Under the Hood; Refinements to Pantaloon for May
Hello! This post is going to get into some of the nitty-gritty of how Pantaloon operates, some of the challenges we’ve faced thus far, and the solutions we’re implementing to improve our offering to continue bringing you the boldest and most bizarre games each month.
The TLDR, though: Pantaloon’s giveaways will be moving to a X/60/40 model whereby:
X amount of game keys are guaranteed for those who solve Pantaloon Puzzles or are subscribed to Pantaloon Primo
60% will then go out on a first-come-first-served basis
…and 40% will be randomly allocated to our subscribers.
We’re hoping this keeps things fair, but also retains the unpredictability that makes Pantaloon delightful.
Ultimately we’re working to dramatically increase the amount of keys we can give out each month, but this is costly, and we’re running a marathon here, not a sprint. Bear with us. There’s bold plans and some ambitious initiatives in the works, but that’s one for another day…
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Ok! Onwards for a juicy deep dive into last month, that attempts to offer some context and transparency into how Pantaloon operates, and some of the fixes/refinements we’re implementing to refine things through May and beyond.
A deeper dive into some of the issues
Context & Backstory
When Pantaloon launched (well, soft launched - we were proving out the model) back in August of last year, we grew too quickly to be able to sustain the model. We pay the developers we work with a price per key, and after two months of running the newsletter - we had too many subscribers to be able to adequately compensate our developers the following month. That is, we couldn’t afford to purchase the amount of keys required to match our subscriber base moving forward.
We thought things would ramp slowly, allowing us to increase key quantities slowly, with our finances in step. Our three-month forecasts were off by a magnitude of ten (!), however, and so we had to go on a hiatus of sorts to find a solution.
That solution was the First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) model, where the first [x] (1000 in this first case) subscribers to claim a key would get one, and everybody else would get a generous discount for the game.
This felt like a fair solution that would work in the interests of all - including our developers - but it introduced some quirks and problems…
Duplicate Game Keys
Last month, with our Death Crown partnership, we moved to a bespoke game key delivery system (as oppose to just associating keys with users in our CRM tool) which introduced a few quirks. Essentially, we had thousands of our subscribers all attempting to claim a key at the very same moment. This meant, in our freshly minted databases, that the exact same timestamp (to the second) was being associated with an email and a key, and the key was then being sent to multiple people - only one of which could then successfully redeem on Steam. This was not something that appeared during our QA phase - as our sample size was much smaller.
This was frustrating, though. If you were one of the few that experienced the dupe issue: accept our apologies. We manually got back to as many of you as possible to issue replacement keys, but we only had a finite number of backups for such purposes.
The fix? We’ve updated the code now, and duplicate claims to the same key entry in the database should now be impossible.
The First-Come-First-Served System
Bugs and oversights happen with new systems and functions. These are kinks we can iron out (and have!) over time. The FCFS design of April’s giveaway was perhaps more philosophically problematic, however. Receiving an email to ‘Claim Your Key’ and then clicking that lovely big button in the email only to be met with “Sorry! You weren’t quick enough!” is frustrating. We’ve heard this loud and clear.
A little extra insight here: the FCFS system might seem simple/trivial, but it requires bespoke databases, functions and logic to serve the keys correctly. The list of keys needs to be dynamically maintained, and once they’ve run out, a separate URL needs to be pushed to serve the discount instead. This database functionality will allow us to do great things when it comes to furnishing you with games in the future, but again - not one for today.
Anyway! On paper the system and logic seemed fair and in the best interests of all - given the key to subscriber ratio. And I think it IS fair, in truth. While I’ve contemplated and lost sleep over some of the criticism and ‘scam!’ comments we’ve received (which led to this post), ultimately we’re providing paid games to our subscribers for free, and offering a pedestal to developers with weird, non-mainstream games to raise awareness for their work. Subscribe or don’t, it’s totally up to you.
But I do understand the frustration/disappointment at missing out. This is very fair. And something we’re going to attempt to fix with our next partnership.
Solutions & Refinements
And so we come to the solutions and refinements to the process to build on what’s working, and move away from what’s not. Here’s what we’re doing:
Placing a greater focus on Pantaloon Puzzles
Our monthly ARGs and puzzles have proved incredibly popular. Moving forward, if you solve that month’s Pantaloon Puzzle - you will guarantee the partnered game for that month. This is now detached from Pantaloon Primo.
Introducing a new format for the giveaway
- X amount of game keys are guaranteed for those who solve our Pantaloon Puzzles or are subscribed to Pantaloon Primo
- 60% will then go out on a first-come-first-served basis
- …and 40% will be randomly allocated to our subscribers.Stopping ‘Claim Your Key’ Emails only to find they’ve run out…
Instead, you will be able to claim your key when we announce our partnered game each month, and you’ll enter the queue. Those that were quick enough will be sent keys, those that won’t, won’t. We won’t rub the disappointment of being too slow in your face moving forward.
Thoughts?
We’re hopeful that the above is going to smooth things out nicely and improve everybody’s experience with the newsletter. If you have thoughts/comments/concerns/feedback-of-any-kind relating to the above, however, get in touch - Discord is probably your best bet.