Is Sonic Origins In Trouble?
Sonic Origins has officially been released, but there have been rumblings of poor output, and that was reiterated by the game's developers recently.
Though it was initially released to favorable reviews on June 23, Sonic Origins is now facing massive criticism over the numerous bugs found in its gameplay mechanics, visuals, and even its soundtrack. So massive that the game’s previously fantastic rating has since dropped to “mixed” on Steam, with more and more users of Valve’s digital storefront advising their colleague gamers against purchasing the game. Now, amidst all the criticism, the game’s developer has revealed that Sega mismanaged the IP and that the bundled collection was developed under a massive crunch time.
An employee at Headcannon, the studio behind the massively successful 2017’s Sonic Mania, publicly commented on the state of the recently released Sonic Origins bundle. As reported by Kotaku, Simon Thomley, a software developer at Headcannon, published a series of tweets explaining that the studio was barred from implementing any major fixes before the game’s release date. He also stated that the studio had to put in a major time crunch because Sega repeatedly denied their appeal for delaying the game.
Among the current complaints about the state of Sonic Origins, the most common ones relate to the lack of integer scaling, which makes all four bundled games appear blurry. Others complain about the unbelievably bad keyboard controls and the fact that the game runs horribly on the PC. Of course, there were users who haven’t encountered any problems with the game, but it appears that their numbers are dwindling in comparison to those dissatisfied with the game. Are refunds still a thing? We’re asking for some friends.
The problems with Sonic Origins are so widespread that personnel at Headcannon had to voice their grievances with the game’s development and Sega’s mismanagement of the property. According to his statement on Twitter, Thomley admitted that the project they submitted to Sega wasn’t error- and bug-free. But the result wasn’t something that they submitted. As it turns out, integration caused some unexpected bugs that would cause the fandom to suspect shoddy work on Headcannon’s part, when a lot of the bugs aren’t the studio’s fault.
As per his own words, Headcannon was aware that there would be massive crunch time involved, and they asked Sega for a delay early in the development process, but their request was met with denial. He admitted that some of the bugs were their own fault and that mistakes, overlooking, and rush jobs can be pinned on the studio as well. However, the studio was barred from addressing some of the issues they knew about due to submission and approval rules, which resulted in Sonic Origins being in a bad state right now.
Furthermore, the studio has offered to fix those bugs in post-launch updates, but Sega apparently still hasn’t responded to their offer after their feedback and request fell on Sega’s deaf ears. As things currently are, Sonic Origins takes its rightful place among other promising video games that were totally ruined by publisher meddling. Sega hasn’t offered an official response regarding this particular bundle, as it was apparently more concerned about concealing its cooperation with Michael Jackson rather than cooperating with Headcannon on delivering a working game.
