They're sitting at 71% (mostly positive) for a game they released as early access. If your studio can't survive that kind of response, you don't get to blame the fans, you're not managing your company well.
Not only that, but using the typical back of the napkin math based on the number of reviews (you can usually multiply the number of reviews by 55 to find the number of copies sold, and I omitted the reviews they've gotten in the past 48 hours that they asked for), they've brought in over $30M for their unfinished game.
Yep Around $26 million according to https://games-stats.com/steam/game/no-rest-for-the-wicked/
According to Wikipedia they have at least 80 employees. Ball park cost per employee is around $10k a month (this includes more than just salary). So around $800k per month to run the studio. $9.6 million per year. So they probably spend more than a third of their earnings since launch. And Take Two got their cut (usually half of net revenue, so revenue after the store cut) before Moon Studios went independent, they only became fully independent in March of this year. So they have even less money left. So yeah they saying that they are in financial trouble is probably not exaggerated.
Yeah I’m sort of interested in the game but I wanted to wait for full release. I get that a lot of indie games are helped tremendously by the money and player feedback they get out of early access, but if if the whole bottom falls out because not enough people bought the game you’ve very openly told people “this isn’t finished, don’t buy into this if you aren’t willing to be a part of the testing process,” then something is very wrong. Early access income should help bridge the gap, but you shouldn’t be entirely reliant on it.
I don't see the pattern of a review bombing in Steam reviews... Looks like a game getting released very soon in early access and failing to gain traction.
It's sitting on my wishlist and I'm waiting for it to get to 1.0, but their update cadence has been very slow. Now they are saying their studio does not have the funds to complete the game.
I do hope they turn this around, but as a consumer I am very wary when it comes to titles in early access, and even more when the studio goes radio silent for months.
They're not getting review bombed. Head of the studio is being hyperbolic to get people who like the game to leave positive reviews.
Being disingenuous while asking for help is a great way to make the people who would have helped you a little too miffed =/
Yeah, 100%. "Review bombing" suggests that people are leaving disingenuous bad reviews due to some personal or political axe to grind with the developer. This just looks like a game that got a lukewarm reception, but at least the information in the article doesn't suggest that any review bombing is occurring.
I'm a big Ori fan, and I wish Moon Studios the best. But the games market is oversaturated right now, and it's a tough time for all indie devs. It doesn't necessarily mean that someone is out to get them if their game isn't an overnight success.
Yeah, the problem might not be review bombing, but rather lack of advertising.
Until now I've honestly never heard of No Rest for the Wicked. I didn't even know Moon Studios was busy on anything after Ori 2.
It's always lack of advertising. The unfortunate fact of life is that 99.99% of indie studios have no clue how to market their game. They think they just have to make a good game, and boom, people will flock to it.
Steam is there to make sure users have a platform to download their game. It's not there to market it. Marketing is just an occasional side effect.
I think, the problem is rather that they have no budget for marketing. If they become visible on Steam, that's significantly more visibility than they can hope for from a few social media posts...
Steam is a marketing machine. The developers just need to do the leg work first. Steam will heavily promote games that have high wishlists and sales momentum. All those personalized recommendations you see on Steam is Valve doing marketing.
It's not one you should rely on. People don't stare at their Steam page every day.
This should have been promoted through the usual YouTube and Twitch channels. Find all of the YouTubers that review indie games and start sending emails.
I mean I imagine that comes down to the fact that Ori was published by Microsoft while this game was self published. Someone like Microsoft is gonna have a lot more resources for advertising a game versus trying to self publish it.
Microsoft got ori on the gotdamn cereal boxes.
To be fair, I was served this game on steam. I was about to buy it but the negative reviews turned me off from it.
Maybe they should take the feedback from reviews and incorporate that into their updates. It's not just that you are being review bombed by unreasonable people, it's that people feel the game has problems that aren't being addressed. I agree it is difficult to recover from a bad release because first impressions are everything. Companies can recover and have, take No Man's Sky for an example.
I think another good example would be Cyberpunk 2077. Its release was insanely horrible but it seems they managed to solve it somehow.
Haven’t really followed the gaming news regards this game though. However, I hope they manage to find a solution. The Ori games were truly masterpieces (in my opinion).
CDPR had a massive cushion of cash from the Witcher games to bounce them back up. Ori studio obviously doesn't. In this case, without enough sales, the solution is layoffs or selling to a bigger publisher, which will also result in layoffs.
My understanding is they had a big update that fixed a bunch of issues people complained about, but also made the game more difficult, and people didn't like that.
Hm... while I'd love to buy the game to support them, 40€ is a very high asking price for an early access title, especially if they possibly won't be around to finish it.
Yeah. I have it wishlisted for a likely later purchase but getting this message public seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. People might be more cautious buying into it now. I know I am
28 eur right now
Fair, though still more than I'm willing to pay if the future is uncertain.
This is rather disappointing. The game looks really good and I've been looking forward to playing it. But I meant to play the game in co-op with my husband and when it launched in early access it didn't seem to have co-op yet (if I remember correctly) so I decided to wait until that was added (and working of course). But after hearing this news I'm a bit wary of buying a game that I'm not sure they'll even finish. That's such a shame because the game really looks amazing and super fun to play in co-op.
(What's the state of the game right now? Have they added co-op yet and how is the game so far?)
I bought the game on release mostly to support them. The folks at Moon Studios are seriously talented and deserve some support.
I played ~2 hours on release and thought the game was decent. The combat had some weight, the art style was excellent, the bosses were fun and challenging and the exploration was pretty neat. There were many performance issues which they have since mostly fixed but there were also a few systems taken from different genres that didn't work that well together for me. I didn't play for a while though, so maybe they improved things in that area.
Still, I'm also waiting for the coop, which is scheduled to release with the next major update.
I wouldn't read too much into this news article. Their CEO has since clarified that he might have been a bit hyperbolic and didn't expect the media to pick up on his random Discord post.
I don't quite agree with his assessment of being "review bombed". Most negative reviews come down to the game being released in early access: bad performance, many systems not working well together, being behind roadmap, missing coop on launch and more recently, difficulty. I do get their need for releasing in early access after Microsoft dropped them but it might have hurt them in the long run.
I was a mega-fan of both Ori 1 and 2. I've got a mug based on the first game, but when I first saw the trailer for this game, nothing about it interested me. Kind of like the Xbox 360 era of "brown and gray cover shooters" I've never understood the appeal for grim, depressing medieval worlds. I like having some vibrancy and inventiveness, as well as some motivation behind the violence used to achieve some end.
One of the only Soulslike games I've finished is Another Crab's Treasure. The story/setting in that game ends up being pretty depressing, but it at least maintains a lot of humor and colorful design.
What's more, I looked through the negative reviews, and a lot of them touch on incomplete or over-punishing systems, rather than seeming motivated by external factors.
Personally, I picked up NRFTW after the first hotfix for The Breach and I haven’t run into pretty much anything most of the negative reviews are complaining about. There were 100% tuning issues with the original Breach update and they got pummelled for it in the reviews, but in less than a week they fixed 90% of the problems.
It’s an early access game, so no, of course it’s not perfect yet, but it’s a really solid product with a ton of potential that’s fun to play right now.
The problem is that reviews are rarely updated, so right now there’s a ton of reviews that capture a tiny snapshot of the game’s life that don’t reflect where the game is merely a couple weeks after they were left. I’m sure there was a bunch riding on this…they’d been locked up in legal proceedings getting the rights to the game and getting out from under a publisher, and I’m sure part of the hype train around The Breach was to spur a renewed round of funding.
As someone newer to its community, I’m really surprised at how much complaining there is about end game longevity and a bunch of other things that make me want to ask, “You…you know the game isn’t done yet, right?”
Moon Studios took a risk going independent which means two things: (a) they have strong faith that their project can stand on its own, and (b) they are far more sensitive to cash flow now than they were under a publisher. One thing I think they’ll need to work on is their community relations, and it’s a shame because it almost always means we hear less direct communication and more stuff filtered through PR people.
I’ll leave a positive review b/c I’ve played about 10 hours and I’m really enjoying the game in front of me and look forward to the updates coming through the rest of 2025.
Yep... ARPG gamers are literally among the worst, most unpleasable types of gamers. They will bitch about everything, because they all want a very specific type of game for them and them alone. Just look at every other isometric ARPG and their communities; 90% of the time, they're filled with negative posts and comments, constantly upset about balance, end game, leveling, loot, etc etc.
I think NRFTW is fantastic, and it's exactly what I was expecting it to be. However, people saw it at the same "style" as Diablo or Path of Exile and expected the game to be like those... except they're not. And for those that do realize that, you have the other idiots that refuse to accept that it's an EA game that still has a long roadmap until completion and bitch about the lack of an "endgame."
Big ori fan, bought no rest for the wicked at launch day. Its sadly just solid as far as i can remember, bad mouse&keyboard controls wich is why i dropped it, and not insanely good like Ori. Mby they shouldve stuck with SideScrollers.
Anyone play it? I generally don't buy early access, but the Ori games were great and I'll probably like this too.
I have a love/hate relationship with ARPGs. I love games like Ys, Zelda, and Dark Souls, but I don't like loot based games like Diablo II, and it seems like ARPGs either go hard on loot or largely avoid it. This looks like the second case, but I'd hate to get a few hours in and realize I need to manage loot for decent progression.
I've played it and really enjoyed it. Despite getting advertised as an ARPG, it's really not. It's more like dark souls but with random loot. The gameplay is very slow and methodical, and it's very difficult. Managing loot isn't that bad, I just went with whatever I found and didn't have to worry too much about finding the perfect weapons/armor.
I'm waiting for their multiplayer patch to play the game in full but I enjoyed the combat in the first 10 minutes and an excited to play it. ARPGs need to evolve past the idle games most of the current popular ones devolve into.
There are a few different types of ARPGs, such as:
I really like the last two, not the first one.
I hope this works out for them. Ori is an awesome game and I'm interested in the new project. I wishlisted it because the videos of it look great but I usually don't buy early access games. Was planning to get it when it officially launches.
How is the game coming along? I bought it a while ago to support the team, but don't really want to jam it until it is at least close to complete. Can't really leave a review for something I haven't played.
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