An open letter to the Suroi.io owner and co-owner (WORK IN PROGRESS)
TL;DR: There are management issues within the development team of Suroi and Kongregate content is accepted by hypocritical owners.
ATTENTION: If you are unable to read this letter with an open mind, we recommend closing this tab.
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With the recent events happening at July 2024, Suroi.io has quite frankly, became a "shit show". These issues also stem back months before. This letter will explain:
- What issues Suroi.io has,
- why these issues are happening,
- and how things can be changed in the future for further improvement and growth.
Please note that this letter should in no way be construed as a personal attack on any member of the Suroi team or community. For the most part, they are all very nice and talented people, who are not acting with intentional malice. The combination of poor communication, hubris, and confusing messaging has made development into a complete mess regardless. We wouldn't be writing this letter however, if we didn't sincerely care about the project and want to see it succeed. Please keep that in mind as you read on.
While yes, listening to the community is important, it is also important to take a certain extent to that. The higher ups should not give in to "dumber" ideas (such as battle passes), but consider ideas that actually improve the game, whether it could be the redesign of an obstacle, a new but interesting weapon, a rearrangement of the layout of a building, etc. The main issue is, that is never the case. It is only mostly the higher ups having the veto power that decide the decisions of the game, instead of having the contributors at least have some input.
Contributors of the game are one of the most important people of the project, yet they neglect them. Such issues are (but not limited to):
- Not making
#dev-privateread-only for Designrs (they literally know the content of the next update, there is no harm in telling them the implementation details) - Ignoring the developers and artists of the game -- the people who implement features of the game for you -- to have their input considered,
- The HP-18 nerf (none of the actual developer team approved this)
- The Barrett damage value (only one person had the veto power to set the damage value to a specific number)
- Skins like Watermelon being added (artists were not consulted on the addition of the skin)
- The very inconsistent art style that applies to most obstacles in game (main exception are guns, massive credit to eiπ for keeping guns consistent)
- The 3+ meme languages in the game's translations file (one was already enough and that one was intended to be for testing purposes, but kept for fun)
- A disconnect between the artists, the developers and the owners of the game. No one knows who is doing what.
- Putting serious game design decisions up to a general poll, with people whose judgement is questionable, rather than a discussion among contributors.
Related to the issue above, the overall poor communication between contributors and the community leads to a dangerous cycle. The community is not kept updated on development, release dates are constantly pushed back, and as a result of this the community becomes desperate for content, and more likely to vote yes on any poll for new content, regardless of quality. Then, as the overall consistency and quality of the game deteriorates, even more questionable content is pushed for by the community. This leads to the community being very receptive to features like mines or flutes, which in a more transparent development situation they might have second thoughts about. The remedy for this is simply to be more open to the community about what's going on in development, and not to promise features or release dates that can't be kept. In an open-source, community project like Suroi, there's no excuse for secrecy.
This situation concerns the v0.10.0 trailer. The former trailer editor, 123OP, had his trailer edited and then released without his permission.
This is a problem because he never intended it to have the NCS music choice in the video, which ruined the video's sync. It illustrates how inconsiderate the owners of the game are treating the contributors of the game. Consequently, he also quit editing videos for the game's trailer, which is a real shame as his editing was good.
If the community ever wanted to know why updates are so rushed and buggy, here's why.
The development team imposes "deadlines" on the whole team by publicly announcing to the community that the next update will be released at a specific date. While this may seem fine, Suroi is completely ran by volunteers. These volunteers have limited time to work on the game, and adding even more pressure on them by giving empty promises to the community unsurprisingly stresses out them even more. Working on Suroi.io isn't a job where you are paid money, you are paid with experience and fun, and that is completely killed by this stress. There is no wonder why top contributors of the project have quit developing the game due to mental health issues.
As an added bonus, there is a pinned message posted months ago in #dev-private that explicitly said to not give empty promises about updates to the community. Did that actually change anything?
Despite the owners of Suroi having a disapproval of what content Kongregate added to the original Surviv.io game, it is evidently clear that the game copies the same designs and ideas Kongregate had for Surviv.io.
The skins and emotes of this game blatantly copy the same designs Kongregate made for Surviv.io.
Skin Examples
| Suroi.io | Kongregate |
|---|---|
| Forest Camo | Military |
| Twilight Zone | Sunset (note that Suroi also has a skin named "Sunset") |
| Zebra | Zebra |
| Fireball (removed) | Fireball |
| Beacon | Lasr Disk |
| Volcanic | Magmatic |
| Ashfall | Cold Magma |
| Tiger | Bengal |
Emote Examples
| Suroi.io | Kongregate |
|---|---|
| Troll Face | Trollface |
| ez | Easy |
| oof | Oof |
| Skull | To Be, Or Not? |
| Creepy Clown | Clown |
| Vomiting Face | Puke |
| Lying Face | Lies |
| Frustrated Face | Frustration |
| Greedy Face | Greedy |
| Sweating Face | Sweaty |
| Nervous Face | ITS OK |
The game deviates from its precursor -- Surviv.io -- at a small degree. This is an issue that has caused the very unchanging player count. The game mostly depends on the former Surviv.io playerbase, and those people do not have an incentive to play Suroi if Resurviv has the original content and Suroi's content is the same but bland and empty.
Glaring Examples
| Suroi.io | Surviv.io | Similarities |
|---|---|---|
| Small Red House | Red House | Same color, similar size |
| Green House | Barn | Same color, similar size |
| Port | Docks | Same idea, gun equivalents are the same |
| Maul & Flint Stone | Stone Hammer & Eye Crate | The same concept |
| Headquarters | Mansion | Giant house-like building with a basement |
| Gardening Facility | Chrysanthemum Bunker | A botanic building with a bunker |
| Construction Site | Hydra Bunker | Suroi's variant is soon to be the equivalent of the Hydra Bunker |
This does not mean Suroi should at least take some inspiration from Surviv. Some ideas such as grenades, realistic guns and similar gameplay mechanics are fine. It is the content that feels like a spit in the face for former Surviv players. This is because Suroi's content is not as well polished and designed as Surviv's. There are actually unique ideas that enhanced the game, such as
- The armory. It is a fun point of interest that attracts a lot of players. Some design choices are questionable but it is very well rounded.
- The old red house. The layout is more fun than the current red house.
- Using boats for special loot. This is actually quite interesting, but they don't attract players well and have questionable designs. (like the Gas Can and Generator)
This section is outdated as landmines are no longer being added to the game. We would like to put our thanks to eiπ for getting them out of the game!
If it wasn't obvious, Kongregate features are discouraged. Fortunately landmines will be added to this game, like they were in Surviv.io! If the developers didn't remember what post-Kongregate Surviv.io was like, these sucked for the following reasons,
- They are awfully telegraphed.
- They can be placed in concealable cover, which makes them even harder to spot.
- Mines can be stacked on one another, further concentrating the damage in a specific area. This could potentially produce unfair "one-shots".
- Because of the above factors, it makes the game more unfair, making the player feel like it is the game's fault for dying or losing.
- Additionally, one of the only features that people liked about landmines was their tactical potential by throwing them and then detonating by shooting, which many legacy players expressed an enjoyment of in 1v1s. The decision was made with no consensus to scrap this, and severly nerf the throwing distance, meaning that only the passive (and more hated) passive use is an option.
It is also crystal clear that even the Designrs don't want landmines added to the game, as evidenced by their attitude towards having to draw art for it:
The Suroi.io Discord guild only has five unclear rules. While it is understandable that writing a code of conduct for the community is difficult and tedious, most large open source projects just use a template that is concise, accessible and simple to enforce as expectations are clear to everyone. Even without using the template, the #mod-guidelines channel that is hidden to the public is already a better version of the current rules, it just needs to be adjusted.
Additionaly, having a rule that states moderators can punish users for "any reason" is extremely problematic, as it encourages them to use their power in any way they see fit, rather than conforming to certain guidelines, which is their actual job. Rule 5 allows them to, for instance, mute users for disagreeing with them, which is a blatant overstep.
With the ambiguous rules set in place for the community, there are clear double standards between the moderators of the guild and its regular members. Some moderators are extremely toxic to the members of the community.
There are also other places where moderators abuse their powers, such as:
- Giving themselves contributor roles that they do not deserve.
- Using channels such as
#leeksinappropriately. - Changing role permissions without consulting anyone else
- Impulsivley imposing punishments without justification based on the rules or oversight.
While it is fine messing around with your permissions for fun as an interaction with the community, there is an extent where it is actually harmful. But sadly some moderators of the Suroi.io community don't understand that extent.
- This is not a letter of harassment. We do not tolerate the harassment of the people mentioned and criticized in this letter, and the people who signed this letter.
- This letter is not intended to create drama. The main purpose of writing this letter is to shed a light on the issues of Suroi's management, and how it can be improved in the future.
- The intended purpose of this letter is to raise awareness of issues in the Suroi.io community.
- It is up to the owners of Suroi.io to change to make the game better
If you want your name on this list, make an issue or a pull request at the Github. If you want to sign anonymously, direct message bien.star on Discord.
- Leia
- TTGetDunkedOn
- 109
- Cyby
- Kenos
- Kaklik
- Bienstar
- Meower
- Headphones Pig
- Hugh Jass
- Cobby
- Slapdap
- 123OP
- Yuyu/Lsis
- L420
- IOMAN
- XNOR
- Ukraines Dude
- NAMERIO
- Preacher
- XVC
- hk-ball
- Nora
- MP220_YT
- Hannover85
- NetGoatFr
- Anonymous (x4)