Thomas Malher, the director who was responsible for Ori and the Blind Forest and its equally sensational sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, is not happy with other gaming developers.
We’re all familiar with ranting developer-focused rants from gamers. But it’s rare when another developer attacks their own kind. On February 3rd, Moon Studios CEO and Ori director Thomas Malher posted a lengthy rant on Resetera that criticised rival game developers for overhyping their to-be-released games and lying to their audiences.
It was clear Malher was angry – he wrote almost 900 words that called out certain games that massively let us all down (Cyberpunk 2077 among them, of course).
In the past, Malher stated:
“It all started with [Peter] Molyneux. He was the master of ‘Instead of telling you what my product is, let me just go wild with what I think it could be and get you all excited!” – And that was fine, until you actually put your money down and then the game was nothing like what Peter was hyping it up to be. He pulled this shit for a good decade or more…”
And that wasn’t all. The Ori director continues on to criticise by listing the specifics of what developers have done.
“It doesn’t matter if the snake oil actually tastes fine. Don’t sell me on features that don’t exist. Don’t paint a picture that you’ll not be able to deliver.”
He tried to end his rant lightly, though.
“I know this whole thread might come off as me sounding bitter and I’m sure there’ll be some people that see this as me shitting on other devs. No, I’m not.”
“I’m shitting on liars and people that are okay with openly deceiving others…There, I said my piece, felt like a chip I needed to get off my shoulder and I think this is a wrong that we should set right so that this won’t happen anymore.”
Malher raised some solid points, and the worlds of difference between the releases of overhyped games like No Man’s Sky or Cyberpunk and Malher’s dearly-loved games certainly speak for themselves.
If you’d like to be the judge yourself, read Malher’s full post here.
