Jump-scared by an update for a dead game

Steam has this 'What's new' section on your library page; it highlights developer posts, patches for things you actively play etc - and this morning I noticed there was one for Hyper Light Breaker that was posted yesterday.

This is confusing for a lot of reasons but mostly because developer Heart Machine announced back in October that the studio was forced to cancel the game and let go of almost the entire dev team. What could this update be?

We wanted to share an update with our community.

Hyper Light Breaker will not be receiving further development for the time being. We’re incredibly grateful for the passion and support you’ve shown since Early Access. Please stay tuned to our official channels and Steam page for any future updates.

• The Arc Games Team

The interesting thing to me when I saw it is that it's not signed 'Heart Machine' - it's signed 'Arc Games', the game's publisher. I believe Heart Machine as a company still technically exists, but with the massive reduction in force in relation to Breaker and then letting go of most of the people who worked on their next title Possessors as soon as it launched in November, who is left to make a post like this I guess?

But the bonkers bit is that someone at either Arc or Heart Machine put the game up on the Steam Winter sale first and then made this post a few days later.

The game's steam page looks unchanged since the last game update; if you for example, had this game on your wishlist and never read anything about it and got an update that it was on sale, the Steam page makes it look like it's in active development. Why not give it a buy, eh?

I'm pretty sure this Arc post is a "Hey so uhh you people are buying this game and that's good but we need you to understand it's effectively dead" damage control post.

I thought the game's dead status was pretty well known with the October announcement but there are 40+ comments in the post's discussion thread (at time of this writing) of people upset that an early access game they bought is ending; many demanding refunds, a few wishing the team well, one person saying "is this because of layoffs" which no one else seemed to know about - and it makes me sad that news about even small companies having layoffs doesn't register for a lot of people OR the sale brought in more fresh eyes for people to be newly disappointed.

And to the above point about the steam page - as a customer, the only thing you'd have to go on is the reviews (currently sitting at a "mixed" overall with "mostly negative" in the recent - to be expected for a cancelled game that sold in part on a multiplayer promise) - but Steam reviews are notoriously unreliable.

I don't know, man. But sadly something that does come up in the comments of this thread though is the time Heart Machine worked briefly with a diversity consultant company that chuds had decided was the most threatening force on the planet. I don't even want to get into it but if you search 'Sweet Baby Inc' and 'Heart Machine' without even having to TRY you'll get get fed fabricated nonsense about how "DEI is what killed the game" (It did not, the game died due to scope and direction problems, and capitalism strangling resources amidst multiple publisher changes and corporate buyouts).

The whole thing is sad but I thought I was done thinking about the game and everyone who worked there that got hurt; this update on my app kinda redirected my morning.

Anyway, if you wanna read about my experiences with Breaker or how much Heart Machine's prior games Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash meant to me, you can read about it here on the blog.

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Thanks for reading, here's your end of post cat. His name is Smokescreen Chip