Ooblets Devs Flooded With Hateful Messages Following Epic Deal

This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.

Adorable indie slice-of-life sim Ooblets recently made a deal to be exclusive to Epic on PC. The developers wrote a blog post, in which they said they expected some backlash. Now it seems like a lot more than expected has come in.

In a Patreon post, Glumberland co-founders Rebecca Cordingly and Ben Wasser say they "really misjudged how angry so many people would be."

"We've been getting thousands if not tens of thousands of hateful, threatening messages across every possible platform nonstop," the Ooblets devs wrote. "It's especially hurtful since we've had such a positive, supportive relationship with our audience throughout development."

Ooblets' Patreon only extends to about 1,100 members, meaning it's likely a lot of messages are coming in from outside, unrelated sources. There's a storm of resentment and anger swirling around games heading to the Epic Store over Steam, and Ooblets is a lightning rod.

"I couldn't have guessed the scale of what it would feel like to be the target of an internet hate mob," Glumberland wrote. "I already had a lot of empathy for other targets of previous hate mobs, which is why we wanted to address that sort of thinking in our announcement, but I had no idea it was this bad."

Glumberland made the move to the Epic Games Store for a very definable reason laid out in its announcement post: funding. The deal struck with Epic not only allows the studio to stay afloat long enough to make the game it wants to, but also guarantees a greater revenue split. The only stinger is having to buy Ooblets on a different store font, but that appears to be a major stickler for some particularly riled up folks.

Many developers and publishers have been coming forward about the benefits of Epic Games Store and why they've been making the deal to go there, including added visibility and a better revenue split. But it's disheartening to see a dev that was frank and honest about their move receive so much vitriol.

Thanks, GI.Biz.