'No Rest For The Wicked' Dev Clarifies Post Saying Game Might Shut Down In A Couple Months
No Rest for the Wicked developer Thomas Mahler clarified recent comments he made in the game’s official Discord where he shared that the game might be shut down in a couple of months.
In a post to Discord, Mahler wrote, “I think eople think I'm joking when I'm asking for positive reviews cause in peoples minds there's always some big publisher in the background who'll cover costs...”
“Folks, if you're writing here and are enjoying Wicked and are excited for future updates, but haven't left a positive review, it's entirely possible that we won't be around in a couple of months to do anything anymore simply because we got review bombed which leads to people not buying the game.” he continued. “Which means we're not making any money and will have to shut down.”
“I wouldn't ask if our business wouldn't be dependent on it. I also never write reviews on anything, but if you want to see us actually finish Wicked, it's detrimental that we get that review score back up,” he concluded.
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After these comments were covered in an article by Jez Corden at Windows Central, Mahler has provided clarification.
In a post to X, he wrote, “This is what happens when the press just picks up Discord posts and writes an article around them.”
“Overall, pretty much everyone who’s tried Wicked after the last few hotfixes is extremely positive,” he said. “The reason I left the post on Discord up was simply to push back against some of the bulls**t reviews. I’ve been hated on Twitter by a few crazies for years now, and I also saw the calls for review bombing because, according to those folks, I’m a 'Nazi.' These days, apparently anyone who doesn’t include five trans characters in their game and doesn’t let their products be influenced by political bullshit is a Nazi. What a world we live in.”
He then provided an anecdote, “When the Russia/Ukraine war broke out and I replied on Twitter saying that Moon Studios wouldn’t be taking a public stance—because we’re a video game company, not a journalistic outlet—the next day a threat letter with a picture of Putin was taped to my office door, full of insults from top to bottom.”
“So I have no issue telling active players who love Wicked that they should go ahead and leave a positive review on Steam,” he continued. “After all, it’s allowed on Steam to buy a game, leave a negative review that doesn’t even talk about the game at all (there are negative Wicked reviews that literally just say '.'), and then instantly refund it… and the negative review still counts. If that’s allowed, then it should also be allowed for a developer to encourage their players to share their real experiences.”
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“And no, we’re not in immediate financial danger—but from time to time, I think I’m allowed to speak up about issues within our industry I personally find unbecoming,” he declared. “We are continuing as always—our goal is for every game Moon Studios creates to be an absolute masterpiece, and with Wicked we’re already on the way.”
Mahler then concluded, “We want our small 90-person company to push companies like Blizzard, GGG, and others to innovate by putting out products that are top-quality and truly unique - we believe in competition and we think players will win because of that!”
In a follow-up he shared a poster calling for the boycott of his game because he has Russian developers working on the game, “And if people don’t believe me, here’s what hung on my office door on 22nd of April last year. It’s not always fun to be a game developer… And this was done simply because we said that we’d want players from all over the world to be able to play our games.”
The game, which is still in Steam Early Access, has 34,860 reviews and it is currently rated “Mostly Positive.” In fact, the 7,364 recent reviews are also rated “Mostly Positive.”
Of note the game does appear to have been reviewed negatively beginning on May 1st. It had 647 negative reviews compared to just 152 positive reviews. On May 2nd, it received 490 negative reviews to 217 positive reviews. According to Corden’s article, the game had dipped to “Mixed” reviews.
However, after Mahler’s May 10th Discord post the number of positive reviews skyrocketed to 1,655 positive compared to 123 negative on May 11th. That trend continued on May 12th with 787 positive and just 78 negative.
What do you make of Mahler’s clarification after he claimed the game might shut down in a couple months due to being review bombed?
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Souls-like. Ugh. Some of us won't buy not because of review-bombs, but because it isn't our style.
"Review bombing" sounds like an excuse.
I decided to give the game a try, because I liked Moon Studios' previous games and Mahler has been quite reasonable and principled like he's been here. I love the game's art style and the mechanics are solid, but in general I'm not a huge fan of Souls-likes. This one doesn't have the brutal difficulty and there are some minor design issues like a small inventory and busywork resource gathering.
A couple of DEI flags that I noticed are the main city being weirdly diverse, one woman could be a girlboss and I randomly found an NPC implied to be gay. Nothing too awful yet, but worth mentioning.