By skyforbes Their whole brand was “community-driven development.”
They loved to talk about how players shape the game through playtests.
Except… the “community input” was really just free QA.
Every patch would drop with balance issues that the devs already knew about.
Weapons overpowered, broken maps, matchmaking busted, and every time my cousin’s team raised it, management said the same thing:
“We’re not fixing it this sprint. The players will adapt.”
That became the company’s unofficial motto.
Queue delays? They’ll adapt.
Hackers everywhere because anti-cheat is asleep? Adapt.
Servers down during peak hours? Adapt.
Meanwhile, devs were killing themselves with late-night fixes that never got approved, because leadership didn’t want to “confuse the data” from playtests.
Translation: metrics > gameplay.
The worst part? A known exploit went live for three consecutive patches.
Players literally made a meme out of it. YouTubers roasted the studio.
When someone from the design team begged to push a hotfix, management shut it down because there was a “community showcase” event coming up and “we can’t afford bad optics.”So instead of patching, they ran influencer tournaments on a broken build.
And when players complained? The boss told the dev team,
“Don’t argue, just remind them we value feedback.”
My cousin said there was even a private Slack channel called #please-dont-mention-the-bugs.
The game’s population tanked. Players blamed the devs, not realizing the people who actually could fix things weren’t allowed to touch them.
So yeah, next time you see a studio post “we’re listening to the community,”
just remember: someone in a meeting probably said,
“It’s fine. The players will adapt.”