Dead Cells will be finished with the upcoming Update 35

I like that they're not trying to milk it with endless DLC's. I found the game to become very engaging after beating the final boss for the first time (not gonna spoil why). Still giving it a few runs from time to time.

Former lead designer and developer on Dead Cells, Sébastien Benard, said on Discord:

Quote"Since you're asking me, I'd just say [Motion Twin] did the worst imaginable asshole move against Dead Cells and [Evil Empire]. Having seen first hand the actual situation behind the scene, 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 [Evil Empire] for their next things, and hope people working there will survive this sudden economic cut."

Quoting: kneekooFormer lead designer and developer on Dead Cells, Sébastien Benard, said on Discord:
<snipped/>

Now an interesting blog post: https://deepnight.net/blog/regarding-dead-cells-termination/

I don't think he claims special knowledge of current events, but he would be well placed to know the history:

Quoting: DeepnightFor the context, I’ve been an associate at MT for about 19 years and was responsible for most of the design of Dead Cells, and its development, from gameplay, controls, balancing, items and down to the engine (see gamebase). I was not alone, but frankly, I had direct implications on all its parts.

Here is also a quick presentation of the Dead Cells related companies:

Motion Twin (including myself) created the game and released 2 DLCs.
While Motion Twin retained the IP, Evil Empire, created by former MT associates, continued the hard work and released 22 new major updates and DLCs, for about 5 years. They hired 50 people during that period of time.

Here's some industry journalism that sheds light on the relationship between Evil Empire and Motion Twin (via the dead cells subreddit): https://www.gamesindustry.biz/from-dead-cells-to-reinventing-retro-ip-the-untold-story-of-evil-empire

So what is he upset about: that they milked the game by creating multiple DLCs, or that they decided to end development of the game?

Quoting: M@GOidSo what is he upset about: that they milked the game by creating multiple DLCs, or that they decided to end development of the game?

For anyone who didn't read the links to figure out the EE/MT relationship:

This former Deadcells dev blew the whistle on the former developer, now IP owner, of dead cells (MT), "firing" the entire outsourced dev team of 60 or so people (EE), a lot of whom were ex-MT, by making a unilateral announcement that dead cells was done being updated.

At this point MT has not been involved in dead cells outside of being an IP owner. I'm guessing most copies sold were after the split. The people who should have been involved weren't.

And it stings to think of the small cooperative behaving unfairly and the newer, traditional company offshoot supporting many more workers and being fairer to them.

This just came out of the blue. I was looking forward to more Dead Cells this year :( It wasn't that long ago that they posted their long-term plan for DC. Now that's not happening all of a sudden. It's a shame because the DLC's went from strength to strength. The Castlevania DLC really raised the bar and almost became something else other than the base game. I wish Evil Empire the best and are excised for their next game.

Hi ! That's interesting ! Indeed, the first Discord quote was kinda exaggerated.

Regarding the longer blog post : much appreciated insight. I don't know to what extent a game HAS to be maintained infinitely. Personally, if I were a game developer, I would actually feel bad for releasing something that never ends and would make people play for years & thousands of hours. It's just a past time, after all, we have a real life !

According to him, MT is now only 3 persons ? It sounds as if MT had been idle while EE was doing all the job. Strange. Sure, EE did a great job, but the core game we all know and love is the work from MT.

Also, I don't understand why they would want to "make room" for their upcoming game, which actually seems to be very different.

Anyway. Maybe, if the community complains, they'll actually change their minds ? The PR sounds like there is a plan for the staff of EE. Is it the case ?

(glad there are several small other French companies making nice games, BTW)

Quoting: bidinouAccording to him, MT is now only 3 persons ? It sounds as if MT had been idle while EE was doing all the job. Strange. Sure, EE did a great job, but the core game we all know and love is the work from MT.

From Deepnigth actually, it was a solo project that eventually gets worked by other MT members. Most of the devs at MT that have worked on Dead Cell has gone to other studio (Shiro Games come to mind). Evil Empire was founded by the marketing department of MT (thus the name) and is the only studio working on Dead Cell for a few years.
Deepnigth has also made the excellent Hamerfest, which was remade by Eternaltwin Eternalfest.
MT has made so many excellent games (and the Haxe programming language). I miss games like Hordre (40 people have to collaborate over weeks in order to survive a zombie invasion) or Skywar (STR with games going for a few days, click per second is very low ^^) that were social experiments as much as game.

As a side note, by reading Deepnigth blog post, I remembered that I am a lead dev at EternalTwin (not the harder working one through ). I should stop slacking now that the source code has been released, seems that I'm going to install Haxe tonigth.