The guy responsible for one of the breakout Early Access hits on Steam says this is the end for the game.
Spintires creator Pavel Zagrebelny has taken to a Russian social network to complain that he cannot upload his latest update for the game to Steam. According to Zagrebelny, Spintires publisher Oovee has taken the money it made from the game and is leaving the game behind. Spintires is a highly realistic simulation of off-road trucking that features accurate mud and terrain deformation. It’s a quirky title that has earned itself a cult following and sold more than 100,000 copies in less than a month in part due to its very specific subject matter as well as for its Soviet-style vehicles.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1628162,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"B"}']“Sad news,” wrote Zagrebelny in Russian. “[It] seemed like the development process [just] started. I almost finished my map and tools to develop mods [for a] free upgrade [just] as our English friends from Oovee disappeared [with the loot].”
We’ve contacted Oovee for a statement, and we’ll update this story with the company’s response.
Zagrebelny also claims that the publisher is removing his posts from the official English-language forum for Spintires.
For people who purchased Spintires on Steam in Early Access, the publisher released the game as complete in June. Since then Oovee has updated the truck simulator a number of times. The most recent update rolled out in November.
But those updates are either finished or coming to an end.
“I don’t have permissions to upload the update to Steam,” wrote Zagrebelny. “So now I’ll complete and release the map editor in the version it is now, and this will be end of Spintires.”
The young Russian developer, who designed the land-deformation tech that is the backbone of Spintires sounds very distraught about the situation. He compared this incident to the 2000 Russian gangster film Brother 2, where a Russian becomes the indentured servant of the mob after making what is essentially a “deal with the devil.”
But Zagrebelny says that he is at least not finished with game development.
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“We’ll see,” he wrote. “Maybe I will do another game about trucks on similar technology.”