I’ve received a few concerned messages asking about the bundles that were removed from sale a few weeks ago. They were some of the first items accepted from the curated workshop and starting to show their age:
Gingerbread
Necromancer
Nutcracker
Queen’s Guard
Robot
Samurai
Spartan
Swashbuckler
Toy Soldier
Vampire Hunter
Yeti
I think there are some benefits to retiring older purchasable items:
It makes newer items more discoverable in the stockpile. Partially my bad for not adding more filtering options (yet?), but I always feel guilty to work on any of the monetized parts of Unturned - why there are item releases only a few times per year.
There’s now a finite number, so they are collectible. In the past I’ve personally found it enjoyable collecting exclusive items in games - when I was younger particularly Roblox and TF2.
would this happen with more items in the future? even if not immediate, like even a few years down the line?
also i see some people ask about bundles related to curated maps themselves, would those be excluded from any future removals?
does an item have an “expiry date” you have in mind? like if something gets too old it goes, or is it mainly based on the looks of the sets themselves?
I share the sentiment with a few other creators that it doesn’t make sense to retire older bundles for a few reasons:
a) Them being delisted doesn’t remove them from the game, and they will still show their age if anyone decides to wear them.
b) Removing 10 or so sets to make other items in the stockpile more visible, the older sets were intertwined with others and barely amounted to less than one page of content.
c) On the topic of making bundles ‘discoverable’; alongside the filters you mentioned, being able to inspect the items in-game and preview cosmetics on your character would be a nice feature to have.
d1) Obviously, when talking about cosmetics, it will be a subjective matter; but that doesn’t change the fact that some of us felt the criteria of cosmetic removals was contentious since some bundles
that were removed looked fine compared to some relatively newer ones clashing more with the art-style.
d2) While it is your game, and you’re definitely entitled to pull some cosmetics out, this contentiousness and subjectivity sets a bad precedent for other sets that get added today, because what if a newer cosmetic set comes along and the old one is deemed outdated? Will they too get removed?
e) We talked to a few creators’ who had their bundles removed, and it seems that they were not notified of it; while some of them may infact be hard to reach, others are still active within the community and should hold the right to know if they will no longer get paid for their work because it’s no longer being sold.
f) Although not listed here, the Ireland Map Bundles were removed some time ago and we haven’t got a reason for it either, despite the map getting an update.
IMO it would’ve been nice if an option to remaster/remake the bundles was given to the devs; If the whole point is that they’re showing their age (which I assume means “don’t fit the game’s art style so much anymore”), then why not update them?
Then again, I don’t think the Ireland devs are even still in the community for example, so I dunno if that’d even work for some of the sets.
In the future it would be cool to see some limited run items! Though having ones permanently available is also good to have at the same time. I believe the Rust store is a good example of doing both of those things. If limited run items do become a thing, it would obviously be good to know how much time you have for each item otherwise you might miss out on the chance to buy them.
There were actually a few limited-time items! They were available for two weeks a few different times but there wasn’t much interest, though from your post perhaps from not being announced well?
I think Rust is a good point of comparison there: many games do cycle out purchasable items much more frequently. Unturned’s on the very longgg end of the spectrum here.
I expect yes it’s inevitable that some items will be removed from sale eventually.
I agree it makes sense to keep items associated with curated maps purchasable for longer than they might be otherwise, especially considering that the royalties from these items are an incentive for creating high-quality maps. The Russia, Hawaii, and Greece items are particularly dated but still purchasable.
No, I don’t have an expiry date in mind. I don’t actually currently have any record of when the items were first released / sold which was pointed out as potentially useful for map anniversary sales by Animatic.
Out of curiosity, who are the other creators? Part of the reason I made this post was hearing through the grapevine that you were particularly angry about this - is it out of concern over the Kuwait items?
I agree this would be a useful feature. Falls under the feeling guilty about working on features related to the purchasable content - when I work on those I often feel like I am letting players down by taking time away from free features. Which when I write it out sounds kind of silly.
I suppose by saying “showing their age” I meant partly that they are literally old and partly that the style has changed over time. I think a lot of players would agree that both the new maps and the items associated with them have evolved and innovated the art style and quality. Someday I’d like to revamp the vanilla assets, i.e., I think it would be fun to do an update like “surprise most models and the trees and the water and effects have been updated”. Leading on from this,
One option would be posting a private comment on the original workshop file. I figured it wasn’t a big deal since these items are ~7 years old.
Unfortunately I don’t recall why exactly the Ireland items were removed from sale. It was a long time ago: 9th of August 2019. I think a factor was issues with the map and the creators leaving.
The curated maps after Greece are in a weird position in this regard because I don’t have the source files. I certainly don’t expect the original creators to stick around patching bugs forever, but it was also untenable for me to continue maintaining every curated map as the number of submissions increased.
It would be ideal for the sake of players if there were a better answer to maintaining curated maps. Their purchased items will be maintained forever of course. One benefit of keeping the Unity compatibility beta versions is that even the absolute oldest maps will always be playable that way.
The community-created update for Ireland didn’t have items with it because as far as I know the original creators aren’t involved. I’m not sure what the state is there copyright-wise.
I think it would be controversial to replace the existing appearances, and I think it’s fun to be able to mix and match items from across the game’s history. TheUnion made several of the retired bundles, I’m sure he’d make them differently now, so he’d also be welcome to make a new version and players could combine them. It also opens the door for different variants (significantly separated by time) rather than never making a similar item again.
I think it would be better to somehow track the purchases and if barely anyone buys certain bundle/skin over time then removing it.
I.e. retire items if demand is low.
Me personally: I do not think any bundles should be removed unless there is adequate reason. Perhaps the person who made them turned out to be a person you don’t want associated with the game or something like that or the content is stolen. But beyond that I don’t see a good reason to remove them. If items are continuing to sell then they should stay on the marketplace and the creators should continue to receive revenue from them. If the problem is newer stuff isn’t getting the attention it deserves then the frontpage of the stockpile should show them off.
If the page design must be a large panel and a secondary bar, then the current layout should be swapped.
I believe curated content should receive special treatment in terms of stockpile rules. I’ve got skin in this game; I’m a map maker who’s coming up on 5 years of working on curated maps, my perception and option will be skewed. I don’t think that the bundles should be removed. Sure, they can get tucked away, or perhaps moved to their own tab in order to separate them, but they shouldn’t be delisted. The Ireland bundle–even though it’s pretty ugly–should be added back. I’ll acknowledge that the removal reason is fair, the map wasn’t being maintained and was removed from the game.
If we think strategically then we could perhaps find a use for delisting. The bundles could work as incentive for developers to keep their maps up-to-date. Carpat, France and Belgium have both fallen behind in terms of updates, perhaps letting the devs know that their map and bundle are at risk of de-listing if they don’t update it would be an effective tool at keeping these maps maintained. As a map maker who does actively maintain his projects, I do not like the precedent it sets that bundles that are created in order to compensate lone developers for their contributions can be removed.
If we must remove items, I don’t think that their permanent removal is necessarily good. Looking at the removed bundles, all of them are ones that could feasibly be moved back into rotation for holidays or other events. Gingerbread, Nutcracker, Yeti and Toy Soldier could take turns come Christmas time. Necromancer, Robot, Swashbuckler and Vampire Hunter could take turns with Halloween. The others are harder to place and honestly some could probably be added back for national holidays or just fitted into Halloween.
While I understand this perspective, you can never be too careful and it goes a long way in showing that you care.
p.s. this is a trend the game has already been following, but all crates should be keyless. Take existing keys and convert them into the keyless boxes, and take the existing boxes and either poof them, or just make them openable, and de-list the key, or replace it with the keyless crate.
Maybe I’m going against the grain here but I definitely agree that the shop was getting a bit crowded with items and some of the older bundles were getting out of date. I’m happy with the removal of them as I can’t remember the last time I saw someone wearing full samurai armour for example. I agree it adds novelty to the items if you want them or something also. I’m am all for the removal of older, unused cosmetics from the shop
