Don't let SUPERVIVE die – A plea for a Community-Driven Future (The DDNet Model)

[grizzled dune]

Hello Devs and Community,
As I understand, with the end of February, a chapter is closing, and SUPERVIVE might disappear. Thinking about this, I realized I had to share some feedback. Over the past years, an immense amount of energy, money, and love has been poured into this project by both the developers and the players.
My question to Theorycraft Games is this: Do you really want the hardcore fan base, who absolutely adore this game, to never experience SUPERVIVE again?
I am asking you to set aside the purely profit-oriented mindset for a moment. Instead of falling into the trap of "if it doesn't make money for us, it shouldn't exist at all," would you consider an alternative solution? Please look at the DDNet (Teeworlds) approach.
Why could this work?
The DDNet Example: Teeworlds was in a similar spot: small dev team, uncertain future. Then came DDNet—they went open-source and handed the server hosting and development over to the community. The result? The game has been alive and thriving for nearly 20 years and is still a leader among platformers on Steam.
Community Power in the Age of AI: Nowadays, you don't need to be a senior engineer to contribute. In the era of AI, passionate fans can generate assets, help with code, and maintain the game much easier than before. The community can collaborate to keep it fresh.
Shared Costs: We don't expect you to pay for servers forever. The core player base is willing to share the costs. Running 1-2 servers for the dedicated fans is a negligible expense if split among hundreds of us.
My plea to the "parents" of SUPERVIVE:
Please don't pull the plug on your child before it has a chance to fully grow. If you have decided to move on, please hand the keys over to us, the fans. Allow us to keep it alive via community servers or open source.
Don't let this masterpiece go to waste, let us help you keep the legacy alive!

[hybrid skiff]

they are staying alive as a studio, they might use some things they have used for supervive, it might just not be so easy.

Specially with some technologies like the technology that powers voice chat, they paid for that, they cant give it for free, they would need to use extra dev power to create a supervive version without any 3rd party paid service and then craft the version itself

[turbid blade]

I think giving out the code is the least they could do, especially as a live-service game, even if it means non-functional code without the proprietary libraries. I'm pretty sure there's a few people (i.e. me) who would be willing to make a minimal working version of the game just to keep playing with your friends.

[meager prawn]

yeah

[pallid nymph]

https://theorycraft.helpshift.com/hc/en/3-theorycraft/faq/67-sunset-faq/

[meager prawn]

:/

[distant cliff]

Stop killing games would have stopped this

[terse crest]

Maybe they killed it before it happened for a reason...(also idk if it'd apply to na company, idk how shit works)

[maiden mortar]

They knew game will fall for months, but instead of preparing it to be free, they decided to squeeze last drops of money

[pallid nymph]

You're free to give your work away for free, do not expect other people to do so, especially when the studio is not closed and they will be working on another game, very much possibly placed in the same universum with the assets, artworks and story to be re-used.
They had other stuff to do than to make their hard work publicly available.

[maiden mortar]

For free?! In-game purchases, converted to paychecks for modelers and programmers to cover pre-dying cosmetics and dead-born gamemodes was able to be put in standalone preparations

[pallid nymph]

That's commercial work, not crowdfunding of something that should be put in public domain.

[distant cliff]

It is pretty lazy work

And dissapointing they didnt future proof it

There is a lot you can learn from "dead" games if they remain playable

I like bringing up the anthem example. Even though it failed. One thing it did right is apparently the flight mechanics. The game going unplayable newer generations cannot learn or replicate similarily polished flight mechanics

[grizzled dune]

I get the point about reusing assets, story, and the universe for a future title, and that is totally fair. But here is the thing: we aren't begging for the graphics, we want the mechanics.
They can strip out every single copyrighted model, texture, asset, and lore piece they plan to reuse. Give us a stripped-down skeleton—heck, even an old pre-alpha "greybox" build would suffice. In the age of Text-to-3D and GenAI, replacing assets is the easy part. The community (myself included) would be more than happy to model new characters and environments from scratch.
Actually, it might even be better that way. The original game had issues with visibility, dark environments, and colorblind accessibility. If we rebuild the visuals on top of the core engine, we could fix all of that.
What we need is the combat system/movement mechanics. Even if it's just a barebones "warmup mode" sandbox, that is enough to keep the soul of the experience alive. If the foundation is there, the passionate fans can build the rest, just like the devs did originally. Please, keep the IP, but don't bury the mechanics.

[honest basin]

fuck playing a generative ai slop version of this game

[distant cliff]

Israeligpt generate me a game

Bzzzt computing 🤖 ⚡ ⚡

Generating game

https://tenor.com/view/supervive-gif-7547899380185546621

Game generated

[pallid nymph]

that sounds like months of work.

[distant cliff]

I doubt they care

[willow bluff]

at this point just make a new game and straight up copy the concepts

no one could stop you

[grizzled dune]

Why call it 'slop' automatically? Are you not aware of what current AI is capable of? Today's high-end 3D model and texture generators actually put most manual 3D artists to shame in terms of speed and quality.
I could realistically generate all the models alone in a few days. I actually won a 3D AI competition recently and I’m sitting on a massive amount of credits that I can't even spend alone—so if no one else wants to help, I’ll do the heavy lifting on the assets myself.
The whole point is that AI cannot regenerate the game mechanics or the code yet—that tech isn't there (maybe in a year, but not now). That is why we need the skeleton/engine from the devs. If we have the core mechanics, the visuals are the easy part to solve

[honest basin]

Don't get me wrong, I don't think ai is inherently slop, I think there are incredible innovations like GENESIS from starcitizen which solved the problem of not seeing the detail in biomes from high altitudes or from a distance - this is an enormous amount of work and is great because it's an additional tool in a kit for us to use. In their words "art inspiring tech inspiring art"

https://youtu.be/_n9bXJnkgBQ?t=4485 (source for genesis)

The text-to-3D prompt slop you are invoking in your statement is not remotely the same.
That is the generative ai that deserves the scrutiny that it is receiving

[distant cliff]

I doubt Ai should be used on the creative front. The thing that makes games and art so appealing is seeing someones vision in it. GenAI I feel looses some of that in transit. GenAI takes what is and clumps it up, kinda pre chews it. It cannot really innovate or fully convey a "human vision" this lack of vision is often what makes people call GenAi a slop machine

There is also a lot of ethical concerns and enviromental issues GenAI is causing

[honest basin]

Let's just prompt characters to life and wave goodbye to 3D artists 😄

[distant cliff]

AI as a tool in general is quite usefull. And using it for stuff like optimizing a menial task like model poly optimization would be nice.

The creative process is human and conveys the vision. But the Ai made some tedious part of the process more bearable

[honest basin]

exactly

[dusty river]

Lol.

[honest basin]

based contribution

[dusty river]

as opposed to random ethics conversation occuring

just doin my part

[distant cliff]

Replacement it shouldnt be

[honest basin]

clanker sympathizer detected

[distant cliff]

Sorry my internet is slow as hell rn. Saying E rn

Instead of 5G

[dusty river]

aight bro, you pay for the artist to remodel the entire backbone

[grizzled dune]

I was a 3D artist myself for many years, working on everything from music videos and short films to commercials. I’ve since moved on from traditional 3D work and became an AI artist because, for me, it’s better, faster, and simpler. It didn’t kill my creativity—it took it to a whole new level.

However, I see that you are standing your ground and aren't open to this perspective. There’s probably no point in trying to convince anyone if the idea is met with this much hostility right from the start. The irony is, you probably wouldn't even have noticed if I used AI instead of making the models by hand

[honest basin]

no it's cool man we'll prompt Zeph to life 😄

also why ever talk about ethics, we're just gamers

:^)

[dusty river]

Like I said, I'm down to use 3d art if you pay

Or draw it

[honest basin]

remind me why the onus is on me?

[distant cliff]

Good for you. I generally try and avoid gen AI myself due to ethical concerns, i feel its inneficient and I like the grudeness of human vision.

But if it works for you keep doing what you do.

[dusty river]

It's not. The point I'm making is that this shit aint gonna happen without someone dedicating extreme amounts of free labor art-wise or someone chucking a wad of cash into a fire

And I'd rather see it happen than not

[honest basin]

Fair and that's fine - we're at odds on that

[distant cliff]

Like if we want to make a cheap imitation of Vive sure we can gen Ai the shit out of it.

Id rather get quality but if the goal is to just have placeholder until further notice I dont mind

[dusty river]

obv everyone would rather have quality, me too, but when you're broke you gotta settle

I htink it's pretty obvious that real artists would do a better job

but it just won't happen

[honest basin]

Supervive was lightning in a bottle which has since been shattered. The magic that we got to experience will be remembered as an era that could have been. I get the feeling to hold onto it too sometimes, but with the decisions that TC made it's obvious that it's better to just let go

[distant cliff]

What ever the case its going to require a lot of spit, sweat and elbow grease

[honest basin]

It was challenging for the spot for one of my favourite games of all time

[distant cliff]

Maybe Ill get the work on a game similar to vive

I have an idea for a little uni project rn

But probably years down the line

[honest basin]

I don't think supervive should die either btw, I don't like that it's live service is being sunset - at least have it playable like battlerite

[distant cliff]

They were lazy wity the infrastructure and arent willing to try and get the game working

Kinda over on that

[honest basin]

ye

it is what it is

[sage dove]

i want that too

[maiden mortar]

I dont see any future in using moba assets in future title in universe wich already failed to be profitable.

In studio which released only 1 title and it failed

Joe Tung isnt Swan Vinke

In modern era where even succesive studios can be close by wish of left ankle of owner

[glad pilot]

rt

[severe garnet]

💀

[honest basin]

btw it's not that i'm not open to your perspective, if what you're saying is different to what I am
if you're exclusively talking about generating characters from a prompt i think that's dogshit

if you're saying you're using gen ai as a tool to help with textures or ideas etc that's chill

[worn wolf]

You talk about AI in a furry lgbt community ( results of a retard*d marketing btw ), you have already lost

Even the studio used AI

Retardds

[nova tangle]

Id rather the game just die than be vibe coded

One of the big draws of vive are tight controls

No offense but I dont think any of you can actually pull off the technical skills necessary

[worn wolf]

Cause you have 0 ambition

[rocky shale]

apparently we have a lot of game devs in the community

like unironically

[terse crest]

I swear half the people i speak to in this community are a game dev. So many actually in college for it

[distant cliff]

Game testers tend to be game dev interested

[eternal wyvern]

id host it for u if ever we got the code

we never will unfortunately

[grizzled dune]

Hey @everyone! I found an initiative to try and save Supervive. The idea is to ask the devs to 'unlaunch' the game back into a Closed Beta state instead of shutting it down completely. This would let them save on server costs and fix the issues for a proper relaunch later. If you want to support this and show them there's still a demand for the game, check it out here:
https://c.org/2kkShJtKxx

[honest basin]

The reality is that they don't have a team that can make this game work

It can't be saved

[river sluice]

game has daily peaks of sub 300 no point of saving a game no one even wants to play 💀

[terse crest]

Good chance customs would still happen, which i think is all people are asking for, a way to run customs after game goes. Not through their servers, even our own private servers.

Everyone knows it's not gonna happen tho.

[severe garnet]

doubt it for the EU community, i think the success of inhouses rested on the copium that 1.0 will save the game

and the 1.0 inhouses happend only for saturday night supervive tournament practice

not just that but pre 1.0 was just more enjoyable, i would sign a petition to bring back beta state of the game with custom hostibility

[terse crest]

Na ik would have small communities here and there.

[terse crest]

I honestly would too. Game was far from perfect but 1.0 just wasn't it

[river sluice]

true but then do people even like the current version of the game enough to play it custom games every now and then?

genuine question cause if this was to happen there would be no patches left

[terse crest]

Not sure how long it would last tbh. Good chance it would fully die at some point but I still feel like a small group of people would play it.