MattScott

Hi all, I’m afraid, I’m quite boring. Ran technology companies for the last 20 years. I am a programmer by trade and have worked in most languages but mostly c++ and csharp. Started game development 16 years ago. Became a publisher about 9 years ago and mostly developed and published kids games. 2 years ago I decided to change the focus of Little Orbit and moved the company into original IP and digital games. Thanks, Matt

No. We have nothing to do with Hawken. Reloaded sold the game to 505 Games before we purchased GamersFirst.

Hi there, @Fortune Runner is correct. We bought Reloaded Productions along with GamersFirst and APB. RP is its own legal entity, and there are minor reasons for keeping it around at the moment. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, Are you having the issue connecting to Jericho or Citadel? We have been getting some reports of people in the EU having trouble connecting and staying connected to Jericho. Thanks, Matt

Posted to Twitter today:

Hi there, Apologies. March was brutal for DDoS issues. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, Apologies. March was brutal for DDoS issues. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, I have answered this question here: Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Locking this post now that I have answered this question: Thanks, Matt

Hi Wastelanders, We've been doing some backend work on the database and infrastructure of Fallen Earth to properly map out how the new version will upgrade. At this point, I'm 99% confident that we will not wipe progress. NOTE: We may still choose to limit quantities of some items that come over due to the duplication bug. But for the most part, everything should come across. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, This was a networking malfunction that caused a circuit into Jericho to go down. The team had to manually reset it, but the issue has been fixed. It’s an aspect of our current network topology that is going away over the next month or two. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We are looking into the issue. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I have updated the main post. We completed our upgrade early this morning. There will be another upgrade in about a month. My team is monitoring performance to see how things run. Please note that we still may see increased latency during attacks, but hopefully the game should remain fairly playable now. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We are sending out the Tier 1 G1C reward codes to all the ARG winners. We had intended to send the rewards on Friday alongside the 3 days of premium, but the team had to wrap up for the weekend before that could happen. So instead we also included 2 additional days of premium that will be added when you redeem the code. Now begins the long process of sorting the hundreds of participants for the Tier 2 rewards. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, This feels like a very heartfelt, meaningful post. I saw it yesterday, but wanted to take a day before I responded. I'm glad you posted this, and that APB has meant so much to you. I sense there are far more players who have had similar experiences, but for whatever reason are reluctant to share them. I look forward to the continuing that journey with you in the coming months. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Jericho was objectively awful over the weekend. Some of the sustained attacks were over an hour. We’ll work on a way to give back the Premium time to Jericho players. The team will continue to work on our new DDoS solution. Sorry, Matt

Hi there, If the OP is on Jericho, then I can see why he would be frustrated. Those servers were nearly unplayable due to DDoS attacks for much of the weekend. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, More progress on catching up with tickets. As of today, there are 1,033 total tickets open (unsolved) which is 159 less than two weeks ago. There are 831 total tickets that have not been touched (contacted) which is slightly higher than the last update. I'm actually surprised we were able to keep pace and still bring the total open tickets down. The last three weeks had a significant uptick in support requests. We had one on vacation for a week. We had another out with a family issue. And the entire team has struggled with getting sick (it's rampaging through our offices right now). Everyone was back healthy on Friday, and as of yesterday Customer Support was following up on one tickets from January 26th 2019. If your ticket is older than that, and we have not reached out, then I recommend updating your ticket and asking for status. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I have just posted about this issue. You can see it here: The issue isn't a lack of response. It's the lack of a viable solution that fits our current network. Basically, we have had to re-architect the old RG network so we can build a new defense solution to type of attack that is hitting us. That process has been ongoing for weeks now, and we are very close to finishing. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, This is frustrating. We have had an ongoing issue on Jericho with persistent DDoS attacks. I have spoken about this a little, but the issue is basically a form of attack that we had no defense for, and the attackers have been relentless over the last couple months exploiting the issue. We have been working with our ISP to design a new solution, we pushed hard to get the new solution working on Wednesday, but there was a problem and they couldn't finish. Today's attacks have been particularly bad. I apologize to all the players getting bumped. We are working on the issue. Sorry, Matt UPDATE 4/2: Effective this morning we have completed Phase 1 of adding new DDoS protection for Jericho. There will be another update in about a month, but we should see significant improvement in the amount of downtime.

We haven't done a full district test, but we have gotten fairly close. The plan is to open this to OTW as soon as the mode mechanics are fully working as intended. There were a lot of lessons learned in Epidemic and Slay Bells. We tried to apply all of them to RIOT. Hopefully, we can collect more feedback from OTW to address items we missed. The mode was very much designed for new players to jump in and have fun. It only uses randomly grouped teams to help balance things. Lastly, there are weapons to find. You can also enter the mode with your choice of load out, however you have to collect money in the mode to unlock those weapons for use.

Nice work! Remind me to ask you two for the Lottery numbers next week

There are two different skins. One is a RedHill themed skin for the ARG. One is the free skin for RIOT Preseason which is the Japanese themed skin. I made that edit. Thanks. For me, it comes down to when not if we make an Official Discord channel. The main issue is resources to properly support it. We already receives criticism for lack of GMs, long Customer Support times, forum mods, etc. I just want to make sure we don't overextend ourselves. I have already posted on this topic. They didn't just Brute force the password. They used the Morse Code hint to limit the number of characters, so they could eliminate all the other letters and numbers.

Hi all, As promised here is the final breakdown of the ARG event complete with reward descriptions and who will be awarded them. First, I want to use this opportunity to address a bit of lore clarification that has come up from players. The district in San Paro is "Red Hill". The company name is "RedHill Institute of Technology". There is a tiny space between Red and Hill in the company name, so I know we weren't super consistent with that and felt the need to clarify. Stats from the Unofficial APB Discord channel: @SKay posted a fun breakdown of the Discord chat during the ARG. There are some interesting stats there. I appreciate the support that Natzu and the team on that server gave us. (Many players have asked for an Official APB channel, and that is something I'm still considering) Stats from the Redhill website: Since Skay posted their stats, I figured I would do the same. The game ran from February 23 through March 28, and was never directly advertised. The URL was initially only available in-game on select billboards and was later spread by players here and on Discord. During those weeks we got more than 2.2K unique visitors to the site. The highest single day was March 27th with 738 unique visitors. Anonymous user data showed our most engaged player visited 38 times and spent a total of 5 hours and 43 minutes going through pages and images. 21.83% of visitors were from the US. 19.62% of visitors were from Russia. 8.4% of visitors were from Germany. 6.11% of visitors were from the UK. And now.. the rewards. Redhill Newsletter Reward We had just under 300 sign-ups as of EOD 3/28. That list has been pulled, so signing up now wont get you the reward. Some players used fake emails. But for anyone that took the leap of faith and trusted us with their real email, we'll be mailing out a unique (1 time redeemable) code for an account wide Tin Foil Hat. Participation Rewards The ARG itself was very experimental for us. We had initially decided on a reward structure that would limit the winners and go to the Top X that solved the puzzle. But as the game evolved it was clear that codes and solutions would be shared with the community. Rather than discourage this behavior, I wanted to encourage it. So we changed gears and decided to eliminate the reward limit and group effort based on tiers. I'm going to list these rewards in reverse order. These categories below (formerly referred to as Tiers) stack. That means if you redeemed the code and participated and posted a winning solution, you'll get Category 3, Category 2, and Category 1. Category 3 - Final ARG Code redeemed in ARMAS This reward goes out to anyone who redeemed the long GUID-based code from the end of the ARG up through noon PDT today. Those accounts will get 3 Days of Premium. NOTE: Premium will start today and run through the weekend. All accounts who redeemed the code will get an email letting them know. There were more than 2,200 of these redeemed. Category 2 - Contributors These rewards go out to anyone who participated in the brainstorming and contributions to puzzle solving. My team is working with SKay and Natzu to pull the list of Discord usernames who where involved in the #redhill channel on their server. Admittedly, I opened Pandora's box here, because we need to reach out to each of those players and get their APB account info to deliver the rewards. My producer started that effort yesterday, but was identified by Discord as a Bot and shut down their ability to keep messaging. These players will get an account wide title "Conspiracy Cracker", and an exclusive new Weapon Skin made just for the event. NOTE: The Weapon Skin and title both need to be patched into the game. Give us a couple weeks to collect all the account info and get these in. Lots of players in this category. In addition to all the players who contributed to our Official Forums, there are well over 200 players who contributed on the Unofficial Discord. Category 1 - Winners These rewards will go out to anyone who was early to publicly contribute part of a puzzle solution. Again, this is a bit of a subjective thing to determine since there were 3 threads discussing the game (thanks @Yood for pointing that out). It’s hard for us to gauge who was absolutely first, and it's possible that people solved the puzzle and didn't post it, but I wanted to reward the people who got the solutions right. Obviously these players contributed, so they will all get Category 2 rewards plus 1000 G1C. The team is going to try and get the G1C issued today, so it can be combined with the Premium reward from Category 3 over the weekend. These winners from the forum posts are: Ketog & Kevkof starting the main thread, posting the billboards, url, and updating the post as details emerged which I think all heavily contributed to the success of the game Nanometic & SKay - finding the hidden link in the first puzzle MartinPL - finding the valid username in the second puzzle Latsha - catching the updated password hint in the second puzzle / finding the spectrogram in the audio file for the third puzzle Wewhoo - figuring out the password in the second puzzle CookiePuss & Weeb_TheEpicGuyV2 - piecing together the RIOT Preseason skin image IROCkiller & PancakePower - finding the bit.ly link on the camera that linked to the audio file in the third puzzle EyePop - brute force solve for final password in the third puzzle SK4LP - puzzle solve for final password in the third puzzle There are some others from Discord that I'll likely add to this list after reviewing. EDIT: I already have a couple more, but it's getting too cumbersome to keep editing the list of winners. NOTE: My intention isn't to overlook anyone, so if you feel you publicly posted the solution somewhere first, and we missed you, then reach out with proof, and we'll try and sort it out. Easter Eggs and loose ends: There are quite a number story items that were left open. Some of them will get addressed as the mode rolls out. Some of them *might* be carried forward in another ARG down the line before the year ends. I am considering an AMA or some other format where players can get online with the producer who worked with our design team to craft the puzzles and narrative. If that becomes a possibility, I'll let you guys know. Lastly the biggest Easter Egg was this image that players pieced together. This is a tease for an upcoming free weapon skin that players will be able to earn when RIOT launches. The plan is to do a RIOT Preseason as soon as the mode is ready - sort of a beta test for the various systems so we can work the kinks out in a live setting. This initial season wont have any Premium rewards, so everything will be able to be earned by players through regular play. The skin itself is the first in a series of new Japanese themed skins that were designed by our lead UI / UX artist. I feel like it represents Little Orbit's first "real" skin that we did from scratch with a full understanding of the system. Here is a WIP shot of what the skin looks like in-game. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, For clarification, Lynette and Lucas are the new mid level contacts that will get added to support the engine upgrade (merging different rewards between console and PC). RIOT will have its own new contacts related to the new Redhill Institute lore. Thanks, Matt