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[jshackles]

Extremely OK Games, Ltd.

Purveyors of digital amusements.

exok.com

Hey everyone, I've got some sad news today to ring in 2025. Late last month, Noel and I made the difficult decision to cancel Earthblade. Yes, we are opening the year with a huge, heartbreaking, and yet relieving failure. I want to outline in this post what lead to this decision, and what it means for the future of EXOK.

 

[near]

It looked more interesting than Celeste, what a shame.

Reason for cancellation:

"Earlier this year, a fracture began forming in the team. Specifically, this was between us (Noel & I) and Pedro, a founding member of EXOK, longtime friend & collaborator, and art director of Earthblade and pixel/ui artist on Celeste and TowerFall. The conflict centered around a disagreement about the IP rights of Celeste, which we won't be detailing publicly - this was obviously a very difficult and heartbreaking process. We eventually reached a resolution, but both parties also agreed in the end that we should go our separate ways."

 

[BosmerCulter]

Another rare chud victory

 

[mèx]

Sometimes cutting your losses early is the right thing to do.

The market is saturated with so many Metroidvania games that I personally didn't care for Earthblade much.

 

[DragoonKain]

Damn. I was so excited about this.

 

[Generic]

Shame, Celeste was great.

 

[Labadal]

 

[TommyCronin6969]

Game wasn't gay enough.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

Game wasn't gay enough.

I mean have you seen it?

 

[Holammer]

How ugly, the rights issues. Game looked fine.

 

[OGM_Madness]

Game was supposed to release by 2024. So it must have been pretty much done. I guess the drama was big enough where it wasn’t worth even releasing it somehow where the people involved could recover some money? Not a single agreement? Weird.

 

[Arsic]

So they cancelled it because of the inner drama between the founders of rights of Celeste?

My guess is they gave Pedro a severance and he took the rights for the new IP with him or just wouldn’t let them continue without giving him free money to use his work.

Sounds like a game ruined by a greedy shitter on one side of the fence. Either Pedro or the other two.

 

[touchfuzzy]

The creator is a mentally unwell drama queen, you won’t see another game from him/her/they/them again

 

[TheDreadBaron]

I mean, what do you think the financial breakdown was between the art guy and the other two, and is there more people working on their games to consider too?

My assumption is he didn't think he was getting a fair split. What would be fair in this situation? I've pondered this question before as it relates to indie game development, it's really hard to answer.

There's the amount of time put into the project which could be fairly compensated with hourly wages, but if the game is successful how does that big pile of money get divided? The person that defined and crafted the visual identity of the game surely deserves a piece of that pie, but there's all sorts of elements that contribute to the game's success that are more difficult to measure. Splitting the percentage between all contributors equally makes some kind of sense, but not everyone's contributions are of equal value. Contractors contribute but don't get anything on the back end.

All I know is they should have had this ironed out before Celeste was even started. He was probably happy with the terms until Celeste saw great success and he began to see how much less he was getting than the others. Success is a bitch.

 

[Kings Field]

Good riddance

 

[Cert.in.Death]

Unfortunate. But shit happens and life goes on.

 

[TransTrender]

I really enjoyed Celeste but hated all the gross TQIA+ stuff associated with the game's discourse and immediately lost all interest with it and anything else they would have made.
Luckily I finished the game before going online and looking at threads, etc.

 

[Brock2621]

Another rare chud victory

Haven’t played Celeste but is it about the Alphabet Mafia’s hardships because of “gay” etc?

 

[Generic]

Haven’t played Celeste but is it about the Alphabet Mafia’s hardships because of “gay” etc?

No, it's a 2D platformer. In fact, one of the best platformers of the past years. The protagonist's gender is irrelevant to the gameplay/story, but the last shot of the game hinted the girl was trans which caused the usual outrage.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Celeste was great, but the devs are fucking weird, so I'm somehow not surprised that some petty drama split them up.

 

[Loomy]

Earlier this year

Not even 2 weeks in lmao.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

The creator is a mentally unwell drama queen, you won’t see another game from him/her/they/them again

So was Vincent van Gogh and he got a museum. Artists gonna artist.

 

[peek]

It looked more interesting than Celeste, what a shame.

Reason for cancellation:

"Earlier this year, a fracture began forming in the team. Specifically, this was between us (Noel & I) and Pedro, a founding member of EXOK, longtime friend & collaborator, and art director of Earthblade and pixel/ui artist on Celeste and TowerFall. The conflict centered around a disagreement about the IP rights of Celeste, which we won't be detailing publicly - this was obviously a very difficult and heartbreaking process. We eventually reached a resolution, but both parties also agreed in the end that we should go our separate ways."

Sounds like money issues there

 

[hemo memo]

Shame. Celeste was good.

 

[Heart_Attack]

Indie developers having mental problems and splitting up is nothing new. For the record. Celeste is overrated.

 

[Generic]

Indie developers having mental problems and splitting up is nothing new. For the record. Celeste is overrated.

What 2D platformer released in the past 10 years is better than Celeste? I can only think of Wings of Vi.

 

[Grizzled Ghost]

What 2D platformer released in the past 10 years is better than Celeste? I can only think of Wings of Vi.

The 2d Yooka-Laylee game is actually really good. Criminally underappreciated.

 

[Labadal]

What 2D platformer released in the past 10 years is better than Celeste? I can only think of Wings of Vi.

All of them.

 

[Hudo]

That's extremely OK with me.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

So was Vincent van Gogh and he got a museum. Artists gonna artist.

Dragon Age Veilguard will be worth millions in a hundred years.

 

[Nikodemos]

Sounds like the project ended in dev hell before the IP rights fight, and the disagreement was the final straw.

That said, it's unfortunately not uncommon that an indie dev's second game ends up in dev hell. Vanripper wrote quite a bit on how Awaria's dev cycle was a trainwreck (ironic, given its name). He got overconfident from Helltaker's smooth dev time, and suffered the consequences.

EDIT: oh, yea, nearly forgot Copper Dreams from Whalenought Studios, who had a small amount of critical acclaim from Serpent in the Staglands. Ended up in horrible dev hell, was eventually released as Mechajammer, and was massively scaled down from the original Kickstarter concept. It also led to the devs closing down the original studio, and opening a different one for their third game (Banquet for Fools).

 

[Cyberpunkd]

What would be fair in this situation?

Whatever each party thinks, and the zone of possible agreement (which is a real thing in teaching about negotiation) is whatever there exists such a zone between each parties concerned.
It's the same as asking what is the right price - whatever the market accepts to bear.