we will keep using those channels.

Deep Silver also has its own official forums, with its own fan moderators. We may open an official Metro forum for discussions, support, and things like that in the future. However, I also do not want to splinter the Metro community.

Looking at it practically, the official THQ Metro forums are more or less an empty wasteland, and this forum seems to be the largest and most active forum about Metro. This poses a bit of a dilemma, since there will be new Metro fans who will look on the Deep Silver forums to find information about Metro: Last Light. At the same time, most of the Metro fans are probably already here and you will probably want to stay here.

What it really comes down to is how things will work between Deep Silver and 4A Games. If we only have a deal for Metro: Last Light, and 4A Games is free to choose their own publisher for any future game, there is little sense for Deep Silver to start building a new official forum community at this stage. If there will be more Metro games together with 4A Games (and I am just speculating here), there would be more sense for Deep Silver to host official forums with FAQs and support.

It also depends on when Metro: Last Light will be released and how much time remains until release. One option would also be that we endorse these forums as the official forums, but leave it under your moderation in a very hands-off approach.

Whatever happens, this forum will receive my support any way I can


Developer Q&A on forum
I really like this idea and if 4A Games wants to continue this, I am all for it.


Release date
No information yet. Patience!


Limited Edition, DLC, pricing, digital distribution channels, pre-orders
Same story as the release date.

Deep Silver releases its PC games on almost all the digital distribution channels these days, so I think Steam and GamersGate etc. are a given. GOG.com I can't say.

What happens with retailer pre-orders, I'm not sure. I'm expecting that retailers won't really care about who ends up giving them the game they are selling, as long as that game will exist. Agreements about DLC and pre-order bonuses that THQ made with retailers may stay in place and transfer over. We will have to see what the situation is as far as all these different agreements go.

If you pre-ordered at the THQ store directly, however, I honestly have no idea what happens with that if that entire store gets closed down. This would be a question for THQ support if anyone is still working there.

I saw that the Limited Edition (essentially the pre-order edition) included a hardcore HUD-less mode. I don't know whose idea at THQ it was to break that out of the game as a separate bonus. But again, whether this will stay the same or not will most likely depend on existing agreements and things like that.


Platforms
I have no information about this, but don't expect a Vita version to appear out of nowhere if there wasn't one in development.


I think this about covers what I can tell you right now. Once I know more and have a release date, information about how we'll be working with 4A Games, or the state of pre-order deals with (digital) retailers, I'll let you know in this forum.

In the meantime, if there is anything you want to suggest or ask, go ahead.

Thanks for reading!

Maurice

 

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone!

My edit was a missing word I noticed just after posting. Nothing major

If we end up using this forum as the main forum, we'll link to it in our forum as an "external forum" link under "Metro" or "Metro: Last Light." I'm going to wait and see what is going on first. Hopefully this will just be a matter of days or a few weeks.

 

Awesome, and good to know! I'm really looking forward to the future of Metro!

I'll make it a priority to find out what the deal is with the Ranger difficulty. The fact that it is already included in a separate edition, and listed on retailer websites, will probably make it very difficult to remove this from the "Limited Edition".

I'm no expert on the sales and retail business, but there's a chance you can't just drop promised content from a product as a retailer without basically pulling the product, refunding everyone, and offering a different product instead. In that case, retailers will probably give you the middle finger and stop supporting your game as much as they normally would have, which would then affect sales, and the devs in the end. Again, I am still awaiting details myself, but in hypothetical case we cannot change this existing situation, it is not just going to be dependent on whether Deep Silver thinks this is a good idea or not.

On the one hand, anyone for who the Ranger difficulty is one of the core aspects of the Last Light experience will probably want to play it the day it releases. A Limited Edition is usually not really that limited when it is just another name for "pre-order edition" -- unless it's a Collector's Edition of sorts. A retailer is not going to stop selling the game just because too many people are pre-ordering it up to the release day, no matter what it is called .

On the other hand, as a Dutchman who used to see these North American or UK retailer-specific pre-order bonuses being announced for games for years, I can also see an issue where some of you may want to pre-order the game, but won't get the Limited Edition because a retailer in your country doesn't have it. I've been there, and it's not very fun.

If there is nothing we can do about the current Limited Edition contents, I will at least try to get all the info I can and make sure everyone knows where to get it.


If it is any comfort, I'm pretty sure that the THQ Community Manager who ran Metro before me has protested against this decision as well. I hope you didn't hate him too much when the pre-order details were announced .

I have to await details before I can make anything official. But we will have no intention of taking down the wikia. Unless the wikia was part of some weird THQ ownership thing (and I'd be very surprised if it was), go ahead and keep it updated. Once we have sorted out everything on Deep Silver's end, we can also support the wikia with official info.

 

I wondered how long it would take for someone to ask that

We did something like this with the Dead Island Ripper mod, where if you hadn't pre-ordered Dead Island you would only be able to get the item by buying the GOTY edition. After seeing fans ask for it, we put it on Steam for the completists. Putting something on XBL/PSN afterwards can be tricky due to MS and Sony. Not as easy as "Here is the item, put it on the Marketplace please" in any case. It also depends on what the deals with the retailers were as far as pre-order content goes, but that would just be speculation at this point.

There may be a few alternative options, however. I will see what I can get away with.

 

Not a problem, ask away! Just know I don't have a lot of hard info right now.

I didn't mean it as "People who pre-ordered could get upset despite getting the exact same content" as much as "There might be an issue with selling a product at retail (even if it is a pre-order downpayment) and later delivering a product with does not have 100% the exact same listed content."

Then again, I'm not a lawyer or a retailer so don't take this as fact for the time being.