Dearest Backers,
Natedawg here. I want to start off by saying that the amount of support and understanding you guys have displayed over these last 48 hours has been truly staggering. It means the world to the team that despite all the complications in getting you folks the game, you have stuck by us and remained overwhelmingly positive.
As you can imagine, we’ve been absolutely swamped with both preparing ourselves for gifting you all the game as well as all the extra craziness that comes with launching a game! So apologies if we’ve been a little slow on getting back to any of you!
It is super critical that you read this update closely, as we have both good and bad news to share with all of you.
SOME QUICK CLARIFICATION FOR PC-ONLY BACKERS
A number of you have reached out to us, wondering why you haven’t received any surveys. Please hold tight as – we haven’t actually sent out surveys for the PC-only tiers and likely won’t in the immediate future. However, you guys should still make sure to redeem your unique Humble pages along with everyone else! More on that later in this post.
LET’S START WITH THE BAD
Following the last update and sending out our official Kickstarter surveys to most of you, many of you raised concerns that gifting apps on the App Store can’t be completed internationally, meaning that the U.S. Camouflaj iTunes account cannot gift République to anyone outside of the U.S. Unfortunately, this is true.
Before releasing the last update, we were led to believe by a credible source that we would, in fact, be able to internationally gift apps. Now, it’s shame on us for not thoroughly testing this in advance. After doing some test runs later that night (at 2:30am, rather), the horror dawned on us that we had just asked everyone for their Apple IDs with no indication of which region it is associated with.
We’ve been taking a hard look at all of our options over the last day and have come to the conclusion that we’ll have to take two approaches now. The first is to gift iOS copies of our game to backers in the U.S. The second, is to refund $5 USD to international backers so they can use that money to buy the game on the App Store.
"NATEDAWG: YOU SAID YOU DON'T KNOW WHICH REGION OUR APPLE IDS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO DO THIS?!"
Yesterday was a really stressful day for me when I realized we would have to be continuously merging incoming Kickstarter results, with results from having previously surveyed the $100+ tiers in November. Then we started talking about having to survey most of you again to figure out which region you are in and merging those results in as well. All this merging would have to be done with very little means of matching up results from the various sources. It was a very scary and daunting situation to be in.
But, as I walked over to Top Pot this morning for an extra large latte, I had an epiphany!
HOW YOU GET YOUR GAME
To simplify everything, we will need all iOS backers to take one new Surveymonkey designed solely for iOS fulfillment. We’ll then use your results, easily merge them once with our master list of all you backers, and continue gifting and refunding the s**** out of you guys.
To all you international backers: We are currently waiting to hear back from Amazon in regards to making partial $5 refunds for your original Amazon Payments payment to Camouflaj back in May 2012. While we remain hopeful, it could end up that we have to investigate other means of sending you all $5. The survey you are about to take will ask you to provide us with the transaction id of this payment (see below for instructions on finding this). We wanted to make sure and get this information from you now so that if we get the green light in the next day or two, we would be able to quickly start firing off refunds to all of you. In the unfortunate event that we can't, we will find another way to get you $5; it is the internet after all! If this occurs, it means there will likely be another update and, I cringe typing this, another survey. In the meantime, International Backers: We ask that you trust Camouflaj will refund you $5 and go ahead with purchasing the game through normal means.
Overall, this process will dramatically increase the speeds and simplicity in the way we can get you all a copy of République on iOS. Please understand that this decision was made to make sure we had a clear and super efficient process to make things go as quick and smooth as possible for each and everyone one of you.
As a disclaimer, your official Kickstarter surveys are still very important to us! Although they will now be asking a lot of redundant information, there are still bits of those surveys that have key information we need to deliver you any sort of physical goods you might have earned. Please make sure to fill those out as well if you haven’t already.
Below is a link to the new Surveymonkey for iOS fulfillment. Please make sure to triple check your information before submitting, as accuracy is key; and will help increase the speed at which we can get you your refund or gift.
A few quick notes about the survey before you take it:
We will also be sending an email with the same link to help increase response rates; if you are reading this and take the survey from the link below, go ahead and ignore the email.
If you have a super old Apple ID that is not reflective of an email account you have access to, please provide us with an alternate email to receive your gift at (it can still be redeemed with your Apple ID)
If you are an international backer and need help finding your Transaction ID, follow the instructions below the link
