Pony Venting Thread

The unfortunate truth is that were it not for the Modus deal and the DLC, the game probably would have gone under after Shanty came out, if it even would have gotten that far. Probably wouldn’t have gotten a console release, either.

They were selling DLC to buy time in the hopes they could afford to continue development, I’m not sure why that’s such a hard concept to understand. It’s not like they flipped a coin with ‘story mode’ on one side and ‘season pass’ on the other. And even if they had, there isn’t an alternate universe where the coin toss went the other way but nothing else changed and that universe got a finished story mode, all the crowdfunding rewards, and a pizza party.

I mean, potentially, instead of working with a publisher, the devs could have all gotten regular day jobs and worked on the game in their spare time instead of the various measures they did to keep things going. Thing is, I’ve seen what that looks like – it’s called City of Titans, a superhero MMO that got Kickstarted in the fall of 2013 (that’s not a typo), right after City of Heroes shut down, and it’s not properly out yet. They ran out of money before even getting the game playable, and the remaining development team have been working on it in their spare time ever since, pre-selling access to the game to help fund development. A little over a decade later, all they have to show for it is a ‘test build’ (for backers and people who paid for access) that consists of a character creator and an unfinished map where you can run around and beat up a couple of enemies. That’s it.

Unfortunately, the former members of Mane6 probably can’t do that. If the publisher owns the IP now (which I’ve heard is the case, but if I’m wrong please correct me), then that would also include exclusive rights to any story bible or setting document, which means those would be protected by any standard-issue NDA. Maybe if you catch the developers (or maybe Lauren Faust) at a convention you might be able to get an “if anyone asks, you didn’t hear this from me” rundown of the lore, but any sort of detailed public release would mean legal problems unless Modus gives them express permission.