This backfired: A nasty jab at Paragon from the SMITE developers was received by fans as “meh”.
Just a few days ago, the developers of Paragon, Epic Games, announced that the MOBA is being discontinued. They simply could not retain enough players, did not meet their own expectations, and even promised a full refund of all in-game purchases to customers.
Hi-Rez, the developers of SMITE and Paladins, however, mocked the downfall of Paragon in a video. The two community managers of SMITE, HiRezSt3alth and HiRezIsiah, invited “all players” to join SMITE in its fifth year in a short clip. They repeatedly threw in trigger words, zooming the camera in extra close.
Unfortunately, the “puns” cannot be meaningfully translated, so here are the original phrases that you can also see in the video below:
- “If you don’t know Isaiah and myself, we’re just a ‘PARA’ community managers for SMITE”
- “Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s ‘GON'”
- “Five years? That sounds like one ‘EPIC GAME.'”
A clear mockery of Paragon and the manufacturer Epic Games.
There was not a significant outcry from the remaining Paragon community, but rather from the SMITE fans. They found this jab to be extremely silly and tasteless and believed that Hi-Rez perhaps should not be so loud when it comes to discontinued games, if looking back at Global Agenda or Tribes: Ascend.
SMITE recognized its mistake and apologized afterward. They only tried to welcome new players and wanted to achieve this with the typical “Hi-Rez humor,” but clearly missed the mark.
Todd Harris from Hi-Rez added:
“Our team planned the video as fun and not as disrespect. We have had to discontinue games ourselves and know exactly how devastating this can be for developers and the community. We apologize for this offense and will represent a more positive attitude in the future.”
Cortyn says: I think “tasteless” sums it up best here. From my perspective, it wasn’t particularly funny and was disrespectful. Discontinuing a game that you have worked on for years is certainly not an easy step for the developers, who now see years of their work ending up in “nothing.” Making fun of it is probably not the smartest move. But we are all just human.
