Earthblade's Cancellation Hints At Dark Side of Breakout Success

In a heartbreaking announcement, Extremely OK Games, the developer of indie breakout hit Earthblade, has been cancelled. In a post on the developers website titled “Final Earthblade Update,” Director Maddy Thorson explained that this decision came after years of difficult development, and an internal falling out with the team’s pixel/ui artist that prompted them to rethink how they were approaching Earthblade. Thorson described the cancellation as heartbreaking, but also a relief.

Earthblade’s cancellation could hint at a common problem that comes with a breakout success

Earthblade, a gorgeous 2D, pixel art metroidvania, was revealed in a two-minute trailer at the 2022 Game Awards. With this being the follow-up to the hugely successful and critically praised platformer Celeste, everyone had their eyes on this game. While a release date or release window was never announced, rumors within the gaming community, perhaps wishfully, thought it might be released sometime this year or next. With this recent update, it’s now clear that Earthblade was much further from launch than anyone expected.

Thorson explained in her post that “Celeste’s success applied pressure on us to deliver something bigger and better with Earthblade, and that pressure is a large part of why working on it has become so exhausting.” Breakout success can be a blessing and a curse. Of course, the consistent income is huge, but the pressure to deliver something even better than the breakout hit can be smothering.

In this week’s edition of Hollow Knight: Silksong. There is so much pressure on the developers of this game that the developer recently came out to say that the game exists and is being worked on after a fan literally pleaded on social media for an update.

With the success of a breakout hit like the original Slay the Spire, and the practically endless revenue those games bring to such small studios, why wouldn’t they take their time to get the next game right? The potential for disappointing fans who have waited so long and set their expectations so high could be devastating to a small indie studio.

On the bright side, Extremely OK Games plans to keep making games, but on a smaller scale than Earthblade. It may be years before we hear anything, but that’s ok.

This feels like dropping a pebble into an endless well, but here goes: Maybe as fans of great video games we should stop flooding every showcase livestream chat with pleads for Silksong. The small teams that made these amazing games are under enough pressure as it is, they don’t need constant pestering from overly impatient fans to add to that. Haunted Chocolatier haven’t been canceled yet. There’s no shortage of great games to enjoy in the meantime, so let’s all try to be patient.

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