If you entered the Death? Preposterous! giveaway that ran on April 15th/16th, please read this! Thread

----------FINAL UPDATE: APRIL 30TH----------

So, I wanted to post one final update for everyone now that all of the keys have been manually sent out.

So what exactly happened with this giveaway? Well... on April 16th after the giveaway period had ended when I realized something might have gone amiss with the giveaway in general, I sent a message to IndieDB staff to ask whether anybody had received their keys and what was going on, if there was anything I could do to help, etc.

The next day I generated a list of the 150 followers on my game page that had undoubtedly been added thanks to the giveaway, and I realized I could get another batch of keys and start manually sending them out that way even if something had gone wrong with the giveaway itself. I started doing that because to me it was more important that people who were interested in playing the game has a chance to do so. That's also what prompted me to change to a full pay-what-you-want option including free.

IndieDB staff asks to allow 48 hours for a response to messages, but by the 19th and even the 20th I had not received a response yet. By then I was already well underway sending out keys manually within their website's private message restrictions of 10 to 12 PMs per 24 hour period for new users like myself. It was a slow process but at least I could start to do something to thank folks for entering and salvage the giveaway.

Now there were two things that happened next here that were mostly negligence on my part. First, I neglected to consider that this was all during a holiday week(end) for Easter, and so the response times would naturally be longer than usual with people busy for holidays and things like that.

Secondly, IndieDB staff did get an email back to me on the 23rd, explaining that the problem had been because of the length of the actual keys that itch.io had generated, it had caused issues with IndieDB servers, causing some errors, and thus not sending out the keys. However, they had gone ahead and fixed this issue for my giveaway and sent out the keys on the 23rd. But here's where my negligence came in again, in that somehow I did not see this message until the 26th (there were no site updates that I had received a response, only an email reply, and I neglected to check that account for a couple days for whatever reason.) By the 26th though, I was already most of the way finished with sending out the other set of manual keys, so I decided to just keep sending the rest until the last batch finished today (the 30th.)

So long story short: some of you may have gotten 2 keys, one sent by the staff/contest itself on the 23rd, and a second one sent via PM on this site directly from me sometime between the 17th and the 30th. That's fine if so, feel free to send the spare key to a friend or whatever else. There were about a dozen or so folks on my list of 150 who I could not send a PM to because their profile was set to private/friends only. And of course the other 41 people who entered the giveaway that I didn't know about, I'm hoping some of them were able to get a key from the 100 sent out by the staff, or see the messages I posted earlier in the month at least.

But I think that about wraps it up. In the future it may help to know there is a feature with Itch.io that allows you to shorten the key links, and maybe IndieDB staff can make note of that feature and maybe make the length limit problem more transparent to help resolve some of these issues, but either way, I believe most of you who were interested have now been given a chance to check out the game in one fashion or another.

I want to thank everyone again for their patience and understanding with this giveaway, and thank you for your interest in my game and for entering the IndieDB giveaway. I really hope that you enjoy the game.

If you never received a key, and wanted to play Death? Preposterous!, it's under a pay-what-you-want setup now, including the option to play it for free, so please check it out over on Jayrayhawk.itch.io or Jayrayhawk.gamejolt.io at your convenience.

----------UPDATE: APRIL 17TH----------

Also, I was able to at least gather the list of followers my game page currently has, which is 150, so I will be SLOWLY sending out keys via PM as well. The site limits me to 10 PMs per day since my account is pretty new here, so by all means please use the above links and just download the game instead first, as that will be the faster and more convenient option.

The folks on the bottom of the list won't get their keys for at least the next 2 weeks assuming I remember to send out 10 every single day until then. Not the most convenient or expedited way to resolve things to say the least. Not only that, but it leaves the other 40 or so entries out of the equation with no way for me to know who they were, so yeah. Hopefully enough who entered notice these messages in a timely fashion and just head over to the store pages, but there is a slow backup plan in motion for those that miss these messages.

----------ORIGINAL POST BELOW----------

Hello all. First, thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway! I really was surprised there were so many entries and I appreciate everyone's interest in the game!

I just wanted to put out a message here in case folks didn't see my newest message on the giveaway page this morning.

User vivalditonio confirmed my suspicions that something was amiss. They posted:

Did someone actually win this? 100 is a lot so I am really surprised nobody announced he had won. It's not the first time in itch.io giveaways there are not that many entries and a lot of prizes and it's always: "You didn't win this time" but what is more surprising here is: "Giveaway closed" written in red. Several times there were more prizes than people who entered and nobody won! More info about this would be welcome.

I decided on the following:

Since both games are set up on a pay-what-you-want system, I've made it so you can just choose to pay $0 and get the game that way. You can think of it like winning the giveaway since it amounts to the same general outcome. Plus, if you prefer Gamejolt over Itch.io, that more easily opens up that possibility too since the game is on both storefronts.

Here are the links to the individual game store pages:

Jayrayhawk.itch.io

Jayrayhawk.gamejolt.io

My main goal for this giveaway was to get the game into the hands of interested folks and spread the word that it exists more than anything. So I hope this is a reasonable solution for many of you who wanted to try the game out. I'd rather all 191 of the interested folks who put in entries be able to play it anyway honestly.

In the next day or two, if the Indie DB staff ends up getting back to me and they are able to get the keys out to the winners, or if I do end up getting a list of users who entered the giveaway from them, I'll still send out keys manually via private message if that's something I can do.

I apologize again for whatever ended up happening to put a snag in this giveaway process. It very well may have been on me for all I know, I'm still in the dark for the moment, but I'll find out more information when I hear back from IndieDB staff. I hope this post provides a reasonable enough solution that most of you who were interested in getting the game still decide to give it a try.

Thanks for your time and understanding!

Edited by: jayrayhawk