Indie developer Playsaurus has a rather sad announcement: Clicker Heroes 2 development won't be focusing on any major updates in the near future due to financial problems it's facing.
Clicker Heroes 2 is a clicker game that's all about embarking on a neverending quest to fight bad guys. It's been in Steam Early Access for a little over three years and the developers have been working hard on trying to realize their vision. Unfortunately, it looks like things haven't been going their way — and now, the future of Clicker Heroes 2 is in question.
Playsaurus Explains ' A Series of Mistakes' Made During Clicker Heroes 2 Development
So, what went wrong with Clicker Heroes 2 development? Playsaurus took to its blog to lay out the problem, noting that it's having some financial problems. These problems are so bad, in fact, that it has lost money developing the game and ultimately had to lay some people off.
"Clicker Heroes 2 (CH2) is an idle game that we released in Steam Early Access on July 16th, 2018," read a blog post from Playsaurus. "At release it was the result of 3 years of hard work by a small team of talented developers, designers, and artists."
"Currently, the game is not in a state that we are very happy with, and this is mostly a post about what went wrong. We are outlining a series of mistakes we made and learned from, and hope our players can forgive us."
Playsaurus then listed four major mistakes it believes it made over the last six years it spent working on this game. The first major issue was that the game was coded in Flash, just like its predecessor. While there have been tons of great games made in Flash over the years, it doesn't have the same kind of robust development tools that Unity or Unreal has, and that made developing the game a lot more challenging.
Without happy players, it becomes incredibly difficult to get very motivated to improve the game. It’s painful to work on a game with the goal of avoiding player negativity, as opposed to pleasing an already happy audience. The feeling one gets is that of 'why work on a game that everyone hates?'.
The second and third mistakes tied into the game itself: Playsaurus reckons that Clicker Heroes 2 was too different from the first game. That issue was compounded with a relative lack of content at launch.
"We should have realized that many players would assume the product was complete before they bought it," the blog post continued. "Some who purchased it didn’t know what 'Early Access' meant, and it was their first time installing Steam. Many players simply bought the sequel without any research, expecting a finished game (for an idle game - this means “infinite” content), and they were terribly disappointed. This was a failure on our part."
The final of the four mistakes comes down to pricing. Clicker Heroes was a free-to-play game, but Clicker Heroes 2 was a premium product. The game originally launched at a $29.99 price point back in 2018 — since reduced to $19.99 — and Playsaurus reckons that that was a bit too much.
"The initial price was too high for many players, but even when we lowered it later on, and had significant sales, the price was always the biggest problem for the players when they reviewed it," Playsaurus explained. "It felt especially offensive to the players who were expecting a complete game. We even received more than a few death threats."
So, what happens now? Going forward, Playsaurus says that it simply can't afford to continue making the same scale of updates as it has in the past. That said, it isn't planning on abandoning the project entirely, so there may still be tweaks and content updates in the future. Playsaurus also notes that there's a fair amount of content in the game after six years of development; you can check it out for yourself by buying Clicker Heroes 2 on Steam for $19.99 or your regional equivalent.
What do you think of how Clicker Heroes 2 development progressed over the years? Do you think Playsaurus can do a better job with its next game, whatever it may be? Let us know in the comments below!
