What happened? this game is awful now.

[Romp]

I remember playing the original free build of this game, it was hard to control and play, sure, but it was fun. then when youtubers started playing it together, i realised that the steam version had fixed allthe problems and actually made it one of the best party games ever!

then they began adding online, and at first it was not too stable, but was fun and easy to control, as well as the menus being nice to look at.

Now that i bought the game... it just looks like a step backward. The menus aren't as nice to scroll through, it just clips from one to the next, there are tons of bugs, and the win screen is just ♥♥♥♥.

WHAT HAPPENED GANG BEASTS??? you used to be cool...

[ColossalCereal]

This is what happens when you go from playing a pre-alpha build from 2014 to a beta build from 2016-2017. And since you've appeared to miss everything in the middle then of course you'd be making this post, just like everyone else who is in the same boat as you

This game has changed countless times in many major ways

• 0.1.0 from what I gathered was very respected, just a more updated version of the pre-alpha builds 0.0.0/1 - 0.0.3 (I joined in 0.1.5a). The menu was a 3D street theme with real time bots fighting each other.
  
• 0.2.0 was extremely overhyped and caused a lot of people to be dissapointed. It was a pretty good update which had the biggest visual improvements (the game went from Unity 4 to Unity 5). The menu was revamped to a more minimalist theme with your generic menu options in an organised list (and well looking too) and just the basic Boneloaf-brown matte 2D background (this was my favourite menu theme in my opinion). Although due to the extreme amount of time it was taking the devs to port everything from the Unity 4 0.1.5a build of Gang Beasts to the Unity 5 0.2.0 build - They left out a lot of maps and costumes which caused people to get very salty. Although they did introduce 3 new gamemodes which was fun.
  
• 0.3.0 was an update where my memory is a bit vague. It wasn't hated from what I remember and it seemed that a good amount of people really enjoyed it. The menu was changed to a 3D street/alley thing again with the shadows of beasts fighting being projected on to the wall (I'm pretty sure). Visuals were further improved, costumes and maps were being added back in and remastered, etc.
  
• 0.4.0 for some reason was another update where I can't really remember the communites reaction. Although since online multiplayer came out for all owners in this build, a lot of people were happy - But like every build, there were bugs, and because of this a lot of people had tough issues playing online which caused a handful of mad people. But again, the visuals were looking good, same for the costumes and maps, etc. Also the menu was just slightly more improved from 0.3.0.
  
• 0.5.0 is the most hated update and also one of the best updates to come out. Now, before people start screaming at me saying that this update sucked - No, it didn't, you are just overlooking the countless good things that happened and are only looking at the bad. Yes, the visuals got temporarily downgraded, there are still many bugs, the mechanics got insanely tweaked (they get tweaked very often in major updates but 0.5.0 was a game changer) which was sorta a good thing for some and bad for others (the mechanics tweak), and some other things. But look, the character customizer that got announced in 0.2.5 finally got released and it's one of the coolest additions to Gang Beasts ever. (Almost) every map was remastered and now finally fits the Beef City theme, the Gang Beasts server hosting tool released, and you can now create lobbies with your friends for private and public online multiplayer, as well as other things. Although of course if you are one of the people that are experiencing a game breaking bug, then it's hard to enjoy the game - No doubt about that. Although many people are looking straight past the good things in 0.5.0. Every major update had "bad things" in it, 0.5.0 isn't any different

[Popcork]

For me, I would say the menus are fine, the previous ones made me nausous. Bugs are kinda a normal thing for games in development, more features equals more bugs until they are squashed. I can agree with you on the win screen but I sincerely doubt that is the final win screen.

The game hasn't tumbled into the abyss as you have described. They added stuff like online, character customization, new moves, polished maps and removed lots of bugs. There used to be game breaking bugs that caused the game to crash at random and the characters to spaz out of the map. Lastly, netcode is hella hard and alot of games lack online because of this, so cut them some slack.