Cruel World (RIP)
The End
I've decided to disable new downloads & purchases of Cruel World.
The reason for this is that I believe the stumbled-upon experience of Cruel World is not very good: that is, if someone wanders onto my itch page and discovers Cruel World and makes the decision to purchase it, they are not having the intended experience, and the unintended experience is largely negative for the audience that happens upon it.
Primarily, this is understood through a number of 1-star reviews left on itch.io over the past couple of years, one left as recently as 63 days ago. (Gosh, I wish it was 66 days ago; how perfect would that be?)
Let me be clear that I am not removing the ability to download and purchase Cruel World because I want to avoid getting negative reviews, but because of what the negative reviews tell me: that perhaps people are giving me $6 and having a bad time. There are different sorts of bad times one could have with a game, with my games, with Cruel World, but at present I don't like the idea of this game being experienced so outside of its context.
Thank you for playing Cruel World. and for being part of making its world the terrible place it was always meant to be.
love, droqen.
p.s. As always, pirating is encouraged.
Cruel World (RIP)
blame everybody else - a mingleplayer masocore platformer
| Status | Released |
| Authors | droqen, NewtonsNinja, Mer Grazzini, sylvie |
| Genre | Platformer |
| Tags | 2D, asynchronous-multiplayer, Difficult, masocore, mingleplayer, Pixel Art, Singleplayer |
More posts
- Brand new Cruel World levels by SYLVIE, new PARTY mechanics for newcomers. Thank...Jun 06, 2021
- In SIX DAYS...May 31, 2021
- Saving the world. Is it possible?Apr 12, 2021
- Upping security; defeating hackersApr 05, 2021
- Redemption Arc Begins (Regret being an OWNER? Now you can HEAL that damage... bu...Apr 04, 2021
- The Cruel World is unavailable to purchase. New areas have been added.Apr 02, 2021
Comments
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Another dev from stuff I got axing contents even from users' libraries. What's with my luck recently? And if the issue is people not getting their money's worth out of the game while suggesting piracy, wouldn't it be better to issue refunds as requested, and disable purchases and making it download only here on Itch, instead of doing what sounds a lot like theft?
what's been axed? i thought i just stopped selling it, are you unable to access the files now?
also, if you gave me $6 and didn't play the game that explicitly stated it was not really meant to be played past the first day, let me know and you can have $6 back. the stakes are very low here, it's six dollars. theft, lol.
i did a little bit of research on how to issue refunds and i see that you never purchased Cruel World... i suppose that you never explicitly requested a refund, only suggesting that, were refunds requested, i should issue them. it seem an unnecessary statement to make, implying that i would not issue refunds were they requested. i don't appreciate that assumption, i don't think the implication is very nice, and i think it's entirely unnecessary to come and accuse me of theft!
you may be frustrated about what appears to you to be a pattern but considering you have no actual experience of me "axing contents . . from users' libraries", no justification for suggesting that i wouldn't "issue refunds as requested", and finally have not experienced "theft" in any way whatsoever, i'd like to respectfully suggest you stop projecting things you're upset about at unrelated people on the internet.
and, selfishly, i'd like to request that you not do it to me in particular, because i don't like it :) -droqen.
this is sad to hear, but i wonder: why not release a version of it for free, so that we can see what this game was about?
i heard about this game from a friend, but i never got to play it, due to it being sold for money only, without a free demo to see if i liked the game or not.
i believe that if you released even a very basic version of it as a free sample or demo, more people would get to explore your game and to see if they like it or not.
i dont think that you should remove your game due to it getting a few bad reviews or some harsh criticism. because when we learn from our mistakes, we become better, and this applies to game development too.
but i wish you the best either way.
hey chris, i appreciate the message! let me give you a response that i hope will satisfy you.
cruel world had a very clear intention from day 1, and at the time i decided to allow people to continue buying it, it was done out of greed and excitement. it wasn't true to what it was supposed to be, or who i want to be now - or even who i wanted to be then. there was a lot of cool stuff that came out of cruel world, but continuing to sell it was, in my eyes, a mistake.
any external criticism was unrelated to my personal judgement; it catalyzed my decision but was by no means the cause of it. in this case i would say that removing my game is something i did because i wanted to own up to that mistake, to learn from it, to become better, as you say. it has been a long time coming and i'm happy to have done it.
regarding having demos for paid products: cruel world was... i never thought of, or never wanted to think of, it as a product. to approach it in that way is too much of a shift for me right now. if i revisit cruel world for some reason in the future, i ought to consider a demo, if my goal is to sell more copies.
i like demos for commercial games! i remember lots of people saying that demos were a "bad idea" for indie games, 5-10 years ago... i don't know if that advice still holds or if it was ever even good advice. there's opinions on both sides.
i look forward to releasing a game with a demo someday. it's intimidating. i make small games, and i worry that a demo for such a game would be so small that the paid version would be almost nothing by comparison.
anyway, i'll figure it out.
love, droqen.
p.s. please check out Gentle World. you can still check it out. i hope you enjoy our videogame.
cool, thanks for the detailed info on this, and i appreciate your point of view.
i will keep following your page and playing your games, keep up the good work!
Why not release it for free?
Maybe someday! It's a server-based game and I initially released it in a manner that would limit the number of people who would flood the servers. I regret not sticking to my original intention (to stop selling the game after 1 day), and this feels like a better ending than releasing it for free & putting no effort into it.
Possibly I could put effort into doing a good free release, but today is not that day.
Can I release it for free?
Yes
Okay, here is the free version. https://itch.io/t/3451497/gentle-world
oh no. My years long "I should play cruel world" is now gone!! mainly cause I thought it might not work well past the launch time? always wondered what that was like. Maybe in another world it could have been a very important game to me, that's what I always thought.
Same, I had hesitated spending the money on it partially because I felt I had missed the train on that initial release. Totally get the reasoning for dropping it though