Thomas Mahler is the Game Director of the Austrian developer Moon Studios, who are behind the Ori series. In a longer post, he complained about developers who promote their games better than they turn out at release. He has since apologized for his harsh words.
What does Mahler criticize? In his post on the platform resetera, the Game Director mainly refers to three games or the people behind the games:
- Peter Molyneux, a British developer who has created games such as Populous and Black & White.
- Sean Murray, who is responsible for No Man’s Sky.
- CD Projekt Red for their game Cyberpunk 2077.
He accuses all three of making their games appealing in advance with promises they ultimately could not keep. He also criticizes gaming journalists for jumping on this hype and therefore neglecting to feature games that actually deserve it.
What does he say in his apology? In a tweet, Mahler apologized for his harsh criticism and sometimes crude language. He is bothered by how hype culture harms both players and developers.
He himself is a passionate developer, but also a gamer, and wanted to start a discussion with this. However, the way he expressed his criticism was not correct and he did not represent Moon Studios as he should have.
Yet, under the tweet, many player reactions are gathered, agreeing with his original criticism. The accompanying text has not been deleted yet.
“Three examples that you are being fooled”
How was the criticism expressed in detail? Mahler is annoyed that players and journalists keep falling for lies. And that has been going on for years.
First, he criticized Molyneux, who according to him had many ideas, but his games could not deliver:
He was the master of “Instead of telling you what my product is, let me just ramble on about what I think it could be and excite you all!” – And that was fine until you actually laid down your money and the game was not what Peter had touted.
The second criticism targets Sean Murray and his game No Man’s Sky. Promises were made about the multiplayer and the freedoms the game should offer. This made it one of the most anticipated games of 2016.
However, even before the release, there was criticism and leakers spoke of bugs and framerate issues. The release version was not well received by many players, as the first test by GameStar shows:
It took some time and updates before No Man’s Sky developed into the game that fans originally expected.
Mahler criticizes not only the false promises at launch but also the prices that the game receives afterward:
Of course, there were massive backlashes when No Man’s Sky was finally released and the product was not what Murray hyped. But what happened then?
They released a bunch of updates, so let’s forget the initial lies and deceptions and hey, let’s award him again with accolades because he finally somewhat delivered what he had said the game would be years before. Thanks, Geoff Keighley. Rewarding such behavior will surely help the industry to become stronger.
His third example is the release of Cyberpunk 2077. Here, Mahler does not criticize much, but links to the video from YouTuber BeatEmUps titled “Cyberpunk 2077: CD PROJEKT are all Liars”.
About the problems with Cyberpunk 2077, the head Adam Badowski also spoke. He has since explained that the E3 demo was a “fake”, but does not describe the release itself as disastrous.
His own game was overshadowed by No Man’s Sky
Mahler describes the hype around these games from a developer’s perspective. He recounts that in 2014, his game Ori and the Blind Forest almost made it to the cover of a gaming magazine.
But in the end, they chose No Man’s Sky:
Ultimately, they had to choose No Man’s Sky because it was the “bigger game.” I somewhat agreed back then and thought: “Okay, I get it, they have to promote the bigger game, they clearly have to be after the clicks. That sucks, but that’s how the game is played.”
But then I really felt cheated when No Man’s Sky came out and it became clear that all this hype was actually based on lies, and the honest guy who just showed his actual product got kicked in the balls because the lying guy was able to invent some stories that had absolutely no substance.
Mahler emphasizes that he is not “cursing other developers, but liars.” In his view, everyone should actually agree that this behavior is not okay:
Don’t sell me features that don’t exist. Don’t paint a picture you can’t deliver. Just don’t lie to me. You are fooling gamers, you are fooling journalists (who should know better, so shame on you!), and you are fooling other developers.
Mahler is known for being critical of events surrounding gaming. He warned on resetera about the hype around Unreal Engine 5, which promises photorealism. However, in his view, this could lead to many games looking very similar because scans from the real world would be used.
On next-gen consoles, Mahler also criticized that 1TB is far too little storage space:
PS5 and Xbox Series X: Developer says 1TB SSD for next-gen is far too little
