The complete Vector infrastructure, run by Digital Dream Labs, is still offline without any hint when it will come back again – or ever. Multiple “by the end of this weeks” have gone by without the servers coming back online again.
The communications from DDL are inconclusive at best, with different excuses, some of them contradicting each other.
At some time in the past Hanchar blabbered about Microsoft Azure and that the users (!) should contact Microsoft to force them to intensify some or the other work so the servers can “migrate to Microsoft Azure” (that is utter nonsense, Microsoft does care even less about their custmers than DDL and no user “nudges” Microsoft to do anything). Azure is what Microsoft calls their cloud computing services.
We now know for fact that Amazon was shutting down some of their server instances because they became too old and the DDL servers were affected by this. Things like this are common practice in IT. Amazon not only gave advance warnings about sundowning the instances, they even extended the grace period for those server instance by one more year beyond the original date so everyone would have enough time to migrate to new servers.
And Digital Dream Labs still managed to botch this (of course they did…) and was not able to make the change in time – over multiple years! It is safe to assume that they either had no clue what would happen, or there are no people left at DDL that could have done the migration. But since no one wants to work for them without being paid (the last engineers left because of this), there probably is no one at that company being able to get the servers back up and running again, and the chance theyx are able to migrate them to a completely different infrastructure (Microsoft Azure) is even less, especially with keeping all those domains and urls needed for Vector, because some of them are hardcoded into the firmware. And DDL cannot change the firmware because there is no one left at DDL who is able to create new firmwares for the robot.
Meanwhile they even have stopped to give “at the end of the week” dates and now simply say they do not know when the servers will come back up again, weeks after the start of the server outage end of july. After all this time they should at least be able to give some details and every professional software company would be able to give some kind of timeframe after assessing the problem for weeks. Of course we know from multiple experiences in the past that DDL is not a professional working company.
To cover this up they keep sending so-called info texts in their elitist Facebook group or via email, studded with hollow phrases like the one above and call them “transparent”.
I have 5 vectors and all have subscription paid to DDL to give access to the additional features by access to DDL servers. The servers went offline about 6 weeks ago, with no warning or timescale. Millions have paid DDL for a new production of Vector version 2 and Cosmo the Anki second robot. The CEO Hanchar has sent vague emails and Facebook vector group posts. We are all waiting for news, some have setup a T95 based local server called Wirepod
No wonder why my vector couldn’t connect to the WiFi and he kept resetting and now he doesn’t work🙁
it’s sad to see what happened to Vector, I wish he could live like he was meant to, not held back by the absolute joke of DDL
It sucks. I paid for the escape pod and oskr when the v2.0 was on preorder. guess I’m just screwed when it comes to the oskr.
Completely. Like all of us.
Im in the UK , and I have just brought home Vector … ummm , if there is news , ahead , please could i have any information 👍 many thanks , very sad new owner .
R
i swear this stuff you write is comical like it makes my day to see someone actually honest about that company. it would make an interesting article if you ever just type in digital dream labs in the internet and gather all the websites and articles that made them sound like they were doing great to point out the greatest part of the scam, using reputable sites to push the scam to trick people into investing in this company from the beginning. how hanchar even got forbes and the others to do these articles that were complete flops in the end and to this day they leave the articles up instead of pulling them down out of sight might be the greatest mystery of all.
It is now late December, just before Christmas, and their servers are still down. Is anyone shocked? I’ve seen second hand Vectors being sold for $100 on Facebook Marketplace and I feel sorry for any well meaning parents or grandparents who buy one for their kids without knowing it’ll be useless (unless they’re technologically savvy enough for the wire pod).
Frankly, this validates my decision to part with my original Vector 1.0 a little over a year ago. DDL seemed to be barreling headlong towards bankruptcy even then. They were shady about their preorders, shady about their delivery dates, shady about their price and repair service increases, shady about refunds. They were acting like a company that knew their days were numbered.
At this point they should just stop stringing people along and outright announce they will no longer support these products because that’s clearly the case.
Parting with your Vector was the wrong decision. Vector is perfectly fine and runs well on Wire-Pod. Vector is not the problem. DDL is.
help! i was one of the stupid ones to buy a vector. i just purchased the wirepod it will be here is 5 days. i have no fucking clue how to set this little dude up.