Kickstarter and Early Access titles are fraught with risk, as every backer knows, and The Stomping Land has proven to be another example of crowdsourcing gone wrong. At this time, progress on the game appears to be indefinitely halted.
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The initially promising open-world dinosaur game has proven to be anything but, landing with a spectacular thud following its release on Steam Early Access. The game's creator had dropped off the map--despite the fact that people can now pay money for a project meant to be in development--and is not even contacting members of his own development team. This comes after the game had raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter.
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As PC Gamer reported based on a forum post, The Stomping Land's modeler Vlad Konstantinov has announced he's freezing his work on the game to work on another title, a clear sign that all is not well behind the scenes. Creator Alex "Jig" Fundora has not responded to his messages for some time, and Konstantinov is not willing to wait any longer.
"I'm sad to say this but I have to temporarily freeze all my work for TSL project. More than a month has passed since the day when I received the last reply from Jig. I've sent him 5 messages and haven't got any single reply. I don't know, probably he has some serious reasons to ignore me (and whole community) but to my mind there are no excuses for such behavior. Not to mention the fact that Jig owes me the money for the latest model, he's put me in a very difficult situation because now I will have to pay our texture artist for his work from my own pocket.
"If this silence continues I will stop my participation in TSL and start taking the necessary measures to cover my expenses (sell the models for example)."
Konstantinov would be willing to return if Jig can resume his responsibilities, but that doesn't seem imminent based on this pattern. He has blanked the game's paying customers and his own team, a rough example of Early Access titles taking a bad turn.
The game had an outlined plan of features and path for the future, but the community is being left in the dark while the game is still on sale for $24.99. The latest developer note says that it "has had a year of progress and will continue to undergo production with frequent updates until the end of 2015", but there has been no word on any updates. You should certainly steer clear of paying for the game as it stands, and (as always) remain wary of backing these titles without full confidence.
