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On January 21st the RPG spin-off of the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, FNaF World, was released on Steam for $9.99 and received very positive reviews with a rating of 87%. So far so good. However, on the 25th the game was pulled from Valve’s service on behalf of Scott Cawthon. According to this announcement under Steam Community Scott has wrote that while the game has received fairly positive criticism. Even so, Scott was not satisfied and came to the conclusion to have the game removed from the Steam store, and refunded everyone who had purchased the game. Scott then put the new version of “FanF World” on GameJolt as a free game. There’s a saying that goes “There is a method to my madness” though this is not considered as “madness” I will have to question this unorthodox practice.

My first opinion regards the reasoning behind this sudden removal: unsatisfactory with how the game is being rated. I would actually believe this statement if it were the case that the developer did not appreciate criticism from low grading reviews. And then pulled the game out of spite as well as the situation where the developer would see that the game was bad, and decided to remove it in hopes that they could fix it and put it up again if people still were interested. This, on the other hand, is being unsatisfied with moderately high scores (as if it was Lisa Simpson getting a B+ on a test). However, Scott believed he could do better. And I can’t fault him on that, but this is more of a situation that would call for a patch update than anything else. And “if” “Fnaf World” is in need of an overhaul with a fully 3D overworld, then just a swap with the old one and replace it with the new version. Sure, I’m glad that a developer wants to go the extra mile, but I feel that the need for perfection is driving this too far. And that brings up my next opinion: refunds.

Only four days after it’s release Scott decides to give the game a full 3D map as part of the updated version.

Not only did Scott have the game removed, but he also asked Valve to refund the money spent on every digital purchase for it. While I don’t think, it would put a dent in his bank account (as Scott made enough profit from his franchise to donate $250k to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital last year). Nevertheless, I think that a refund should be reserved for a failed product only. And from what I understand “FnaF World” was a perfectly good game (my wallet was not ready for the 21st though). Even so, Scott wants to reimburse people their money for a digital game. And that kind of defeats the purpose if people still have the game installed. In short, this decision makes no sense at all. And I´m having a hard time trying to understand why Scott chose to refund people, instead of just adding brand-new and polished features to “FnaF World” for no extra cost? And that´s something that´s messing with my mind, as I don´t get why Scott would do such a thing in the first place. And that brings me to the last topic for my opinion: moving the new free version of “FnaF world” to GameJolt.

According to his announcement, he plans to re-release the game, fully updated and polished, for free by replacing the demo of the game on GameJolt with it. To begin I don’t think Steam will be left out as a distributor since his FNAF games are currently sold on one of the most recognizable online gaming service/community. That being said I still have to ponder what is going on here. It’s not just removing the original and replacing it; it’s relocating the final product to another service. I will admit GameJolt is a good site to find some indie games (that’s where I found CrimeCrew) However, saying that he’s going to move his game without any word about it being put back on Steam may not have been a wise idea.

Not only that but he’s putting it up for free after it sold for at least $10. If he wanted to make it a free game after patching it up for Steam. Then I can see some reasoning in the refund but just putting the free game on GameJolt, before Scott released the game anywhere else. As it could slightly hurt his reputation with the Steam community. Even so, I bet that we’ll see “FnaF World” on Steam as a free title in the near future, but time will tell for sure.

Will all this be worth it in the end?

Even though I have mentioned that I don’t consider this as madness it is enough to give myself a headache. I am glad that Scott strives to improve himself and his games for his followers, but I wish his method wasn’t as complex as his mysteries.

With that said, what do you think about all of this? Leave a comment and let us know your opinion on Scott Cawthon’s method.

David Lucas
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @GamerFoxem