Moon Studios is the talented development studio behind the acclaimed Ori and The Blind Forest and Ori and the Will off the Wisps. In a recent post studio head Thomas Mahler said that the company’s current game ARPG No Rest For the Wicked could be the studios final game. The reason? Apparent “review bombing” which Mahler says has caused significant financial trouble for Moon Studios. Flicking through the Steam reviews though it seems like they are mixed because of the game, rather than actual maliciousness. Hopefully, Moon Studio soldiers on through and gets the financial stability they need.
“I think people think I’m joking when I’m asking for positive reviews cause in people’s mind 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.”
They got review bombed? For what?
The game has a 7/10 across the board from all critic sites.
7/10 isn’t even bad really. It’s weird that anything less than an 8/10 in gaming has always been seen as a failure and terrible score, when it’s still up there and should be at worst a good game, just not great or excellent. And reviews are so subjective anyways, I’ve read plenty of great ones for games I didn’t care for and horrible ones for games I loved.
It’s the natural consequence of people getting enraged at IGN for giving a game they haven’t even played a 9.5 instead of a 10.
Hmmm, seemed to be mostly positive from what I could tell. If there are negative issues it’s because the game is in early access which if you’re that concerned the developers probably shouldn’t have made it an early access game. Shame if they go under as the Ori games were great.
Can I see some of that “review bombing”? 🤔
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1371980/No_Rest_for_the_Wicked/#app_reviews_hash Make of it what you will.
Relying on the opinions of players, uh… no comment!… you just have to see the amount of game bashing on Metacritic while the vast majority of players don’t even own it (who said Astral Chain?).Even though on Steam you have to own the game to post a review, it remains subjective…Between ‘the game isn’t translated’ or ‘without updates, I won’t raise my score’, well there you go…
The Astral Chain hate was so weird. Best game on Switch imo.
I could be off base here, but this sounds more like mismanagement trying to blame another issue (an issue that I just don’t see as existing) or,as has been the industry trend, expectations that are unreasonably high.
Reviews I dont agree with must definitely be caused by false pretense review bombing. Ya, of course! Anything else would shatter my fragile world view!
Didn’t mean that as a reply to you Meat. Sorry about that.
Yeah no. Definitely not review bombed. A few reviews may be a bit harsh for early access. But if anything a dev should welcome criticism of feature in early access to possibly improve it.
First Negative review I found had a long list of QOL issues with the game and most positive reviews also mentioned QOL issues but trusted they’d be fixed.
Despite this the game sits at mostly positive. If that’s not good enough to keep the lights on you have SEVERE management issues.
Eh. Clearly they’re shifting the blame. If you come from two mostly acclaimed games and your next product is “mostly positive” (which is still positive, mind you), then it’s a you problem, not the players.
And most of the negative reviews are due to the current update doing some changes, apparently for the worse, which doesn’t help their case. For me, they got too conceited and now don’t know how to handle criticism.
That’s not what reviewbombing is.
No Rest Fort The Wicked is also not on Switch so not a lot of point in sharing the news here.
Another studio I liked going down the drain…
First I’m even hearing of this game. A lot of the reviews I’m reading seem to raise legitimate concerns. It’s not “review bombing” if your game isn’t up to snuff and people voice their opinions. Review bombing is large quantities of people who haven’t played a game giving it 1s or negative reviews in general just to hate on it for some political or business reason.
This is just blame shifting. Don’t make a game people like? Then you don’t deserve that funding I guess
Bruh… I love the Ori games