It’s still a bit surprising to me that one of the most incendiary stories we can post on Destructoid isn’t about sex or violence or “censorship” in games. Those were the hallmarks of news bits that used to drive people to the comments section and send the page clicks skyrocketing. No, today, it’s all about the Epic Games Store. The people who hate it hate it with a passion I haven’t seen out of the PC community since the clusterfuck that was the launch of Diablo III. But unlike that mess, this bitterness is persistent and it’s spreading from its original focal point of Epic Games to the developers that choose to partner with them.
Case in point, Ooblets. This adorable-looking life sim is the type of game that should be generating nothing but sunshine, smiles, and positive vibes with each trailer developer Glumberland releases. And it did, right up until the beginning of this month when it was announced Ooblets would be a temporary Epic Games Store exclusive. The reason behind this move was simple: Epic offered the two-person development team a financial liferaft that would cover Ooblets’ sales forecast as if it were selling on all PC storefronts. It’s the smart financial move for a tiny developer like them to make and it’s allowing them to hire additional staff to ensure the final product matches their vision for it.
In other words, this move can only make for a better game. But of course, because everything is terrible now, people online took issue with the announcement. In a message to the Ooblets Pateron community, the developers said they’ve been receiving, “thousands if not tens of thousands of hateful, threatening messages across every possible platform nonstop.” The developers said they knew people would be upset — they don’t live under a rock — but could not anticipate the scale of the vitriol.
Thankfully, Epic Games has their back as it’s issued its own statement on the backlash, writing:
Source: Destructoid Epic comes to the defense of Ooblets developer after rash of hate messages