Ori and the Blind Forest studio head says they could be forced to “shut down” due to the impact of negative Steam reviews for ‘No Rest for the Wicked’
Ori and the Blind Forest studio head says they could be forced to “shut down” due to the impact of negative Steam reviews for ‘No Rest for the Wicked’
39 Comments
I honestly didn’t even realize this game was made by the same studio who made Ori. Those are two of my favorite games. May go check this out.
Not the impact of making a middling game then?
Shame.Both Oris are great games.But industry is ruthless.
I will never understand how they could fuck up that game so much
Offtopic kinda, but, you know, sometimes I think Ori series was made good not because of Thomas Mahler, but in spite of him.
What a douche of a person, I’ve seen enough of examples either from his socials and from the opinions of the people who have worked with him.
The unfortunate reality of many studios is they basically live paycheck to paycheck. One big flop can tank them.
I understand all of the challenges this game and developer has but I don’t like blaming players for “review bombing” the game.
Got bills to pay got mouhs to feed ain’t nothing in this world for free.
No Rest for the Wicked flopped that hard? Damn.
I bought it but didn’t play much because my PC was running the game full of stutter back when it released.
Smells like gaslighting. “WE will close because YOU left negative reviews”. Sure pal, whatever you say
I really hate how they call it review bombing. People buying the game and not enjoying it and wanting improvements is not review bombing.
The game has also sold a lot of copies and if people not enjoying it is going to bankrupt you, you’ve messed up somewhere not the players.
Made a shit game and had poor sales. Hmm… it’s the consumer’s fault for posting negative reviews, not ours for making a bad product.
Money don’t grow on trees.
This whole article is based on a few posts on Discord..
>I think people think I’m joking when I’m asking for positive reviews cause in peoples minds there’s always some big publisher in the background who’ll cover costs…
> Folks, if you’re writing here and are enjoying Wicked and are excited for future updates, but haven’t left a positive review, it’s entirely possible that we won’t be around in a couple of months to do anything anymore simply because we got review bombed which leads to people not buying the game. Which means we’re not making any money and will have to shut down.”
> I wouldn’t ask if our business wouldn’t be dependent on it. I also never write reviews on anything, but if you want to see us actually finish Wicked, it’s detrimental that we get that review score back up.”
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Edit: Update from Thomas Mahler of Moon Studios on X: https://x.com/thomasmahler/status/1921646282726138116
> lol, this is what happens when the press just picks up Discord posts and writes an article around them 😂🤣
> Overall, pretty much everyone who’s tried Wicked after the last few hotfixes is extremely positive. The reason I left the post on Discord up was simply to push back against some of the bullshit reviews.
> I’ve been hated on Twitter by a few crazies for years now, and I also saw the calls for review bombing because, according to those folks, I’m a ‘Nazi.’
>These days, apparently anyone who doesn’t include five trans characters in their game and doesn’t let their products be influenced by political bullshit is a Nazi. What a world we live in 😂
>When the Russia/Ukraine war broke out and I replied on Twitter saying that Moon Studios wouldn’t be taking a public stance—because we’re a video game company, not a journalistic outlet—the next day a threat letter with a picture of Putin was taped to my office door, full of insults from top to bottom.
>So I have no issue telling active players who love Wicked that they should go ahead and leave a positive review on Steam. After all, it’s allowed on Steam to buy a game, leave a negative review that doesn’t even talk about the game at all (there are negative Wicked reviews that literally just say ‘.’), and then instantly refund it… and the negative review still counts.
>If that’s allowed, then it should also be allowed for a developer to encourage their players to share their real experiences 👍
>And no, we’re not in immediate financial danger—but from time to time, I think I’m allowed to speak up about issues within our industry I personally find unbecoming.
>We are continuing as always—our goal is for every game Moon Studios creates to be an absolute masterpiece, and with Wicked we’re already on the way.
>We want our small 90-person company to push companies like Blizzard, GGG, and others to innovate by putting out products that are top-quality and truly unique – we believe in competition and we think players will win because of that! 👍❤️
This is such bullshit clickbait.
The rating is “Mostly Positive”. Recent reviews are mixed, sure, but that’s nowhere near what I’d call negative. 33k reviews is a lot too, so it probably sold well.
So is this just attempting to garner support?
Really? Wow I thought they were in a good spot
So I’ve never heard of this game, but I looked it up. It’s got “Mostly Positive” for its all time rating. And “Mixed” for recent. It hasn’t even been review bombed that hard.
Yeah it’s those gamers who bought their game are forcing them to shut down. Definitely not some incompetent developers who don’t remotely listen to feedback.
All I am reading is if you are having a positive experience, please leave a positive review. If you are not having a positive experience and leave a negative review, we will dismiss it as “review bombing”.
I gave up reading reviews many years ago or caring about ratings. I thought the Ori games were fairly good so curious about this game but I don’t do early access. EA can be a good and bad thing for devs.
It’s mostly positive with mixed recent reviews? Is it really that bad? They have improved on the game a lot it kinda sounds like they want a excuse to not work on it.
Shame, I was looking forward to the full release of the game after playing Ori games, expecting a great game.
Is it ‘review’ bombing if the complaints are legit?
Way too many companies get overly defensive with bad reviews and call it bombing instead of taking the criticism and improving because of it.
Also if a company financial situation is so precarious they make or break it with an EA title, I don’t think they deserve to make it.
EA funds shouldn’t be used as their only real financial strategy.
Really read the reviews.
They mostly are about shitty QoL they can easily fix.
Game deserves the negative reviews if they release on EA and people dislike the experience.
We should give positive review if game drains the fun out of you ?
What’s happened to the game? I loved early access
I LOVED ori but holy shit was no rest for the wicked bad. It had a lot of cool ideas but the design was just way too difficult to be fun. I refunded it within a couple hours because I just was not enjoying myself.
When people give valid criticism it’s not review bombing. It’s calling it for what it is.
Early access is gonna be full of jank for sure but you approach a broken build with “we’ll do our best to fix it asap” not “wahhh stop having valid criticism”
Read the reviews for 5 seconds and you can see they’re valid complaints and not blind hating instead of seeing it go negative and cry review bombing.
Welcome to Xbox Game Studios
Moon Studios CEO refutes this article on his socials. Considering the state of video games journalism now a days, im more inclined to believe him.
Glad to hear it. Really not fan of these games being released as “early access” like this (and sometimes staying in early access for ages). If it becomes synonymous with “studio being shutdown”, that’d be great.
From what I can see the game was never review bombed, all it’s negative reviews are purely critics of the game
I’ve been playing the alfa since the beginning, and teh game is awesome, sure there are change i like, change i don’t, and the game keep changing and taking form because, again, is an alfa, im not going to give it a bad review just because they change something in a patch i didn’t like so much when i know is going to keep changing.
If the success of their game comes from positive reviews of their early access release, they were not going to succeed in the first place. They’d be better off taking feedback from the negative reviews to improve the product.
I honestly really love and enjoy this game, but I absolutely understand criticism levied against the studio head and team for this and the reviews it’s getting.
They essentially released the game and did a minor update. They went radio silent for almost 6 months while separating from their publisher and then come out and drop a huge update that changed a lot of aspects of the game, many of which people don’t like.
I get it, and it’s deserved, but man, I really don’t want to see this game fail.
A legit, in depth review is not review bombing. The game has issues. The boss is also a complete dickhead. You can’t call it review bombing just because people don’t like your game fella.
“We took immense risk by using all of our money to buy publishing risks back and now we’re fucked”.
Sounds like a you problem, to be honest.
I bought the game to support them after loving Oris, but it’s not great. I’m not going to write a positive review and mislead others. I just didn’t write a review. It’s the risk of early access – on both sides.
Haven’t kept up with this game. I thought initial impressions from early access were good. What happened?
I haven’t played the game yet. I had planned to wait until full release because I do not like early access games as a concept. But them blaming players for “Review bombing” when every review I looked at had legitimate complaints is just gross. If you make decisions in development and people don’t like it you messed up. Its not the players fault you shit the bed.
Both Ori games are among my favourite games ever and I had planned to get this game, but not anymore. fuck em.