The game development process is an arduous one filled with many challenges. Due to that, many developers form teams to be able to make those ideas into reality. However, doing things as a team often lead to disagreements that jeopardize the project. The creator of Celeste has decided to pull a plug on Earthblade due to aforementioned reasons. We at Infinite Start will cover it more in depth.
Rights matters
Just as with the creation of many forms of art, video games have copyrights that must be respected. Unfortunately, a disagreement regarding this issue caused the Earthblade team to separate. It is not very common for games to be cancelled for such reasons, but a team fracture could greatly impact the quality of the experience. While it might sadden many to see the game getting cancelled, its good that the situation didn’t end in drama.
It is important to take into account that the teams issues have been solved. By going separate ways, its members could focus on different personal projects, reducing friction. While there is no details about what happened, it is known that there has been issues with who holds the rights to Celeste.
This seems reminiscent to other situations in the industry, such as what happened with Disco Elysium. However, Disco Elysium’s case was more convoluted, sparking lots of drama and misinformation about what truly happened. It is nice to see that the developers of Earthblade solved it, and its important to respect their proposal to not belittle the parties involved.
There’s many indie games that sadly need to be cancelled due to worse reasons. Be it drama that stems from a bad team dynamic, to not getting proper financial support. So it is a bittersweet ending to a game that had potential, and despite its lengthy 5 year development, it reached nowhere.
