This has been a disastrous, terrible day for Project Zomboid and the developers.
So first of all this happened. You know. That kinda sucked. Didn’t it?
The day was not done with us yet.
So some kind soul reddited the above blogpost, and we shot up the ranks at an unprecedented speed, getting to #5 on reddit’s MAIN PAGE within an hour of being posted.
Based on our calculations, based on previous experience, this would have probably reimbursed our potential Google Checkout losses in a matter of hours. We’d likely have had six months of paid development in the bag. This was AMAZING! and made the whole thing seem like a strange twist of fate to help us out.
Now, people who have followed us from the start, may be aware that we got on reddit page one once before, and it killed our server. This was because we were on a cheap VPS, or Virtual Private Server (I think) which is where you share a server with a bunch of other customers. Our massive visitor spike was zapping the other server’s bandwidth, so our reddited page was blocked.
We were furious at how this was handled, and with the donations / pre-orders we had, we deemed it a necessary purchase to rent a more powerful dedicated server so this would not happen again.
OH GUESS WHAT, IT HAPPENED AGAIN.
The entire time we were on reddit’s page one, the server was down. As soon as the reddit plummeted down to obscurity due to the link not working, the server admins ‘managed to get the site running again’.
Pre-orders = ZERO for that entire time.
Furthermore, we now discover that our dedicated server, already really more than we can afford, is ‘not powerful enough’ to deal with that amount of traffic.
So as well as potentially having lost 80% of our pre-orders, then getting tempted with the prospect we may get even more because of that loss, and then getting none, we also have to pay more than what we can’t really afford for a server that we can only ASSUME will be powerful enough to deal with the traffic that seems necessary to support this game.
Awesome.
It’s been hard holding it together, this is a massive blow to us, and is one of our lowest days, after what has undoubtedly been our highest days.
Also, given all the pieces we have to pick up after today, It’s unlikely we’ll get the demo out for the end of April. We need to spend the next week looking for additional funding, as well as another bloody server.
Thanks everyone for your support, and if you were unfortunate enough to follow us on twitter, apologies for the crazy man ranting that’s gone on today.
We love you all,
Indie Stone Studios.
we love you too
this sucks, i hope you guys are able to find alternative funding. i also still hope you guys got my preorder!! maybe ill send another just in case =P
What a total farce! A stressful time, no doubt. I’m sure you still have everyone’s support! Chin up
awwww i was wating 4 it but if it is as good as i think it will be its worth the wait!
Let me help you out, cloudflare.com will help you out
They are a free CDN that will protect you from al ltraffic spikes. If you need help setting it up drop me a line. 
What was your dedicated server specs and how much traffic did you receive to cause it to die?
Why you guys don’t try Kickstarter? it worked well it seems, for some.
Hope everything fixes up in the end for you guys.
Requires U.S bank account.
Kickstarter is only good if you’re looking for a specific amount of money – and it /requires/ a credit card at all times, as it’s Amazon-only for funding. The reason I still tolerate Paypal despite their bullshit is that they can take money directly from my bank account (I usually store about $20 in my account for indie games and sales and replenish when necessary!)
Oh no! That one guy is going to go crazy seeing -two- blog posts in -one- day!
I don’t have any helpful advice like some of these other guys so I’ll just keep you guys and your situation in my prayers, and hope that things start turning around for the better. You’ve worked hard for those donations and here’s to hoping that you get them!
Cool its a shame that google screwed you over. but now your screaming about how your website provider has screwed you over, its not there fault mabye rather than posting blog posts on how some things are not working and screaming/pointing fingers for the whole internet to see. be a real company and stop complaing about how your negitive news got views.
dont you see that any public appearance is good even if its bad.
btw screaming about how you didn’t get anyones money while this error was happening shows that your a greedy company only in it for the money.
Man alive.
Thank you for your support. We’re definitely only in it for the money, you’re right. However, paradoxically, we want that money so we can be in it. Of course we want the money, and of course we are upset if a massive opportunity for extra money goes wrong. Why? Because it’s the only way we can afford to carry on working on the game full time. Sadly our landlord and local grocers don’t accept our enthusiasm for game development as legal tender.
This is terrible … I can’t give any good advice because I don’t know much about all that stuff but what I can say is you have to keep at it, because a game of this much potential could easily
work the same way Minecraft did – selling millions of copies.
Keep up the good work guys and try not stress too much.
Rancorist
Im still waiting on these assbags google to drop the money back into my account so i can re-preorder to help.
I totally understand where your coming from with posts like this and i dont see this as “money hungry”.This money is important to fund their company, to build games they love and to share them with people likewise.
Some people dont understand that you need money to do anything in this world.Money makes the world go round, you need it to stay afloat and to follow your dreams
Hope things get better in a few days when google either gives the money to you guys or refunds so some of us can preorder again to help you guys!
I know you guys aren’t too huge on Google right now, but it sounds like their App Engine is something you could use. Here’s Wolfire Games on it:
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/06/Hosting-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle-on-App-Engine
and if this second post is any indication, other providers like Amazon’s cloud services might have done something similar by now
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/02/AppScale-and-the-Commoditization-of-Cloud-Infrastructure
Just a suggestion (sorry for the Wolfire link spam, I follow their blog closely and recalled them switching to App Engine for the same reason you guys are having problems)
You could try nearlyfreespeech.net. It’s pay-per-usage, which in my experience usually works out cheaper than an equivalent monthly package. And they seem well-equipped for the slashdot/reddit/digg effect.
Hey guys. Sorry to hear about your absolutely horrible day. My advice would be to move your website onto Amazon or a comparable network. It’s affordable, and you only pay what you need. There are even 3rd party apps that will automatically fire up new instances as the site gets wildly hammered with requests, and will remove the instances as the traffic starts to fall off.
The second piece to that puzzle is to have some form of backup plan. Create a nice landing page that has your donation buttons and everything you need to operate. In the event of a melt down, you can be serving up a very small page with external assets. You wont be missing out on the potential conversions from the burst of traffic.
I pre-ordered, and “donated” the first time.
This game looks awesome, so I will definitely “donate” a.k.a. voluntarily pay a taxable contribution to your development team to ensure this game gets completed! =)
“Donate” again, I meant to say.
I don’t like them, but why don’t you add some ads ?
If I donate twice or multiple times with the same e-mail account, do I receive multiple licenses? I donated and wanted to send more money your way once I have a good feel of what to expect (DEMO
), probably resulting in me sending more money your way and wanting to gift those new licenses to other people.
Hi sorry no, but if you do that and also send us a mail (lemmy101 at gmail.com) now and once the first license is sent out, then we can create the second manually then.
We will get a system for this in place soon, but at the moment we’ve been focusing on the game.
Thank you!
Sadly our landlord and local grocers don’t accept our enthusiasm for game development as legal tender.
LOL best line every. Sounds like you guys are getting there. I hope it all gets figured out.
Project Zomboid blog reads like a angsty teenager’s Myspace.
Money makes the world go ’round. I for one am going to purchase a “license” and hopefully I can convince my friends to as well. I wonder if you are using Bluehost? I have had many problems with them.
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