Co-founder of the French studio Motion Twin and former Dead Cells designer Sébastien Benard explained why he harshly criticized the decision of his former team to stop content support for the game.
Let us remind you that recently Motion Twin (MT) and the studio Evil Empire, which it founded in 2019 to support Dead Cells (consisting of former MT employees), announced that The End is Near update will be the last for the game.
Benard called Motion Twin’s decision “the most disgusting act imaginable” against Dead Cells and Evil Empire: “I never thought that my former studio would turn out to be a bunch of such greedy people.”
According to Benard, when they were working on browser games before the release of Dead Cells, the Motion Twin team regularly abandoned their projects (and their fans) after a short period of updates.
Having seen what happened with Dead Cells, Benard learned a familiar tactic: abandoning the game to make room (including in the media) for his next project, the rogile action Windblown, announced as part of The Game Awards 2023.
Over five years of work, the true architects of Dead Cells were the employees of Evil Empire (EE), who were distinguished by “true love for the franchise.” Benard believes that the first million copies sold were credited to MT, and the next nine to EE.
According to Benard, when the press began to understand this, MT panicked: “I even understand MT’s strategy. It’s a logical marketing ploy to get rid of Dead Cells to make room for Windblown.”
“As with all previous cases, this Motion Twin strategy is one-sided and leaves everyone behind, both loyal players and EE employees. Nothing new, unfortunately,” Benard complained.
Benard concluded his appeal with a quote from a dialogue with a current Motion Twin employee, with whom he discussed how not to deal with fans of the studio’s past games:
– Why bother? What do we owe them?
– Everyone. Absolutely everyone, dude.
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