We Love Physical Games: EFS 30th Anniversary Kickstarter

We miss the pleasure of being able to hold the games we play and knowing we get to keep them forever. We want to share this love as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of Emperor of the Fading Suns in 2027. This classic strategy game hit store shelves January 23, 1997 and quickly went through two printings. However, it has not been available in a box since, and now is the time to change that.

The plan is to Kickstart a new box version, complete with the game and a plethora of digital goodies, or the limited-edition boxed set with even more digital AND physical goodies. This edition of the game plays locally on your computer, and does not require players to have Steam, GOG Galaxy or any other online service to play it. In addition, backers also get future versions of the game as we continue to enhance it.

I will post more as we move forward with the Kickstarter, but for now check out THIS VIDEO to learn more and visit the Kickstarter so you can select to be notified on launch.

DragonCon 2026 Schedule

I hope you can join me at these

Title: The state of video games
Description: Our panel brings their diverse experiences in the video game development to the table to talk about where we came from and where video games may be going in the near future. Q&A to follow.
Panelists: Richard “Lord British” Garriott, Andrew Greenberg, Alison Carrier, Harrison Giles Pink
Time: Fri 11:30 am
Location: Augusta E-H Westin (Length: 1 Hour)

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“Smart” App Controls

As a heads up to fellow devs, today is the second time a player on Steam has sent me this concern after a game update: “An Application Control policy has blocked this file.” I have a hard time figuring out exactly what triggered their “smart” app controls, but this work around took care of it for them both times:

1. Right-click the game and select Properties

2. Go to the Installed Files tab and click Verify integrity of game files.

3. Relaunch the game once the process completes.

The Shape of the Future

As opposed to many theorists who like discussing video games, Scott Steinberg actually spent his time in the trenches, working on game dev and publishing, before moving more firmly into writing about the future. That might help explain why I have been enjoying his “The Shape of the Future” (written with Aric Dromi Jankov) and its insights on planning for uncertainty.

I found one of their quotes especially applicable to what the Emperor of the Fading Suns Enhanced team and its mod community have been doing to make this 30-year-old-game relevant to modern gamers:

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Twitchy Steam Key Vendors

I meant to write about this when we launched Emperor of the Fading Suns Enhanced last year, but releasing Machiavelli the Prince Enhanced last week reminded me of it – all the people who claim defunct Twitch accounts to use them for their own skeezy purposes.

Right after launch, we received AI-generated emails from people claiming to have Twitch accounts and wanting to stream the game. At first glance, these look pretty good – several thousand followers. Dig a little deeper and you quickly see that they have not streamed in three or four years.

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