Hello, everyone.
I know given we haven’t posted here in a few years and the comments/questions about it, this post isn’t a surprise, but we’ve had some increased outreach from users about crashes over the last couple weeks so we wanted to make this official post.
We have looked into the reported crashing to see if it could be a simple/not-expensive fix, but we have seen no commonalities in OS, hardware, etc. to figure out what is going on and give us a lead.
Unfortunately, although our studio is still alive, we have not had the resources to continue to support Tyto Ecology so long, as it was originally released over 6 years ago in 2016. The game financially barely broke even on the developer cost that went into development, not providing us financial resources for ongoing support and maintenance (which we did for the next year+ anyway).
We love that people love this sort of gameplay: thoughtful, science-driven, and we’ve found financial support to be able to continue with this type of work from grants and investors. The focus with this support has shifted to be on educational applications more explicitly, so we’ve developed an online title (Tyto Online) complete with teacher tools and supplemental resources that has growing adoption within school districts.
What should I do, as a Tyto Ecology player?
First, we still see regular playing in the data Steam provides us, which is why we’ve not wanted to totally pull the product. So here’s what we are thinking:
If you are new to Tyto Ecology and get it, please be sure to test it quickly to see if it crashes on your machine. If so, you have 2 weeks to request a refund from Steam. And please keep in mind that as you get computer/system updates, it’s likely to break at some point for you.
If you’re a player beyond the refund period and you start having crashing, we can get you free access to our online title, Tyto Online. Please note that it is made for middle school level science education, and is more of a simplified MMORPG model, so you may not enjoy the quests, but it does have three sandboxes: one similar to Tyto Ecology, one that’s for weather & climate, and one that’s around genetics and dragon-breeding. None are really as complete of games on their own, since they’re set as features within this game, but could be a good compromise on a title that is still actively being developed.
If you want that access, please email us at hello (at) tytoonline.com with if you’re interested in the whole game or just the sandboxes. You’d have the whole game either way, but we could give you faster Sandbox access if that’s all you want to play vs. natural unlocking through quest progression. Please include your Steam profile link so we can verify you own Tyto Ecology, and give us some time to reply as we’re not sure how swamped we’re going to be with these requests.
What are your studio’s plans?
This has come up as I’ve talked with some people reporting issues, so I also wanted to share here. Our goal is to continue to develop Tyto Online out into a full platform with many areas of content, and more Sandboxes. We’d love to be able to make the Sandboxes separate apps or playable more independently from the MMO-style game for those only interested in their gameplay: a suite of Tyto Ecology, Tyto Weather, Tyto Genetics, etc. ... but it would totally need better names.
But of course, all of that takes financial resources. Right now, we’ve had grants from the NSF, Dept. of Education, MIT Solve, and others supporting our vision of a science video game with properly deep science learning focused on K-12 education. But we hope to expand far beyond that as we grow and have capacity to try new areas.
This is the demo I give to administrators at schools and districts if people are curious about how we’re approaching the educational market with this game: view demo walkthrough.
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Thank you all for being one of the kindest communities on Steam. Everyone who reached out due to crashing has been understanding and considerate – even with that, I’ve been dreading making this post, but of course it’s not fair to avoid making it and bringing this transparency out.