On September 9th, 2014 we shared the news of a new indie Dreamcast game called SLaVE. The game has been in development for so long, that back in 2017 I posted a story updating readers on why it was taking so long, and while I am not here today to give another update, you can read that article. The reason I am writing about the game again is that GOAT Store, which is the home to GOAT Store Publishing who had taken 400 pre-orders for the game back in 2014, emailed those with user accounts giving an update on the site:
You are receiving this email because at some point, you signed up for a GOAT Store member account. Your member account gave you access to a record of your past GOAT Store orders – but that was it, we kept no other information. I’m writing this email because this weekend, we will be performing a major site upgrade, and when we do, we will not be able to carry over our current member system.
Because of this, if you wish to access or save any part of your order record, please head to https://www.goatstore.com ASAP as we intend to upgrade this coming weekend.
If this is a reminder that you loved the GOAT Store and want to order more great gaming stuff, our old site is available for ordering now!
Basically, if you ordered SLaVE, which is an old unfulfilled order, it is likely that your order history will disappear after this weekend. So head to the site now, login and screen capture or print out your order because you may lose any evidence that you pre-ordered the game.
I do not know what their future plans are, but if pre-orders are disputed or refunds are issued, it’s good to have proof you paid for the game 7 years ago.
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I got an e-mail from Dan Loosen (one of the GOAT Store’s owners) with regarding this message about GOAT Store website upgrades, and he said that while they won’t be retaining prior orders, the pre-orders for SLaVE will be retained! The game is still being worked on, but there’s still some things that are holding it back.
By this point they should scrap the project and issue refunds or store credit. The preorder treated the game like it was releasing soon, and here we are 7 years later.
You should be able to get a refund, you just have to ask for it.
I was involved in Slave and organized a beta test for it as Jay completed the game back in December 2014. The game was never released cause the Isotope 3DGE engine was never functionally ported to Dreamcast, it has a memory leak that was never fixed because the lead programmer didn’t know how to fix it and Goat couldn’t arrange another programmer to help.
I feel bad for Jay Townsend he could’ve successfully released the game on PC. Instead he designed a game for a Dreamcast engine that doesn’t work on Dreamcast.
On that same e-mail, Loosen said the game was working for six levels and then “we suddenly had a new game ending scenario.”
“It’s still being worked on, and I hope that in the very near future, we’ll have good news. If the project ends, we’ll be refunding everyone.”
He goes on to say for folks who can’t wait, they can reply to that e-mail and they’ll issue a refund.
I pre-ordered it many years ago, and I had expected that these Dreamcast projects would take a good while to finish (not seven years, to be frank!). There have been times where I honestly forgotten that this game existed if not for those e-mail updates that would occasionally pop-up. I could get a refund now, but it’s not very much money I spent on it and I’m hoping it gets done at some point. I mean, Paprium somehow eventually came out, I’m sure this one will too. If not, I least I got my $20.84 back!
I got my refund over a year ago already.
The thing that makes this whole debacle so bad is that it was originally going to be released only a few months after they first opened preorders. Then they found all the game-breaking bugs, and have never been able to fix them.