That may be true, but consider the possibility that the game didn't sell much beyond pre-orders.  Add in the fact a certain percentage of pre-orders get canceled and then also add in returns like you mentioned.  All three together may have been enough to precipitate the lay-offs, and not necessarily just returns.  This is saddening to hear as Stardock has been a pretty good company to its players, and Brad isn't the first to make mistakes especially on a brand new IP with a just as new engine running it.  Hopefully Stardock rebounds from this setback.  Personally I like Elemental, and am eagerly awaiting to see it reach its potential.

Sorry it is true, I did read it. I understand what you're saying but that's not what Brad said. He went from being fully committed to Elemental for the next two years to having to lay off one of two teams. One team with Elemental. One team working on future games. His words.

Here's my money point. Brad just laid people off due to poor revenue from Elemental. They broke even on preorders, right? Anything after preorders is profit, right? Since no Elemental revenue had been coming in before Elemental's release it seems kind of ludicrous to use poor revenue as a reason for laying people off. They had money to pay them before release but not after? Haven't laid anybody off since 1997 but all of a sudden because of poor Elemental revenue people get laid off. Doesn't make sense especially since any sales after preorders are profit. Maybe not the profit they were hoping for but still profit. I think maybe Stardock is having financial difficulties and counted on Elemental sales to bail them out.

I'm with tevans. things don't really add up. i don't feel like the "honesty" is 100% honest anymore.

As far as preorders and sale goals, remember that say they need 50K to break even (number out of air). If they only end up selling 51,000 copies, that'll break even and make a profit, yeah, but it's hardly enough profit to be able to really re-invest back into the company (ie expand and maintain a second team). If they needed 75K to break even on Elemental plus pay for the second team, well... 51K is far short.

As for the team prior, I'm guessing it's like so:

Stardock has 20 bucks extra. They use it to hire 20 people. 10 people (10 bucks) make Elemental. The other 10 bucks/10 people work on other stuff (and Elemental in spare time). Elemental only makes 10 bucks; enough to pay for Elemental but not enough to pay for the other 10 people working on stuff that isn't making money yet.

Not to mention the role of investors and such - Stardock may have taken on outside funding (and thus, debt) to fuel expansion. Without the extra profit to pay off that debt plus cost of development, well there's that.

At any rate, I doubt we'll get a perfectly clear picture beyond that without some word about it. And I doubt anyone at Stardock is going to give specifics on their finances. Suffice to say, all we really can say is that Stardock had to lay people off due to an inability to pay those extra people. It happens, it's no good for anyone, and that's about all a point we should make.

Just how did anything I say imply that I hated Stardock? Grow the hell up. Everything written is not always of the "fanboy" or "hater" variety. Let me tell you something. I hate certain sports teams. I hate certain foods. I'm also not too fond of some politicians. But I have absolutely no fanboy loyalty or hatred towards Stardock or Elemental. My loyalty only goes as far as Stardock producing a product that I want to buy and me buying it. That's it. You can call me a "hater" all day but there's no denying the fact that Elemental is not a Stardock quality product and I think Brad would agree.

As for your other comment. It's possible. So I guess revenue from their business software is drying up too? That's what you're saying. It was good enough to support two teams. Now all of a sudden it can't and layoffs occur due to poor Elemental revenue. That doesn't make sense. If two teams were sustainable before Elemental's release they should be sustainable after release unless Stardock is in some type of financial difficulty. That wouldn't suprise me given the economy and the fact that bigger fish have fallen.

How do I live with myself? Pretty damn good. I look in the mirror every day and I like what I see. I call things the way I see them. Do you really think it bothers me you calling me a "hater"? I'm too damn old and too set in my ways to care what somebody else thinks of me. I just consider the source and let it go.

Fanboy!

Not really,  the fundamental mechanics aren't bad.  Exploration is in decent shape,  I'm not thrilled with city development but it isn't a bad mechanic.  They've got 4 primary issues IMO.

1.  Magic is too weak.  A Mage character isn't viable at the moment,  Magic needs fixing.  Stardock's already said they're going to redesign this.

2.  AI.  Tactical and Strategic AI isn't up to snuff.  I don't need to elaborate.

3.  Informational.  The game has tons of things going on,  but does a very poor job of telling the Player what's happening and/or why.  I blame the manual for a good part of it,  alot of the problems could've been avoided with a manual that tells you what things do.

4.  Bugs.  They're there,  some like performance issues I could see,  how shards not working made it out the door in a game centered on them I've no idea. 

All of these things are quite fixable,  none are beyond repair,  none are fundamentally flawed.  Just flawed in implementation.  As far as the reviews go,  I think PCG is wrong.  Very strangely,  I can't argue with Gamespot except for the crash complaints,  I'm having a hard time believing those.

Overall I think Elemental is quite fixable,  I just think it was released 4 weeks early.  I just still really don't understand what happened to the magic system though...

FYI I still cannot see this game on UK Amazon website, or our Play.com website.

I think the answer, as may have been stated above, is better distribution, not the nature of the game.

PS independent amazon/ebay sellers: note that there is currently a gap in the market you can exploit, if you can beat amazon to it!

 Well, well. I'm sure glad I didn't spend that $50 bucks on this game. Is this new to most of you? bad product = low $$$, low $$$ = no jobs. Brad made the decision to release this unfinished product and is reaping its reward. I wonder how many of the 20 laid off (not fired, yeah ok) said "ITS NOT READY, what's he doing"

I read all the beta warnings about the state of the game. (Strike 1) I don't buy games without demos, period. (Strike 2) Now, the CEO is giving us contradicting stories (Strike 3). I'll wait for the K-mart dumpster.

IMO Brad should stop talking. A simple "I farged up" would do. No need for 4 paragraphs of driveling which 2.5 paragraphs of can be contradicted 2 days later. 

This cycle is not making for good Stardock PR (or Stardock bottom line)

I don't get what confuses people so much about the financial situation here.

The gaming division isn't producing enough revenue to sustain another independent team, and potentially not enough to sustain the current size of the Elemental team. Regardless of this, Brad will invest profits from the other divisions to continue to keep enough people in the gaming division to develop and improve upon Elemental. He won't, however, throw good money after bad and try to keep two teams fully up and running when there's a fundamental problem in the way the gaming division is currently being managed as a whole.

Secondly, there's a difference between profit on a product, and enough profit to fund the continued existence of support for a product. Even if Elemental does break even, and indeed profit, there's nothing saying that said profit is enough to fund the continued development without essentially reinvesting some of the "breaking even" part of that revenue into the project. Now we're effectively running in the red again. This gets even worse if we're expecting the profits to fund a second team that probably didn't even exist for a significant chunk of the original game's dev cycle.

Theoretically, Stardock could probably continue to fund both teams for some time from a purely financial standpoint (ie: not going bankrupt), but this wouldn't be a very sound business decision until the underlying problem is fixed. Fixing the problem could very well require investing more money in other areas. It's not exactly logical to be funding the day to day operations of the gaming division (with profits from other divisions) when the failing division is larger than it has to be, while simultaneously pumping money into trying to fix the problem affecting the division.

Keep in mind that profits pulled from the non-gaming divisions, robs said divisions of money that could have otherwise been reinvested into them and most likely made further profits on. Brad is there to keep Stardock as a whole fiscally sound, not to sabotage the company in the name of being completely fair. It sucks, but the alternate situation could very well end up with Stardock bankrupt, and everybody working there being out of work. On the flip side, there's the chance that keeping everybody on board and biting the bullet in the mean time could potentially rebound and be a great success. There's no way of knowing these things, but to gamble with the jobs of everybody working at Stardock, and the company as a whole is a risky maneuver best saved for when there are no other viable options.

And on a somewhat unrelated note, I find it amusing how much people get all flustered over Stardock being evil or something for this, while the big studios routinely do this on a larger scale, even when the game is a massive hit.

Pretty much this. Stardock will persist, and may ultimately benefit from this failure. Had Stardock waited another month to release Elemental in a "good enough" state, the shortcomings of Stardock's game development model would remain unnoticed. I sincerely hope that this crisis will force Stardock to overhaul its development strategy and become a stronger, more consistent producer of games.

I would like to see Impulse grow and Impulse::Reactor mature so that developers and consumers may benefit.