Glumberland
| Glumberland | ||||||||
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 The future of this studio certainly looks glum now.
And remember, kids: Don't be a condescending jerk to your audience. | ||||||||
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Glumberland is an American indie game studio currently working on the video game, Ooblets. It was founded by Rebecca Cordingley and Ben Wasser.
Why They're Glum
- They originally promised the PC version of Ooblets would be available on Steam, but like many other developers, they recently opted to make Ooblets an Epic Games Store exclusive.
- While financial needs are understandable and Epic did offer them a lot of money to finish their game in exchange for exclusivity, Glumberland made a blog explaining why they did it but acted so snarky and condescending that it made several gamers opted to not get the game, even when it's released on Steam. Game journalists and Epic Games Store founder Tim Sweeney, however, praised the blog.
- Stated on their Discord that they refused to do a Kickstarter for the game as they did not want "entitled gamer babies" holding more power over them even though gamers are the ones most likely to buy the game.
- They can't take even the smallest amount of criticism.
- Even some simple questions like how to get the game if a country's currency isn't supported by EGS will get you called "entitled."
- They're behaving EVEN WORSE than Phil Fish. While Phil acted the same way when Fez was released, Glumberland is acting this way while Ooblets is in development.
- Their negative attitude towards gamers makes you wonder why they even bothered to make a game at all.
- In their blog, they complained that there are worse things to be angry about than installing EGS to play Ooblets and listed climate change and human rights abuse, although people can get angry about a lot of things.
- They started out making Ooblets with backing from Patreon supporters. Once they got their hands on Epic's money, however, they stated they didn't need Patreon anymore hinting that they saw their Patreon supporters as a means to an end and had outlived their usefulness.
- After receiving backlash for their insulting attitude towards gamers, the developers played the victim card even claiming to have gotten death threats and spent nights crying. Unsurprisingly, games journalists and Epic took their side and even downplayed why they were receiving so much hate.
Redeeming Qualities
- They eventually caved in and released Ooblets on Steam on October 5, 2023.
- On that topic, Ooblets is a pretty good game despite the devs' crappy attitude.
Reception
Jeremy Hambly of TheQuartering called them his most hated developers so far in the thumbnail of his video. Their attitudes have pretty much ticked off the gaming community, and their quote about Kickstarter is now the quote for the entitled gamer article. There are several comments around the internet stating they were excited about Ooblets, but now are either not going to buy it or are just going to pirate it.
While most of the criticism of the devs is well-deserved, there have been reports of trolls creating fake Discord messages and sending anti-Semitic messages and death threats to the developers.