The rise of retro gaming has led to a flood of aftermarket mods and optional equipment, all of which is designed to make playing your classic games as enjoyable as possible. These range from everything from Optical Drive Emulators to AV hubs and next-gen memory cards, and many of these amazing items are often created by a single person.
Because of this, demand almost always outstrips supply; one person designing a cool retro upgrade can't call upon the manufacturing might of a company like Nintendo or Sony, so they almost always keep production runs low to avoid risk.
Then there's the fact that these one-person businesses have to handle stuff like assembly, testing, shipping and more all by themselves, in addition to working a full-time job and having a family—so it's little wonder that, when a product becomes popular, there are more than a few disappointed customers who can't get hold of one when stock is replenished.
Arthrimus' excellent Scalable Video Switch is one such product. This modular AV solution allows you to connect a wide range of retro inputs at once and has rightly become an object of desire for many retro gaming fans.
However, Arthrimus has received such a backlash from those who weren't able to secure a unit that they have taken to social media to plead their case—a situation that should never have happened.
"I want to say something because I have already received a bunch of nasty comments here on Twitter and emails through my contact form about today's SVS restock," says Arthrimus, before adding:
I have so far arranged manufacturing, quality control tested and delivered 4000 modules by myself. With today's restock, that number will be doubled. I am a small business. I have no employees, I have no investors. I have designed, marketed and sold a product by myself, and I am doing everything in my power to deliver it to everyone who wants one. Most people have been very kind and understanding of this, but to those who have not been so kind, just know that you are talking to a person here who is doing his very best to provide a product that you want to buy. You are not talking to some faceless corporation. I'm not running one of these limited run super exclusive FOMO based marketing strategies here. I never set out to make a product with this much demand. I've released countless products in the past and nothing has ever caught on like this, so please bear with me and give me a chance to deliver for you. I understand it is frustrating to miss out on something, I've been there, but this is not by design. I'm doing literally everything I can.
Arthrimus' post has resulted in other members of the community coming to his aid:
Arthrimus has since posted that they intend to handle future orders differently:
I have been thinking about it and I have decided that going forward after I fulfill this round of orders I will be moving to a preorder model for sales of the SVS until the demand decreases. There's just no way I will be able to stock enough units at once to satisfy demand and make everyone happy. Give me a couple of weeks to get everything squared away with this round and I'll announce preorder details after that.
Nobody likes to miss out on something cool, that goes without saying—however, we always need to remember that we're not dealing with billion-dollar corporations with near-limitless budgets and incredible manufacturing might behind them. When you moan about not being able to secure an item which has a production run of less than 5,000 units—and all of those are being made by one person in their garage—then you perhaps need to take a step back.
Attacking equipment makers like Arthrimus just means future modders won't see the point in bringing their ideas to market—not if this is the thanks they get for creating them.
[source x.com]
Comments 19
Just don’t be a dick to people. Also, if something as unimportant as not being able to connect your games console to your TV in the exact way you wanted is enough reason to abuse a stranger, maybe fill your pockets full of rocks and walk out to sea.
Obviously it's not the intention, but there's kinda an implication in this article that it's fine to attack someone if they are part of a billion-dollar corporation. Shouldn't need to say it, but that's obviously not cool either - there's no need to attack anyone on social media, or anywhere else for that matter.
I remember being in a hardware mod discord when someone asked a question, got a community answer a day ish later, and was followed by some other person going on a long tirade on how the creator didn't care and that the clones were going to finally put them out of business.
Just entirely antisocial, uncalled for behavior. I don't know what provokes people to do this.
The internet is frequently the worst possible combination of anonymity and entitlement.
The entire world needs a refresher on the golden rule. This shouldn't be so damn hard.
@Razieluigi The big companies shouldn't be giving these people privacy as it just keeps them anonymous.
As per Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun. The internet makes this sort of behaviour more easier and more instantaneous. Prior to the internet people had to make do with spiteful letters sent anonymously, rude missives to the editor, crudely drawn graffiti, or spending 20p per word in the classifieds.
Gits gonna be gittish!
It’s really sad the way the internet is now used for group bullying when people feel they’re entitled because they didn’t get the first item off the assembly line or someone has blue hair or isn’t their gender.
Arthrimus is absolutely right. This also goes out to people who harass FPGA core developers and emulator authors as well - you are doing a disservice to us all. You are ruining the scene and killing the very thing you think you love. Stop it.
Personally, I think we're getting close to the point where the various retro mod developers should get together and make a community blacklist - identify users who are consistently ***** towards developers, and refuse to sell to them, or support them if they get the products via other means. We don't need people like that in the retro community.
Lol, seeing the likes of Voultar of all people react and whine about abuse is a bit rich. I don't think i've ever witnessed a bigger d*ckhead and getting into abuse regularly himself
@Hailestorm NintendoAge Hall of Shame I miss you
I think we can all agree that only people that deserved to be attacked is the Supersega “team”.
There's enough demand that 4,000 modules wasn't enough? I have an extraordinarily hard time believing that. Apparently we're all in the wrong business.
@WileyDragonfly why do you have a hard time believing that? When you likely have each person ordering at least 5 different modules (otherwise, what would be the point?), that's only 800 or so customers. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the actual number of people that were able to place their orders is actually significantly less than that.
@dmcc0 Applying the "Assume Good Faith" principle, I don't think the implication here is that it's ok to attack big corporations. Rather, it's not unreasonable to expect that corporate suppliers should have the resources to meet high demand without delays or scarcity games. If they DON'T, it's still wrong to attack them, but not to at least call them out for apparently not knowing how to do their entire jobs.
When something is created by a small/independent designer working with limited resources, it's not even fair to EXPECT that of them, never mind attacking them for falling to meet our unreasonable expectations.
@FeRDNYC As I said in my comment, I'm sure the intention wasn't to imply it was ok the attack bug corporations, that's just how it read to me.
The problem with 'calling out' the big corporation's is that any customer-facing employees usually aren't the ones making decisions, so i don't really see what that achieves. The general public are pretty clueless when it comes to how manufacturing works, and just assume big corp can just churn out stuff with a click of their fingers.
It's adorable that Mr. Arthrimus thinks that he should be immune from mean words that stemmed a choice he made to limit supply based on operational constraints and risk aversion. Instead of recognizing that he has no problem but a successful product launch. If only I had a problem that required hiring staff, raising funds and shipping a product high in demand. It's absurd.
@saintstereo
Do you really think he's made enough profit from the first run of his product to be able to afford staff?
This is why we can't have nice things.
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