Moon Studios (Ori devs, No Rest For the Wicked devs) are in trouble

drotahorror

drotahorror

Member
Keep in mind, the publishers of NRFTW are gone and Moon Studios is solo now.

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Lemme preface this with;

I've been playing videogames for almost 40 years. No Rest for the Wicked is one of my favorite games in recent history DESPITE early access. NRFTW just had it's largest update drop since EA, and has received quite a few negative reviews. These reviews are mainly on the difficulty (which honestly wasn't bad, but ADD people don't want to grind for 30 minutes). Theyve since changed some things to make things easier but folks haven't updated their negative reviews I suppose.

I dunno, this is more like a PSA. If you haven't bought NRFTW wtf are you doing? It's amazing and 100% it's own thing despite what you read. There is 30-50+ hours of awesome gameplay here and some folks are crying.

 
drotahorror said:
I don't know the whole story, why do they have themselves to blame?
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Well they seem to light a match to scorch any relationship with publishers for one but they also made the choice to buy back the publishing rights of NRFTW which was probably costly and now they have all the risks and its looking like they don't have the strength to continue independent, as clearly its pretty dire right now.

As they said "They saw an opportunity", and now risking the whole project. Fucktards. There's no other words. You have to think how long you can survive independent and clearly for them it was a matter of months?
 
drotahorror said:
If you haven't bought NRFTW wtf are you doing?
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I don't buy games on early access unless it's something I'm extremely hyped about.

If they depend so much on user reviews they should have delivered a finished game, imo. Begging to your own consumers for positive reviews in exchange of nothing isn't very professional and ofc I'm not buying their game knowing they might close the studio and leave it unfinished. I play videogames, I'm not a charity.

Wish them for the best tho, shit sucks.
 
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I have just looked at a video of the game. Plenty of critics in the comments as the game is not really pleasing to look at overall.

Too dark and the characters have those ridiculous long arms. beauty and aesthetic are important to gamers. Would you prefer playing some beautiful game or some ugly game?
 
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I love the Ori games and loved the look of this, and I want to play it, but it ran horribly when it launched, my computer struggled so I gave up on it.

A lot of people was in the same boat. I think they launched it too early, and the hype for the game went out the window.

I might give it another chance, although this is just about the dumbest thing you can say to get people to play the game. How can I trust it will be finished?
 
I love their previous work but I don't buy early access games period. If you fail to manage the project to completion after the massive success you've had before this when backed by a publisher, you've shown you have no management skills and needed your hand held. Great artists don't always make great project managers.
 
Seems a bit weird. How do you release 2 VERY successful games (with Microsoft money btw) both critically & commercially and then get in this position with the next one.

I'm gonna buy the game because I love this studio (I was waiting for the 1.0 release but whatever) yet I can't help but think there is more to this story.
 
Dynasty8 said:
Want to buy it in EA because it sounds like my kind of game, but can I trust it will be finished and released?
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Check out Path of Exile 2, that one has actual chances of ending up good and finished.

Did play that one on EA and the campaign was amazing. The end game not so much, but I guess that's what EA is for.
 
Brutal.

Wicked was one of my fav games last year.

But Early Access is risky.

I haven't played it possibly in over half a year, for me it didn't feel like a game I can replay at every update, like I did with No Man's Sky. I don't think it's structured right for replaying. Things aren't changing between runs except for loot and it's not open like a Bethesda game so you can fiddle with side content for 100 hours. It's fairly linear, fairly static, you'll get stuck on bosses and grind until you beat them and doing them again isn't appealing. I don't want to start over. Why should I go back to replay it after this supposedly big update?
 
I tried it it looked cool but refunded. But the performance was just not good at all for me on a 58003d/5070ti. Some people it runs fine some others, not so much. I'm not even talking brute force. It's just some set ups work better than others even looking at reviews it's just all over the place. I spent most of the time just messing with settings. The disappointing part is that it looks like it will be a good game, whenever it gets cleaned up a bit.
 
They had an agreement in place with a Take-Two subsidiary. Really sucks for them to be in this position. Thomas is so passionate for gaming. Hope this drives sales, and if not that they can put a plan in place and approach another publisher/company for funding in terms that work for Moon Studios.

The company released action role-playing game No Rest for the Wicked in April 2024, which was published by Private Division, a label of Take-Two Interactive. A few months after this release, Take-Two Interactive began the process of shuttering Private Division. Moon Studios bought back the rights to No Rest for the Wicked, which were completed by March 2025, and allowed the studio to become fully independent.
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I don't buy early access games out of principle. But it's been on my radar for when it releases. I don't have time to play all my finished games, let alone pay to beta test.
 
The crazy thing I was trying to find the video from mortismal gaming about this because it looked interesting and I couldn't remember the name. Crazy this how I find what I'm looking for...
 
Why not take a break from the game and quickly port Ori 1&2 to PS4/PS5? Sell it as a complete edition for $30

Even selling 500k copies would provide enough money to then finish NRFTW.
 
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I feel a little bad for them but they sound desperate and that isn't a good look.
 
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Your PSA got a sale from me. I can't in good faith review the game anytime soon but hopefully some new sales give them some breathing room to make alternative arrangements.
 
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Pejo said:
What's the right way to handle it then? Not antagonizing, just wondering what you'd do in their place.
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For starters, definitely not begging for positive reviews. I'm sorry but that comes off as very desperate and unprofessional.
 
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Game difficulty is a bit rough at the beginning but eventually I got into it and it's kinda fun.
I did leave a positive review after 10 hours but figured I'd wait for a full release. Hopefully they manage to release it, lots of talent on that team.
 
They have over 30k reviews on Steam. Reviews vs copies sold generally seem to be in the 10x-30x range so their sales should be over 300k. If they can't make it work with numbers like that then I don't know what they are doing.
 
Buggy Loop said:
Well they seem to light a match to scorch any relationship with publishers for one but they also made the choice to buy back the publishing rights of NRFTW which was probably costly and now they have all the risks and its looking like they don't have the strength to continue independent, as clearly its pretty dire right now.

As they said "They saw an opportunity", and now risking the whole project. Fucktards. There's no other words. You have to think how long you can survive independent and clearly for them it was a matter of months?
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You do know that Private Division is effectively closed right?

Were you expecting Moon to leave the publishing rights with Private Division when it was the janitor who was going to be in charge of actually marketing the game and the lunch lady in charge of platform holder relations.

Take-Two wasnt willing to take on the publishing job, so they were effectively publisher-less but not allowed to self-publish their own game.

They had to buy the publishing rights back or leave it with Private Division to do whatever the fuck private Division is going to do with its contracts now.
Its a skeleton company but still holds publishing rights.

So Moon was in a desperate place, they either needed a publisher to buy the rights for them and take over publishing (which can take months if not years to secure) or buy the rights themselves so atleast they know they can release the game.

I get what the director is saying, review bombing a game in early access thats being self published can easily crush a company and make them undesriable for any publishers, but high wishlist and high positive EA reviews will attract publishers.
So people angry about the difficulty need to nut up and join the discord instead of review bombing the game, and people enjoying the game need to leave positive reviews.
Dont let a studio die when you can help them out because Take-Two are greedy.
 
It's in early access, I'll buy it when it's finished. Also wish the game had better performance, I would have already purchased it if it ran at 60fps on the steam deck to play on the go.
 
Bonfires Down said:
They have over 30k reviews on Steam. Reviews vs copies sold generally seem to be in the 10x-30x range so their sales should be over 300k. If they can't make it work with numbers like that then I don't know what they are doing.
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They had to buy the publishing rights for their game back from Private Division.
I guarantee publishing rights cost in the millions.
 
vaibhavpisal said:
Am noticing they have received mixed reviews on steam recently.

Why is that the case? Apparently they released a big update.
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People dont like the latest balance patch which basically reset the meta forcing old players to heavily respec and new players find the game broken. (too hard to the point of being unfair).

Tekken 8 players did the same but difference T8 has a big publisher backing them.....Moon dont and are in EA.
 
Black_Stride said:
People dont like the latest balance patch which basically reset the meta forcing old players to heavily respec and new players find the game broken. (too hard to the point of being unfair).

Tekken 8 players did the same but difference T8 has a big publisher backing them.....Moon dont and are in EA.
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Wut?

Balance patch hate is so weird. Let the game be finished if you want to make a build thats gonna stay. Lol.
 
vaibhavpisal said:
Wut?

Balance patch hate is so weird. Let the game be finished if you want to make a build thats gonna stay. Lol.
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I think it's more that review bombing on Steam is how you get shit done, but the dev team is obviously running out of money so they can't afford to have the reviews tanking the game's sales. So now they have to waste even more money addressing the negative reviews.

This is why EA is so risky. One bad major content patch can have lasting negative effects.
 
drotahorror said:
I don't know the whole story, why do they have themselves to blame?
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Looks like their recent patch lead to a lot of issues gamers didnt like. And the dev guy doesn't want to man up in the OP's post being open why people were pissed with the update and Steam bombed it.

If anyone goes purely on the OP's post, you'd think gamers were review bombing it just for laughs. But there was a reason after all.

vgtimes.com

No Rest for the Wicked Players Review Bomb Game on Steam After Major Patch — Hotfix Released

The Breach update for the hardcore isometric action game No Rest for the Wicked turned out to be extremely controversial, causing outrage among players. The developers from Moon Studios have already released the first hotfix, which fixes a number of issues.
vgtimes.com vgtimes.com
 
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So confused what's going on with this game. It looks great, ran like shit on my laptop and been waiting for it to come on console. I've always been confused if this game is a dungeon crawler, or just a Metroid vania type game, or souls like. Or all of the above. Been waiting for the complete package before jumping back in. ( or on console)
 
Salz01 said:
So confused what's going on with this game. It looks great, ran like shit on my laptop and been waiting for it to come on console. I've always been confused if this game is a dungeon crawler, or just a Metroid vania type game, or souls like. Or all of the above. Been waiting for the complete package before jumping back in. ( or on console)
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I always thought it was a Diablo-lite. But I'm not sure myself. But I agree with what you say.

Reading up on it, I'd pass as the game seems to have a lot backtracking, respawning enemies, and the maps arent procedurally generated like Diablo. It has random monsters and loot (I think?), but I dont think the levels are unless I'm wrong.
 
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