GamesRoguelikeDead CellsDead Cells' designer livid at former studio for ending support for the game in ‘worst a**hole move imaginable’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesRoguelikeDead CellsDead Cells’ designer livid at former studio for ending support for the game in ‘worst a**hole move imaginable’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Motion Twin)
Late last week came the news that, seven years after its early access release, original developers Motion Twin and DLC developers Evil Empirewill be ending work on Dead Cells. Evil Empire was set up as a satellite studio to support the game and had been working on it for over five years, creating four DLCs and 18 updates including the recent (and excellent)Castlevania crossover, but now says it’s moving on to “secret projects”.
The news didn’t seem like an enormous surprise: Dead Cells has been wildly successful, and has had great post-launch support, but it’s now an absolutely huge game and seven years of updates seems pretty healthy. But the game’s designer, Sébastien Benard, has a very different take: this guy is absolutely furious about it, and seems to think Evil Empire is being thrown under the bus.
“Since you’re asking me, I’d just say [Motion Twin] did the worst imaginable asshole move against Dead Cells and [Evil Empire],” writes Benard. “Having seen first hand the actual situation behind the scenes, I can honestly say I’m glad to not be part of this anymore. The official statement is total marketing bullshit, the way this situation happened is on a whole different level.
“I never imagined my former co-op studio would turn out to be such greedy people. I wish the absolute best to EE for their next things, and hope people working there will survive this sudden economic cut.”
The accusations of greed and some of the language here are certainly eyebrow-raising, though it’s worth remembering that Motion Twin was established as a worker collective and Benard undoubtedly has firm ideas about how it should operate.
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Benard spent 19 years at Motion Twin before leaving in the wake of Dead Cells’ success, and apparently not on the best of terms. At the time he wrote that, following Dead Cells' launch and success, he’d moved onto prototyping future games but his “relations with the team became more and more complicated”—so complicated that he was “asked to leave in December 2019.”
His words on Motion Twin are pretty scathing stuff nevertheless, and an unexpected reaction to a relatively low-key announcement.
Correction: This story originally named Sébastien Bénard as a Motion Twin co-founder. He was an early employee, but not a co-founder of the studio. PC Gamer regrets the error.
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