Ooblets

About

Ooblets is a life-simulation video game developed by indie game studio Glumberland. After announcing that the game would be an Epic Games Store exclusive, the two-person development team reported a flood of hate mail, negative feedback, and even death threats.

History

Development on Ooblets began in 2016,^[1] with the two-person team of Rebecca Cordingley and Ben Wasser serving as art/programmer and designer, respectively. The game has been described as a mix between Animal Crossing and Pokémon. The game was initially due to be published by Double Fine, but after the company was purchased by Microsoft, the duo announced they would self-publish the game.^[2] On July 31st, 2019, they announced that the game would be an Epic Games Store exclusive for its PC launch.

Online Presence

Ooblets has generated some hype thanks to strong performances at E3 in 2017 (shown below, left) and 2018 (shown below, right). The game has 3,400 likes on Facebook^[3] and 51,000 Twitter followers.^[4]

Epic Games Store Controversy

On July 31st, 2019, Cordingley and Wasser announced that Ooblets would be an Epic Games Store exclusive. In a post on the Ooblets website,^[5] they poked fun at the anti-Epic Games Store sentiments in the gaming community, writing:

"Just imagine if other companies got it in their head to offer funding in exchange for exclusives. What’d be next? Game consoles paying for games to be exclusive on their consoles? Netflix paying for exclusive shows? Newspapers paying for exclusive articles? It’d be some sort of late capitalist dystopia."

They also explained that signing with Epic Games "offered us a minimum guarantee on sales that would match what we’d be wanting to earn if we were just selling Ooblets across all the stores. That takes a huge burden of uncertainty off of us because now we know that no matter what, the game won’t fail and we won’t be forced to move back in with our parents."

They also defended the Epic Games Store, writing:

The store and launcher just require a free signup. It’s not like having to pay for HBO and Netflix and Hulu to watch all the shows you want, it’s more like just having to press a button on your remote to change between free TV channels.
It’s also really disappointing to see folks threatening to pirate a game just because they can’t get it on the game launcher they’re used to. Feeling like you’re owed the product of other people’s work on your terms or else you’ll steal it is the epitome of that word “entitlement” that people use to discuss immature, toxic gamers.

The piece was evidently not well-received by the video gaming community. On August 6th, Wasser posted a piece on Medium^[6] explaining what had been happening since he and Cordingley made the announcement. Wasser wrote that the pair had received lots of harassment online for the decision, including anti-Semitic slurs, threats, and death threats. The piece includes screenshots of such threats and harassment, including threats to rape Cordingley and smash Wasser's face. Wasser tweeted that someone had fabricated a screenshot of him saying "gamers should be gassed," which he strongly denied.^[7]

The situation was covered and strongly condemned by websites PC Gamer^[8] and Kotaku.^[9] Epic released a statement saying "The announcement of Ooblets highlighted a disturbing trend which is growing and undermining healthy public discourse, and that’s the coordinated and deliberate creation and promotion of false information, including fake screenshots, videos, and technical analysis, accompanied by harassment of partners, promotion of hateful themes, and intimidation of those with opposing views.”^[10]

Search Interest

External References