Working against the odds.
Squid Shock Studios, the developer behind Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus, has reached out to fans on Patreon to ask for support after the Humble Games "restructure" left them with no post-launch support.
"It has been a hectic two weeks since we launched our first game, Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus," Squid Shock says on Twitter. "Our launch was not without its challenges. Our publisher shutting down has meant we have missed out on critical post-launch support, which may put our studio's future at risk."
According to one employee, 36 people at Humble Games were let go, and according to Chris Radley, a former Humble employee, the team was replaced by a third-party consultancy. Despite all this uncertainty, Humble's official statement made it sound like the utmost care would be taken in helping the studios it had partnered with: "Supporting our development partners and assisting former team members remains our top priority. We are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved." While it's unclear how true this statement is for other developers, it certainly seems like Squid Shock got the sharp end of the stick.
"On July 25th, we lost access to the pipeline of critical systems without warning," Squid Shock says. "We can currently only manage the game on Steam, and we were able to push an update this week. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for consoles. Porting and QA support was tied into our deal with our publisher, and at the time of writing we still do not have that pipeline restored. However, steps are finally being taken to restore access."
The initial funding for Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus began on Kickstarter, and unfortunately, Squid Shock has had to return to crowdfunding, setting up a Patreon to ask for support "in these uncertain times."
There are six choices for membership currently available. The Seedling is the cheapest option at $1 (£1) a month, giving players access to a digital thank-you card with exclusive art, access to Patreon updates and posts, and Discord access. Kami is the most expensive option at $100 (£85) a month, giving you access to "a unique in-game collaboration named after the patron or designed in collaboration with them," according to the description. As well as an invitation to a virtual launch party, a personalised thank you message from the team, and more.
"We have so much planned for our studio beyond small updates for our game," Squid Shock says. "Bo began as a community endeavour where backers believed in us and supported us with initial funding on Kickstarter."
As of writing, Squid Shock has 22 paid members on its Patreon, and hopefully, this is the start of something more concrete for the studio. Its last post on the platform shared patch notes for an early preview of version 1.1, and announced that a new patch had been submitted to the QA team, which is great news, especially as the studio had issues with acquiring QA testers only a few days ago.
