We Happy Few was at one point from the Steam marketplace because of an influx of review bombs, developer Compulsion Games said.
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The survival game that tasks players with consuming mood-altering drugs to stay safe in the always-happy world is now available, and Compulsion Games took the time to answer players’ questions in a Reddit AMA. Considering We Happy Few’s tumultuous path to release that included a delay, a price increase, and Gearbox coming on as a publisher, commenters had plenty of questions for Compulsion. One referenced the timeframe when We Happy Few was available on Steam as an early access title before being removed and coming back later, something that Compulsion said was a direct result of review bombs.
“The TL;DR is that we pulled the game from Steam because we were heavily review bombed for months for ‘the game not being worth $60 and also fuck Gearbox!’” Compulsion said, sharing the short version of the story.
The longer involves the price jump that We Happy Few experienced, something that Compulsion announced last year while also saying that the game would be coming to consoles as well. That same post said that Gearbox had been brought on as a publisher and that the price would be raised to $60, double the price of the early access game. Sharing the same reasoning again that Compulsion has offered in the past to explain the price jump and the need for Gearbox – increasing the scope of the game, making it cost “the same price everywhere,” and bringing it to the PlayStation 4 – Compulsion said that the news went over fine at first until YouTubers caught wind of it.
“However, several YouTubers weren’t interested in that argument, and instead just saw a price rise,” Compulsion said. “We weren’t review bombed for the first week, until those videos came out. There was a great deal of Gearbox hate, that I don’t think was reasonable, and we were left between a rock and a hard place: Endure months more of review bombing, or just stop selling it.”
The developer did admit, however, that the version of the game people initially got upset about wasn’t worth $60. Content wasn’t there to warrant it, something that Compulsion says it communicated at the time, but the devs acknowledged that it was a confusing time.
“One thing I will say was that the early access version of the game wasn’t worth $60 – that’s for sure. We had none of the story content available. It was coming, and we publicised that on the store front and center, but I don’t fault people for being confused. It’s never been done before to add this much content between last early access patch and release. It’s always more difficult to try new things than just ‘do what we’ve always done,’ and definitely this is one of the most unique/strange situations a developer has ever been in.”
We Happy Few is now available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
