WARNING — These devs have abandoned 3/3 games they put out. No updates after incomplete launches, gamebreaking bugs, and broken DLC

[vvv]

All straight from the horse’s mouth - UNEDITED “excuses” from dev responses on why they stopped updating even when the games are in an unplayable state:


BLOCKBUSTER INC. - As you all noticed the game struggled early on with a lot of negative reviews due to the unfinished nature and full release status back in June 2024.
We did our best to bring improvements and QoL updates for 6 months past the release date, but we were doing that on our own free time while looking for jobs to sustain ourselves. Since us and the publishers could not see any improvement even with big sales happening, we were forced to move on, as all of you surely understand, we cannot sustain ourselves with no money no matter how many years and effort we put in this game

GLORIOUS COMPANIONS - Hi everyone. We are aware of the remaining issues with GC and will address them when the time and capacity allow. Our two main programmers and designers are still with us, ensuring that any critical problems can be tackled eventually.

As for the rest of the GC team, the majority were contracted until the 1.0 release and a period of post-launch bug fixing. Given the game's sales performance, we couldn't justify keeping the full team on board, which is why their time with the project has ended.

While active development has concluded, we acknowledge the issues and will do our best to address them when possible.

THE TENANTS - The Tenants is published by a different party, which means we're limited with our actions to anything that we can work out with the publisher, which hasn't turned out fruitful so far.

[waxx]

We’ve seen this thread making the rounds, so let’s clear things up with actual context:

Glorious Companions was developed almost entirely by a few people - no funding, no publisher. We took years to bring it to a 1.0 release and did complete it. Sales were low, and the project wasn’t sustainable to keep updating indefinitely. But we put a lot of work into it, the exact opposite of abandoning.

Blockbuster Inc. was developed by an external team that we published. It launched, struggled, and they patched it for a few months post-release. Unfortunately, it didn’t find a market. No harm here either.

The Tenants is a game we developed with a publisher, and they still hold the publishing rights. We’d love to continue working on it, but we’re currently in a legal dispute with that publisher, which ties our hands completely.

Hotel Galactic is fully self-funded, built from scratch by our entire team, and is in a completely different position: strong support, solid reception, and full ownership. We’re here for the long haul on this one.

We get the frustration when projects fall short - we’ve felt it too. But framing it all as a pattern of “abandonment” doesn’t really hold up. We’ve always communicated openly, owned our missteps, and done our best to move forward.

I’ll let everyone make up their own mind from that.

[vvv]

Slapping a 1.0 release tag on a game that has game breaking bugs is the opposite of completing a game. Forget missing features or lack of QoL - i’m talking about characters clipping through the world, quests not completing, and paid DLCs that have to be disabled to be able to launch the game.

End result in all three - devs still made of with the money, players were left with broken games. The response above clears up why they stopped updating and not the messes they left behind when they did so.

These are all complaints that are clear as day in the three games’ reviews, general discussion forums, and reddit pages. ABANDONED is a word you will find in all three from people who own and played the game and It will take you a minute to have look before you consider supporting another game from these devs.

[SakujoSakujoSakujo]

The criticisms do hold up. If you check top reviews on steam for those aforementioned games, the word "abandon" is quite prevalent, outside of the fact that all of those games are sitting on "mixed". Trying to deflect it makes you look more dodgy.

[Zanon]

Originally posted by SakujoSakujoSakujo:

The criticisms do hold up. If you check top reviews on steam for those aforementioned games, the word "abandon" is quite prevalent, outside of the fact that all of those games are sitting on "mixed". Trying to deflect it makes you look more dodgy.

They really aren't deflecting: they're actively responding to it and explaining whatever it is the smurf account was accusing them of.

In fact, if you actually read what the dev has said, you will probably understand that they only developed ONE of the three games.

Some games sell, other games flop. Not every game is going to sell 5 million copies on day-one, not every game is going to be a perfect 10, not everyone will like every game.

[VideoBard]

Originally posted by Zanon:

Originally posted by SakujoSakujoSakujo:

The criticisms do hold up. If you check top reviews on steam for those aforementioned games, the word "abandon" is quite prevalent, outside of the fact that all of those games are sitting on "mixed". Trying to deflect it makes you look more dodgy.

They really aren't deflecting: they're actively responding to it and explaining whatever it is the smurf account was accusing them of.

In fact, if you actually read what the dev has said, you will probably understand that they only developed ONE of the three games.

Some games sell, other games flop. Not every game is going to sell 5 million copies on day-one, not every game is going to be a perfect 10, not everyone will like every game.

Yeah, the reply was pretty honest and informative.

[vvv]

Originally posted by Zanon:

Originally posted by SakujoSakujoSakujo:

The criticisms do hold up. If you check top reviews on steam for those aforementioned games, the word "abandon" is quite prevalent, outside of the fact that all of those games are sitting on "mixed". Trying to deflect it makes you look more dodgy.

They really aren't deflecting: they're actively responding to it and explaining whatever it is the smurf account was accusing them of.

In fact, if you actually read what the dev has said, you will probably understand that they only developed ONE of the three games.

Some games sell, other games flop. Not every game is going to sell 5 million copies on day-one, not every game is going to be a perfect 10, not everyone will like every game.

BIG difference in a game flopping and no further updates VS leaving the game in a broken state which the tenants and glorious were left in.

[ptarn]

You know... you guys must be the unluckiest dev team ever if, until now, 3 out of 3 games were essentially left in a state that, while not unplayable, leaves a lot to be desired. I get having a legal dispute with a publisher (although it's weird that a publisher would, well, allow a game to be published, and then say 'stop updating/working on it'). I sort of get trusting a dev team that didn't quite follow through with their game/idea. I even get how your first(?) game (Glorious Companions?) didn't quite get the reception you hoped for. But all of these? Either someone is making very poor judgement calls, has no idea about finances, doesn't have a clue about what gamers want, or is in other ways incompetent.

I wish you well on your new project/game, but I do hope you understand that trust, once lost, is very difficult to earn back.