MadalinStroe: This guy is insane. I can respect his choice of never putting the game on sale, but adding DRM to the game. I guess I'll never get to play it.
There's nothing wrong with being insane, lots of people are and, well, it's not their fault. Being a vintage troll, though, it's your choice to make, and Cleve made that choice *a long* time ago. He's an attention whore and I'm pretty sure he's pulling all these controversial moves in order to get attention from people. He's probably living his dream, right now.
You know what they say about trolls and not feeding them, right? We're all feeding Cleve, right now. Those who buy his game, those who praise it, those who bash it, even those of us -- like me -- who think this is a worthy enough topic to keep discussing.
Grimoire is a decent enough game. I follow a twitch streamer (the same guy Cleve decided to call a "kid with bipolar disorders" who "wasn't good enough" for his game) who made it farther in the game than anybody else I've watched playing it. He was genuinely enjoying Grimoire, until Cleve decided to be an elitist prick by invading his stream and treating him -- a paying customer -- like someone who isn't worthy of his "masterpiece". He kept playing the game afterwards. Struggled with a backwards, unintuitive system Cleve supporters keep calling "INCLINE" but it's basically a way to make a game stupidly harder than what it needs to be, but kept on going. He made it way farther in the game than anyone else probably did, even being a "kid with bipolar disorders". But then Cleve, the "GENIUS" that he his, broke the saves with some update to his "oeuvre", and that guy simply quit the game -- at least for now -- because there's no way he's happy with losing this much progress. That's how well Cleve treats people who bought Grimoire. For $40. $40 bucks for what is basically Wizardry 7 with a different set of clothes. And, well, you can get Wizardry 7 for $5.50, along with Wizardry 6, here on GOG. So just stick to those. No bugs, no crashes, no save file incompatibilities, no douche troll dev behind them: same "stellar" gameplay that we can "excuse" for being a product of its time, better writing (with way less typos, if any), more interesting story, tried-and-true classics.
Cleve made a Wizardry 7 clone. A decent enough one at that. But nothing else. The game doesn't seem to be improved from the "superdemo" days. He just kept it "in development" to troll people, because that's what he does. And people kept feeding the troll. And now he added DRM to Grimoire, because he needs to troll his customers more. He knows this move will keep people talking shit about him and his game, and that's precisely what he wants.
There's no denying the gentleman is a complete and utter nutcase. But that can be excused if only he had made a great game. He didn't, though. This whole thing only has the dimension and profile it does because it's all draped in controversy and a whole lot of trolling. And while being crazy can be overlooked, trolling your target audience just can't, even if Grimoire was the absolute "INCLINE" masterpiece Cleve and his "Neanderthal Master Race" fanboys (troll minions, simply put) keep trying to convince everyone else it is.
In short, do not feed the freaking troll. Just let this whole thing die, like it eventually will. And then Cleve will come up with some new controversial thing for the world to notice him and feed him with the attention he so desperately craves.
[EDIT] I know my post is long enough as it is (I apologize), but I'd like to add this: Cleve probably never even considered releasing Grimoire on GOG, for a multitude of reasons. He calls Grimoire a game for "old skool" (sic) people, and it doesn't get more old school than most of the GOG user base. This whole store started out as a place for *good old games*. But this also means the GOG community knows their way around blobbers and are pretty knowledgeable about them, unlike most of the people who buy their games only on Steam, and Cleve can't risk releasing his game in here, because it would likely be shredded to pieces by the true old school gamers who know Wizardry 7 like the back of their hands -- even though there *are* a few Cleve supporters in here, but just not enough to make a difference. Adding to that, Cleve is also probably aware that GOG doesn't have the same exposure as Steam does, and Steam is enough for him to get the controversy and the attention he lives for. Also, not releasing his "old skool" game on the go-to store for old school games is a trollish and controversial move in and of itself.
