Sonic Origins Dev is "Very Unhappy" With Sega About State of Game
One of the developers of Sonic Origins has come out against Sega to express frustration regarding the state of the aforementioned game. Sonic Origins was released earlier this week and although it was reviewed fairly well, there were some noteworthy bugs and unwanted changes noticed by fans. The Sonic franchise is no stranger to bad games or controversial releases among fans, but this one has a lot more backstory around it and has spawned plenty of drama. The new release was worked on by Headcannon, a team that worked on Sonic Mania, but one member of the team has some strong words about how it was released and even essentially disowned the final product.
Developer Simon Thomley took to Twitter to say that the version of Sonic Origins that was released this week was not what Headcannon had "turned in" to Sega. Thomley went on to claim that Sega introduced a lot of bugs and issues that weren't present when they gave the game over to the publisher. Thomley still claims ownership of some issues, even chalking some of it up to "rushjobs" as there was a big time crunch with the game's development. Nonetheless, the developer also stated that they asked about delays early on and were told they wouldn't be possible and pleaded to try and fix a number of issues that they noticed with the game. Thomley went on to note that he's willing to work with Sega again under the right conditions, but it's up to the gaming giant if they choose to do that. You can read Thomley's tweet thread and an excerpt below.
This is frustrating. I won't lie and say that there weren't issues in what we gave to Sega, but what is in Origins is also not what we turned in. Integration introduced some wild bugs that conventional logic would have one believe were our responsibility- a lot of them aren't.
— Stealth (@HCStealth) June 24, 2022
"I'm extremely proud of my team for their performance under such pressure, but every one of us is very unhappy about the state of Origins and even the Sonic 3 component," said Thomley. "We weren't too thrilled about its pre-submission state either but a lot was beyond our control. We asked to do major fixes near submission but weren't allowed due to submission and approval rules. We asked about delays early and repeatedly but were told they weren't possible. We offered to come back for post-release fixes and updates – we do not yet know if this is happening."
Whether or not Sega will work with Headcannon or Thomley again remains to be seen, but it is rare to see a developer vocally go after a publisher like this. Sometimes these things come out much later in post-mortems, but this is immediately after the game released and seems to have been triggered by some of the experiences fans have been having with the game. As of right now, Sega has yet to comment on the matter.
What do you think of Sonic Origins? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.