The highly anticipated indie-game Ooblets—a farming-sim that combines elements of Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, and Pikmin or Pokemon—will now be available only on the Epic Games Store.
Its development team, Glumberland, made the announcement Thursday. The studio is not the first to make the switch, as Epic Games has been buying off several other games on the condition they promise exclusivity for the application. Many of these games have taken massive backlash from the fan community for the move. Ooblets will likely be no different in this regard.
Glumberland attempted to head off some of the incoming fan anger in their announcement post. “Feeling like you’re owed the product of other people’s work on your terms or else you’ll steal it is the epitome of that word ‘entitlement’ that people use to discuss immature, toxic gamers,” developers wrote. Already fans have taken to Twitter to call out the developers for calling them entitled.
The developers explained their reasons for making the switch, citing the need for more funding to hire another programmer. In the post, Glumberland said Epic Games promised to give them a minimum guarantee for the sales the team had expected across all online stores. And the financial security was enough to make the deal worthwhile.
The only thing Epic Games required, in turn, was exclusive access to sell the game for the first year after its release. Another reason Glumberland gave for taking the deal was that they believed it would help them create an even better final product.
This is not the first title receiving backlash for its Epic Game exclusivity. Earlier this year, the long-awaited Shenmue III switched to the Epic Games Store after promising fans who donated to its Kickstarter that the game would be available on Steam. The fighting game likewise received a massively negative response from its supporters, which resulted in refunds for those who demanded it.
In the same post, Ooblets‘ developers explained that they remained unsure of when the game would officially be released. Now that the team is planning on hiring new developers and staff, it might take longer. Not only does the hiring and set-up take additional time, but with the addition of more resources, the developers may decide to revamp some aspects of the game entirely.
It will be a long time before we find out. Assuming a 2020 release date for Ooblets, Steam fans will have to wait until 2021 before they can gain access to the game. But, hey, at least it’s still available for Xbox One.
