Peak was one of the surprise successes of last year. What was originally meant as just a simple game jam project turned into a huge hit as hundreds of thousands of players gathered around the foot of the mountain with their friends with the aspirations of scaling it and escaping the deserted island.
Since then the game has gone through some updates and changes with the recent update adding a bunch of custom settings including an option to turn on “Grapple Mode (stupid)”, alongside an April Fool’s update that replaces the help reaction with a Spartan kick. But apparently not even Grapple Mode (stupid) isn’t enough for some players.
“Y’all are mad at Landfall for not releasing a game, I’m mad at Landfall for their lazy dev cycle for Peak when they could be doing so much more with it considering they’re ending development of it this year,” one player says (via GamesRadar).
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Because apparently three major updates, over 30 patches, nine hotfixes, and four minor updates is completely outrageous for a game that’s been out for less than a year, costs $8 (but is regularly on discount), and was made by two non-live service studios just trying to have a bit of fun.
“Peak has had sooo many updates tho,” one of the developers, Landfall replied. “Neither us or Aggro Crab are live service studios, any update is a bonus not a right. We just made a huge update for customising runs, but full customisation is a big ask. However if there are specific suggestions we’d love to hear them. [Redgarding] modding, we have a great connection with the modding community, when asking if we should add [a] workshop etc they didn’t want it.”
I understand wanting more from your favourite games, but I think this is also an example of the bad side of gaming fandom, an unreasonable entitlement to game developers’ time and hard work. It’s easy to forget that there’s actual people behind the scenes, who mostly don’t have the funding to be able to just focus on one game. There’s a danger that as a small studio you can spread yourself too thin.
“Last year was our busiest ever, with the PEAK release, Haste, TABS: Pocket Edition, and ROUNDS ports,” Landfall explains in a different post. “We worked on something new for this year, but in the end, it didn’t work out. We’ve stretched ourselves too thin, and the pressure to deliver a new game every year can be a lot on such a small team.”
There’s a limit on how much players should expect from small indie studios for a game less than $10, that’s just it. It would be different if both studios made a huge song and dance about how Peak will essentially be a live service game from the get go, but that’s not the case.
While Peak may be winding down, Landfall doesn’t want players to think they’re being taken to a farm upstate: “Don’t worry, we’ll still be working on new projects, just maybe at a more reasonable pace.”
