Site is now publicly available

Guys,

After two years in “invitation only mode”, we've decided to make this site publicly available. Starting today, anyone can join directly or by using their personal Discord, Google or Facebook accounts.

We love Gaia Project, and our goal has always been to give the GP community a place to play GP online.

We really value the hard work of the designers of every board game, and we know it takes time and a lot of passion to create great board games. At the same time, no game would be successful without publishers willing to invest in bringing it to market.

So, in an effort to balance business needs and community needs, we have implemented a “fair use” policy in this online implementation of GP. We have added an option in your profile to confirm that you own a physical copy of the game. If you confirm ownership, you will be able to open a new table. Anyone can join any table, whether they own the game or not.

You’ve probably noticed that we switched the domain from a “geeky” gaiaform.io to a “boardgamegeeky” boardgamers.space. The reason for this is that we want to add more games to the platform, and let you enjoy more time with us, in a growing community of online players. The first game we are adding to the platform as of today is Take6. It’s a popular game and a great filler while you are waiting to gaiaform a planet!

We want to thank you for your support during this period, for your feedback and for being part of this new community. Thank you! The BGS team.

@zuli Great and best wishes! I’ll address the elephant in the room: is it okay with DIGIDICED?

DIGIDICED did not approve this being open to the public.

Does it mean I can publish link to this site on the board game forum announcing that the miracle has happened and GP is available on-line?

@El-Temblo The GP app has been ready for almost two years, since summer 2018. We strongly believe an online implementation is beneficial for the community, and even for sales of the physical boardgame. Nevertheless, we stayed private all this time based on the understanding that an official app would be released Q4 2019. The development of the official app hasn't even started, when digital rights were bought more than two years ago. The release would be in 2021 at the earliest. We understand there probably are circumstances, but as players we decided to move ahead and release now, instead of waiting - and letting the community wait - longer.

@bardopondo Yes, you can ;)

Great!! Thanks a lot for creating this site, there was a demand for it for a very long time. ;)

@zuli Well, I am one of the founders of Digidiced and have to say that we do not have any contracts that I know of that would allow sharing the digital rights for gaia. There are exepctions but they are based on a clear understanding and knowledge of both the licence giver Feuerland and the licence holder Digidiced. No third party has a word in this. If we allow platforms free of commercial interest to air anything digital connected to Gaia Project this would be surely in connection with an already released digital version of Digidiced. But we did not publish anything alike. The fact how long we take to produce our game does not result in any right of a third party to form their own reality of usage rights. We invest a not small amount of money in this and of course we have financial risks that we will protect. I am pretty sure that our cooperation with Feuerland has resulted in funding of quite a lot of beneficial work for games they made that we love. We are far from bad guys here I can assure you...we Play by the Rules and therefor of course do not want to be on the losing end... So actually we will need to find out what this is about...Patrick Soeder Co Founder Digidiced UG

@Huatiak, what exactly are you losing here? Between my other 4 friends who play in this platform we have 3 physical Project Gaias. Because of the isolation we can no longer play in person. This was the only way to play our beloved game. You dont have a digital version, let this platform continue, or make some sort of deal. I dont know, just dont take it away from us.

@K6 is actually wrong, we don't have 3 physical copies, we have 4. The rest, unfortunately, I have to agree with him. He's my friend, but I don't like him, because he just keeps blocking me in every game!

I'm sorry about you Digidiced, but a company that in two years has failed to do what a person has done practically alone, without earning anything for it, does not deserve my credibility. Everyone begging for a digital version on BGG and you didn't give a damn! I'm sorry, but you have failed miserably.

One more thing, i am also a programmer, and i know that the work they did on this site was not easy. but really, I can't understand how you missed such a opportunity, Digidiced. If you look at the number of Terra mystica games in the BGA you will see that it has tripled because of the pandemic, you had to have been faster with the development of the application.

Also, it is not like BGS is taking away customers from you app (since it doesn't exist yet), so it is not clear to me what type of financial damage are you currently sustaining because of this (or any other kind of damage, as a matter of fact). You want them to remove GP from their playable games once your app is out? Ok, I can see the logic behind it. But doing it know, in the middle of a global pandemic that is preventing people from playing in person? This is the only thing that is keeping a community of players alive, and you need a community of players if you hope to sell your app to someone once it's finally out. Besides, since it doesn't look like the app is coming anytime soon, I really don't see the problem in people keeping playing GP while you work on development. I mean, we'd be doing exactly the same thing with our physical copies of the game, if the situation allowed us to.

This is not right. I represent the original publisher and we didn't give permission to this. You probably do not care, because we are a small publisher and have little means to defend ourself, but that doesn't make it right. You wouldn't start streaming the music from Sony or other big companies. Your argument: „I want this, but I can’t have it, so I’m just taking it“ is wrong on so many levels that I cannot understand how anyone can agree to that. On your website, you write that users have to confirm that they own the physical product but that is a joke. Would you set up a website and lending money to strangers if they simply click "I promise to pay you back"? I don't think so. As a publisher, we have to earn money. If we don't do that, we can not run our business. And it should be our decision how are we doing that and not yours. We do support the community, e.g. we allowed a free implementation of Terra Mystica on snellman and on yucata. But if you do not get permission for using our rights and intellectual property you should respect that.

For those interested the conversation continues on BGG. (now censored!)

I missed the BGG thread before it was censored. Would anyone be able to summarize it for me? Was anything decided?