18 Jun, 2011
I did receive a response to the Community Letter I submitted back in May. It follows as…
Dear Jonathan,
My name is Colin Thompson; I manage the Customer Support team for THQ North America. I was forwarded your letter from May 2011, and after conducting a little research on my side, wanted to reach out and hopefully address your concerns .
First, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to serve as a voice for the Supreme Commander/ Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance community. While THQ regularly receives feedback regarding current, past, and future titles, your letter particularly stands out (in my 5 years with THQ) due to its attention, clarity and specificity. I’m also aware the letter was the sum of the input of several other Supreme Commander community members (yes, we read the message boards, too!), so I’d like to pass on my appreciation to your fellow SupCom fans.
On to business - Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, and your request that the unofficial patch 3603 be certified by THQ for distribution. Like I said, this took a little research, as many of the QA personnel who worked on Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance have moved on to new positions, or new companies.
It’s my understanding that the licensing agreement between THQ and Gas Powered Games ended in late 2008. When that relationship ended, the ability for THQ as the publisher to provide quality assurance testing for any further patches also expired. However, in my discussions with current THQ QA staff, they recollected that some measure of testing was done on patch 3603, as a favor to Gas Powered Games. But because the relationship had ended, a sanctioned patch by the publisher would not be possible. I believe this was conducted in the late spring of 2009.
Since that determination was made, no further quality assurance testing was performed on Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. There are no current or pending plans to resume this testing, ostensibly leaving patch 3603 in its unsupported, unofficial beta state.
Is this largely a legal issue? I’m not an attorney, but my guess is yes.
When a license to produce a game ends, so do obligations to provide further material testing. The issue is probably also financial in nature, as the resources required to staff a development and quality assurance team to fully test and certify a patch for a several-years-old game would be operationally and financially prohibitive - and the argument could be made that THQ is fully engaged in producing new products tied to new IPs or existing licenses.
So, going back a paragraph, the short answer again is, there are no current or pending plans to produce an official patch 3603 for Supreme Commander:
Forged Alliance. I am not aware of any information that would suggest it’s a future possibility.
As an industry professional, I doubt this would surprise anyone who’s ever worked for a videogame publisher. I’m sure this has happened many times before, and simply - it is what it is. The licensing agreements, the legal aspects, the contracts, the resource allocations, ROI - at some point a project reaches the end of its viability.
As a fellow gamer, would I like to see a patch produced for a great game
like Forged Alliance? Of course. But again, even we gamers have to dabble
in reality, and at some point have to accept things as they are. Licenses end, resources are allocated to new projects, and the game industry churns ahead with the latest and greatest.
Lastly, despite the lack of any future patch plans, my Customer Support team will continue to support the official versions of Supreme Commander & Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Forget your GPG password? Contact my team. Having a problem installing or reinstalling the game? Contact my team. Game disc scratched/eaten/lost? You guessed it, contact my team at http://support.thq.com, and we can still probably provide a replacement (as long as supplies hold out).
Again, thanks for taking the time to write. I would have liked to have responded sooner, but I wanted as complete a picture as possible on the history of the THQ/GPG relationship before responding with something coherent.
Respectfully,
Colin Thompson
Supervisor, Customer Support
THQ