There should be credits. There should ALWAYS be credits. I don't care how big or small the company is. The artists, writers and developers deserve to have their work acknowledged. Will I stop playing the game forever? Probably not. I paid for it, have hundreds of hours in it and I enjoy the game. Will I still throw money at DLC's and things like that? Absolutely not. At least not until they seriously change their business practices and get rid of Bruce and all people like him. Props to Kyle and his honesty and props to you MRIZ for shining a light on this. ❤
I really wish that some of the people in the Discord server would stop with the "they're just a small indie dev team" defense already. Bad/unethical business practices are still bad/unethical regardless of who does it.
As someone who was a wiki admin for years, and got close behind the scenes, it's a shit show over there. There is a reason many of us who saw behind the curtain stepped back.
Sadly a lot didn’t. I pointed out my displeasure at a lot of the shady actions a while back and got met by a wave of fanboys parroting lines about how they are a small team like that excuses everything.
HOLY SHIT, IM THE HALI IN QUESTION!!! Ive recently been thinking about my Sun Haven exposé again and on updating Kyle - I had some more health issues and college stress inbetween and the leads I had had run a bit dry. With Tav suddenly being fired I thought I'd resume my investigative work on Pixel Sprout Studios in around two weeks, when my exams are done. Im honestly surprised and honored Ive been mentioned :-D I dont have a youtube presence at all, I was thinking of posting an article summarizing all my findings and then presenting all of them in video form for accessibility/detail and linking to it in said article/posts. But youve done a fine job yourself too!
It's such a shame how a fun game like this can get tarnished by bad business practices. One or two mistakes is forgivable, but at this point it will be hard to trust any of their future projects. You brought up so many great points. Another thing I really did not like is how they put their new team members on a brand new game (Sun Down), which was not only really bad, but they launched it before the 1.0 of Sun Haven.
Tom the quality assurance guy is no longer with pixel sprout. He got fired around the same time tav did, right when the team came back from the 4 week long silent treatment. I know tom did some sort of announcement but it was immediately deleted. Edited to also point out many backers who chose the switch key either never got one, got an invalid one, or one for the wrong region.
I quit playing a while back. The constant bombardment of DLCs with every update sent up red flags to me. If only all developers had the integrity of Concerned Ape the world of gaming would be a much better place.
This alone isn't a big problem to me... It's cosmetic DLCs to support the continued development of the game (at least on the surface). That shouldn't raise red flags on its own. But if the studio is unethically treating its employees, then it is what it is.
They did back before 2015 but you know. Also harvest moon also know as story of seasons was the original from the 80s still going till this day. Stardew was not the first or best xD
As a game dev, thank you for reporting this story on the dev's behalf. Our stories get overlooked and untold too much. Yes, it's a dream job but that just makes us even more vulnerable to exploitation cuz we want it so bad. May the Sunhaven devs find better studios 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Hiding how many real employees they have and paying a lot under the table is definitely a way to avoid some laws about having to pay healthcare and taxes.
Thank you so much for making this video and taking the time to interview someone. I started playing Sun Haven last year, took a break because I wanted to eventually play it on Steam Deck, and unfortunately haven’t gone back to it after getting the Deck. I was OBSESSED when I regularly played it, and was hoping that the only issues were the DLC being sketchy. I’m so disappointed in this studio. While I never had any glitches when I played, just hearing about how piss poor the quality is especially for the Switch port and knowing how they (allegedly) treated the team makes me not want to return to it; maybe for a very long time, maybe never. I feel like “gamers” are quick to dismiss issues like this, saying it’s just how the industry is, “that’s capitalism, baby” etc. etc. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Keep fighting the good fight and sharing the cozy content!
the first half of the video really reminds me of the state of sims 4, quantity over quality and making new content instead of fixing bugs and game breaking glitches. it’s sad when companies/studios care more about money than its players :(
unfortunately this is not an isolated incident in "indie" games. I've worked for some smaller studios and there always have been the same exact shit that you were covering in this video. That's why now I'd rather do commissions over working in some small, greedy studio with ceo that doesn't know how to make games but always has the last word. Artists being underplayed and uncredited makes my blood boil. I loved SH at first but quickly bugs become so tiring that I've given up, esp that most of them were quick fix which made me irritated even more. Also as someone who have been recently left without credited under the project that I've spent 2 years on I can feel the pain and frustration of the artists. Thank you for covering this case!
@@drawgam2946only get credit for the final product and significant stuff added. FFS you folk are dense. Indie studios won't have no wear near as much cash as mainstream studio a of course the pays shit
@@drawgam2946 In an industry where credit is expected and has become industry standard, not having credits for the people who worked on/contributed to the game is unacceptable. It's not "99 percent of workers".
there needs to be an independent gaming union for asset creators, composers, writers, etc. I'm so beyond "enough is enough" with expecting every new cozy game to have been forged with the souls of orphans or something.
That poor singular QA guy. QA is the end of the line and that means being in a hard position in general; being the only person doing the work for a game that large is unrealistic.
Not even Joja in-game is this bad. Morris directly supervises the community developments, in stealth. It keeps Pierre in check. Movie theater is in a more reasonable location. Clint don't have to stare at the boiler room on Fridays.
you are so right, Sun Haven grew up to be my all time favourite game. But the sketchy practices really overshadow the potential of the game. In not native in english and the game is advertised on steam for mutliple languages. Little did i know, that all the translations where made from only one person (whom i had contact with, hes a really nice guy ). I dont think they get on the right track soon. Hopefully Pixel Sproud gets backlash for their trashy switch version. All of this is such a bumer, because the game itself is really great and my cozy hideout
I enjoyed it at first...then 2 weeks later they dumped their first DLC. When I bought it with no idea they would add monitisation, and at that point I couldn't refund it. I don't care that it's 'only cosmetic' items - these sort of games are very focused on collecting cosmetics and decorating your hourse/farm. Best part is them now hiding new DLC on an ingame cash-shop 'store' (there's way more than the steam page shows). I would never recommend the game to anyone; there's plenty of cozy games that don't paywall hundreds of cosmetics. Not surprised the devs are as scummy as their monitisation in all other aspects.
I used to love this game without ever knowing what was going on. But when they released that major update I was so excited about, not only did I lose everything in my save due to bugs, but what made me never want to play again was when I realized that the translation had gotten MUCH worse, which before was not good but acceptable, but now it has become very difficult to understand anything that I was reading. I was so sad to feel cheated for all the time I loved playing this game that I even cried. I could write much more about my experience but I feel like this text is already too long. I don't think anyone will read my entire rant anyway.
It is wild seeing a video about abuse of game artists and game devs by a studio that’s sponsored by a company who gets game keys from either lying to game devs about being a reviewer, stealing credit cards, or buying cheaper keys in other markets and reselling them. All of these practices result in the good studios and their employees not getting paid. Don’t support companies like your sponsor in this video.
Not having CREDITS in your video game, something that has been a feature of basically EVERY video game since their inception, is absolutely WILD. And unconscionable, frankly!
Oof, this is honestly a good expose on the terrible practices of Pixel Sprout Games! I won't be buying any of the paid DLC nor talk about Sun Haven anymore because it's basically free promotion. However, I will still play it as it is a fun game; This is simply a knife wound to the soul and I do hope Pixel Sprout Games get roasted on a larger scale so they will answer for all the bullshit they've engaged in. I'll be sharing your video so that way more people are made aware of the truth.
I remember back when cohost was still around ( *cries* ) and one of the artists tried to discuss just this on there. Used to have the game on my wishlist, but immediately took it off after hearing about that. You should ALWAYS credit those who contributed to your product. That should be one of your top priorities.
Travellers Rest is really fun! I've been playing it since super early access and they've changed a ton of stuff (some good, some bad LOL). I miss being able to pickle chicken.
Thank you for the very informative video! ❤ You address exactly the reasons why I stopped playing it in August 2024, even though it is my favorite game. It is just sad how they are ruining the game with their greed. In Discord I have also noticed several times that (critical) questions are simply ignored or deleted. Especially the questions about why there are no credits yet... I am very curious to see how things will continue with DLC Haven in the future, especially because the competition is huge and does a lot of things better
Thank you for speaking on this! I stopped playing a while ago too, something always felt fishy to me about this game and Pixel Sprout. Such a shame. I feel bad for the artists and everyone who worked on the game who didn’t get credit. Also, only 1 person doing QA?! CRAZY! That must’ve been hell.
The most worrisome part about this tbh is that it shows that Nintendo doesn't at all check games that go on their platform anymore, no pre-release QA, no assurance the game even runs, probably no assurance that you'll even get a game that opens. Yet Nintendo charges more than not just all other stores and marketplaces, but even more than all other consoles for the exact same games run at a worse quality. They really genuinely just do not care at all anymore. Would Nintendo even notice if you just uploaded a patch full of malware to your game?
You give Nintendo more fault than they actually have. Pricing ist Not determined by Nintendo. Nintendo, Steam and all the other gaming platforms/marketplaces do take roughly the same percentage of the price (around 30%). When Studios claim they need to charge more because of Nintendo - they are lying to make more money. And why should Nintendo do their Work and do QA for the Game? Do you expect Steam to do that? Probably not. The QA Nintendo does IS to make Sure there is no malware, viruses, etc.. At the end, Nintendo just gives devs the possibility to port their games to another console. They will not do their work. I am really confused that you put the blame on Nintendo, not on the studio which made that horrible game,lied and deceived people. Like... that is a huge leap.
wild take. the game is feature rich and playable, why would nintendo not host it on their store? Furthermore do you think QA teams refer to…the people working at the storefronts? thats not a job that exists. QA exists within a studio, no further. Also, you absolute hyperventilating panick attack, in what fucking world can you buy a fake game off the e-shop that doesnt work? And would they notice if you patched malware in, obviously not there isnt a person sitting at a desk looking at thousands of daily updates, but like…there would be massive repercussions for the attacker and for nintendo, legally. just…relax lol. this game is bad and the people who made it are bad. This doesnt mean that nintendo is no longer a trustworthy company, theres so many other reasons thats true that actually relate to nintendo whatsoever
@@yungoldman2823 Nintendo literally used to have an internal QA team just for games submitted to their system, that is what the entire Nintendo Seal of Approval used to be for after the Atari market crash. You were getting a guarentee that any game you purchased on a Nintendo system actually would be a working game, or else Nintendo wouldn't give them access to printing on Nintendo cartridges. You can read about in the book Game Over. Clearly they now don't even test if the game can be left idle on their normal hardware before hard crashing anymore before letting anyone sell anything regardless of functionality. Nintendo still has a submission process for putting your game on their platform but it clearly no longer has anyone actually testing the stability or quality of products anymore, ignoring that the store has been filled with shovelware adult games on top of this before.
I was considering getting Sun Haven on the Switch to add to my cozy games collection, and I'm really glad this video got shown to me before I did! I refuse to support companies that treat their staff like disposable automatons and abuses their time and good will for zero credit. Thank you for the warning.
Hmm I was going to play Sun Haven for my channel, but something about it has rubbed me the wrong way since I've seen other people play it. I'll definitely be following this story. Thanks for sharing it.
When I first played the game there was definitely so much love in it, the art, music, and writing were all great. I have been happily telling people how good the game was, and how it seemed like the company was a good one to keep following. The massive amount of DLC coming out did get an eyebrow-raise but I didn't think too much about it. But if even half of what is alleged is true... I can't in good conscience play or try to convince others to play anymore. I don't want to play a game where the "love" was wrung out of artists for as little as they could get away with, and that's setting aside how shady everything is. ... I will however thank the developers that actually made the game,for the good memories, even if the company that's benefiting from their work refuses to credit them.
Finally, people are speaking about it. I've been playing since EA and I am just so disappointed how this has all gone down. The company is shameless with how they have treated their customers and ruined what could of been something awesome.
thank you for covering this. i hope there is a list somewhere of the artists who were harmed so we could support them as individuals. encouragement and other support can really help artists heal from burn out.
I am torn SOLELY in the sense that I purchased this game the moment it released in EA, and it is now FAR past the refundable date/playtime (540+ hours) on Steam.. I've always hated their intense DLC push instead of fixing game-breaking bugs, lack of controller support, etc. have also complained heavily about it in their official server, and have/will never purchase one. I was extremely excited to be able to play it on Switch but am wholeheartedly thankful to have been far too broke lately to purchase (because Nintendo eshop games aren't refundable at all) after learning all of this information! I've always been such a huge advocate for supporting Artists and their work.. To not only not credit their work and involvement, but to be soooo cheap with paying them for their service makes me so sick to my stomach. This is someone's livelihood, their job, their means to survive. I will never purchase from Pixel Sprout, again, I can't support that kind of cruel, selfish behavior.
Hi, just here to say DLC of any kind, cosmetic or not, should still be a worthwhile investment. Treating cosmetics as some sort of get out of jail free card always feels weird to me. Also, companies want you to excuse cosmetics as a free pass. Otherwise, very good video
To me there are two main qualifiers to good DLC. First does it justify what they are charging. Second the cost of the DLC should never eclipse the price of the full game unless we are talking about giant expansion level content, and even then it’s not a great look. Sun Haven fails at both spectacularly which alongside all the other shady stuff just makes me comfortable in never buying anything of theirs going forward.
i applied to be a pixel artist for them, didnt get it but the people who did get hired did the work, it wasnt received well by the players, and their work was removed and the artists were never even credited. glad i missed out.
The game is honestly good, I rly enjoyed the fantasy and gameplay but what I cannot fathom is how these devs and other people who worked (and maybe even working) on the game is unfairly compensated and treated. That's unethical.
Thank you for compiling all of this information, you do a great job of making a shit ton of info like this digestible(as also seen by your videos on Early Access cozy games). I, personally, will say all these posts and the info you shared has made me definitely decide I don't wanna buy this game now. It's been in my peripheral for a while, and the size of the game has always been a daunting thing to me. But to know that it's that big and yet their are still bugs amassed in older content is just....that's unacceptable man. Hoping for the best for everyone who has worked on the project, and I hope they're somewhere now where their work is being appreciated, compensated fairly, and credited.
I do want to say sun haven isn't unique in having a troubling switch port release, as it is a curse almost all indie games have to deal with. As far as I know, it's due to lack of decent communication between Nintendo and each update also goes thru a long approval time (hence why some Devs update steam releases first as they can do it whenever, with switch patches they need to fix as many issues they can in one go because otherwise waiting for individual smaller patches takes forever). All that being said it is still surprising and notable that they did little to advertise the switch release, usually that's always a big deal! Overall very concerning stuff
*Sigh* I really like the game but all of this just made me not buy more dlc's ever again, if they ever release something new in the future im not buying it until it's on at least 90% discount or they deliver quality instead of quantity, knowing the game sold that good and what they are doing with the money of the artists working, just, no. Thank you for opening my eyes
Oooff, I remember buying this game last Christmas on Steam. While it's not my fav Farm sim since I felt the game was lacking in the Romance department, I still liked it. I did pick it back up again with the 1.4 update and lucky for me I've never had any glitches or issues. Hearing this, I won't be getting another game from this studio (it wouldn't be the first time I've done this as I refuse to play video games that use AI, if and when I find out). To those who in this company (I am looking at the Director) who mistreated others, all I have to say is, "Be careful of karma, because what you put out, eventually will return to you."
Oh I feel absolutely the opposite about DLC. In my mind, if a company makes it's money from selling cosmetics, then that's what they're going to focus on.
Yup, I found and subscribed to you and joined your discord through Sun Haven and not through Stardew Valley. It's one of my favorite games in the genre. I love the different towns and themes. This explains why I never see you make videos for it any more. This is sad news all around. I guess his economics degree didn't teach him that good products sell but great products keep selling. Exploitation is not a good look.
You could have stopped at "the pictures in the store are fake to better showcase the product". I was out at that point. It's not just the blatant lie, it's that the lie is lazy that it's insulting they think anyone would be dumb enough to believe that.
@@DirgeMacBee Two different games though to be fair, if they're looking for a game like Sunhaven, definitely go for Mistria, as it's also lovingly made and extremely charming. Elin's great, but it's more akin to a roguelike adventure game akin to Caves of Qud with farming opportunities (and in very, very, very early access).
they had a lead artist playing goalie on Discord with ANGRY FANS both in text AND voice on their EA opening weekend??? even if he felt compelled to do it and wasn't asked it's such a red flag that it was even necessary. it's hard enough to crunch when you're not having to talk to people or worse, manage their frustrations. people forget to treat you like you're people when they're frustrated with your company so it's wild to leave the artist (or any lower level worker) there for the wolves to gobble up. sick
I've never played Sun Haven, since it's not my type of graphics, but I read about this video on Reddit so I got curious, which is why I'm here. Always ready for some hot tea.
If you already bought the game you should still play it - it's super fun. The DLC isn't relevant at all. No point dying on the hill if you already bought and paid for the game. A collective of human beings worked very hard to make this game. You can still appreciate it without further supporting the studio or buying any DLC or whatever.
Never really been interested in this game, but it's sad to hear there's so many issues with certain parts of it and sounds like the studio can be a bit rude to people 😓 hopefully this all improves for everyone moving forward. Oh man, I just got to the part about their labour practices. Yikes. They really need to compensate everyone!
Luckily we have a new Rune Factory game coming out in a couple months which should scratch that blended Fantasy RPG/Farm Sim itch. (Though they do also have a concerningly high number of marriage candidates lol, at least it's like a mid-tier studio making their second game in this engine so such lofty goals are a bit less worry-inducing than Sun Haven's)
Honestly, this is kinda a common thing. The best other example I thought of while watching this video is the Star Trek: Prodigy game for the switch. It was suppose to come out months before in between the two parts of the tv show’s first season. It literally has LORE points you can only get in the game, but it wasn’t released until a while later. But the biggest gripe was that the game was STILL unplayable. Luckily not crashes as bad as this, but you could literally glitch into the level and be stuck and forced to restart the game. It was shitty overall with lackluster puzzles and environments, but the BIGGEST annoyance to me was the characters only having like 4 lines a piece. And they repeat them over and over and OVER again. It almost made me not like the show (which is impossible though definitely watch even if you’re not a Star Trek fan. Great kids show). You should look into that too if you’re interested in making more of this kind of content. Also I’ll just say this one and move on, but Princess Peach Showdown was the biggest disappointment of gaining in a long time…. Also would like to see this talked about more….
I had this game on my wishlist for such a long time but was always hesitant due to some of the reviews and from reading through steam discussions. I eventually removed it entirely cuz all those dlcs turned me off. Man, didnt realize it was waaaay worse than I thought, glad i decided to not get this game.
Yeah, the treatment as of recent has been gross, but this knowledge is pretty sad. I mean I have the game already so I'll probably still play it possibly. But I might not be as willing to tell my friends about it. Especially as an artist hearing about the treatment of artists (writers included), AND using AI instead of paying humans to translate? That's scummy. If the artists and writers, themselves end up working on anything I would be happy to follow them, but not Pixel Sprout Studios.
I stopped playing because of the bugs and frankly stopped engaging with the community because at least on Steam a lot of the more vocal people like to pretend like there are no bugs in the game. I haven't encountered many game breaking bugs, but I don't think one can play an hour without encountering at least one bug. And given how faux positive some people are in the forums, I doubt the devs have that much of an incentive to fix the bugs. If people are willing to tolerate them and just buy the mtx why should they fix the bugs?
Speaking from experience; it feels like a battlefield trying to voice issues. Especially when Pixel Sprouts out of nowhere wanted to change the entire art style of the characters. People against the change no one asked for and forcing 4Kids levels of modesty had everyone just calling us gooners. It's maddening. They focus on everything BUT the actual problems.
I tried to like Sun Haven but it just wasn't a vibe. Then I tried buying the DLC... ended up refunding all of it because I was disappointed. Now I don't feel as bad about not liking it and refunding the DLC 😅
Wow this caught me totally off guard! I have played and loved Sun Haven so much since i bought it last year, one of my all time favourites. Its incredibly disappointing to hear all of this. I have never had any glitch issues on my pc or really thought about the dlcs but yikes that sounds seriously terrible and game breaking. I hope the devs fix things and do what they're supposed to do as game developers which is cater and respect their consumers! Thanks for sharing this info as i have had zero awareness about this.
I never started playing this game because I found the female character design to be extremely ugly and laughably over sexualised. Like it was drawn by a teenage boy or something. I am petty like that and I only want to romance women, so things like this do keep me from buying a game. The rest of it looked like something I would have LOVED as a nerdy teenager but as an adult it wasn't enough to convince me to buy the game regardless of their character design. I know many people might disagree with me and thats okay. I kept an eye on the game to see if I would want to buy it eventually but the things mentioned in the video kept piling up, so I never tried it. I feel really bad for people who played and enjoyed this game and for the workers who were screwed over.
Thank you for the leg work you put in here. My partner was an original KS backer and waited years for the port (no gaming computer). She has played it to the crashing point a few times and is super disappointed her first game project has gone this way. Shoutout to all the artists out there, good luck yall.
I too loved Sun Haven, it was pretty much everything I wanted but after losing my entire save file and having to start over from scratch, I gave up after the bugs glitched out my whole screen. Thank you for shedding light on this.
Sun Haven is my biggest heartbreak in gaming. It had such an amazing foundation. But it was squandered and abused by a greedy and inept dev team. There's too many things wrong to even fully list. I would play this while watching One Piece. I would play it on my days off with my friend.
AI is fine when it’s a tool (also to note not all AI is generative AI). AI can be great for touching things up and helping take some of the tedium out of the process so artists can focus on more important aspects. It just shouldn’t be something that is used as a crutch to just do the job in place of actual devs but instead as a tool to assist them and make their lives easier.
This is so sad. I had so much playing sun haven back in 2021. And I love seeing unique games from small indie companies. I haven’t played in like 2 years or so so I had no idea what was going on, I didn’t even know they finally got it on switch. I had so much hope for this game
I played the game when it was still in EA and ended up shelving it after a rather unsatisfactory conversation with one of the project leads on some criticisms I had for the game. It's so sad to hear about the mistreatment of artists and writers working there no matter how common that is these days. It is nice to see people finally putting their foot down on the insane laundry list of DLC at this point. Blech.
20:58 I dealt with this when I worked at a game studio, too, even once having the lead writer (???) pick the chosen design in the end. 3 weeks after the art director had picked a design.
I quite playing when my main toon was randomly gone from my save file, emailed the company and never heard back from them about it to this day (this was over a year ago). I tried playing around June 2024 and quit playing when my new character couldn’t leave the porch because it was too close to a ledge. I had so many fond memories of this game, but all these bugs have made me not want to play ever again.
Goodness i bought the game but never installed it... this is the first I've heard about any controversies. Im not a dlc girly, they were never getting any extra money outta me 😅
thank you for this! SH was one steam sale recently and had been in my wishlist forever (didn't have a computer to game on until last November), but negative reviews alluding to exactly this changed my mind about buying it. I appreciate the comprehensive breakdown here and am even more glad I spent my money on something else.
Norwegian had the same issue, booted the game up fall of last year and "Chest" was translated to "Brystkasse" aka the anatomy. But what I found the most peculiar was that the game had translated my custom chests. It had changed my chest I had named "Random" to "Tilfeldig" which is correct, but it just felt wrong, and raised alarms in my brain. It felt more like translations were "filtered" on top of the game and reading every word, idk
Regarding the DLC & artist income: I don't know about Pixel Sprout, but years ago I worked for a small game company (Facebook gaming era) and we used similar content as a way to keep our in-house artist busy. For us that meant daily icon rewards and similar, but cosmetic DLC fall into the same category. It's possible they have an artist on salary as a permanent employee. That person isn't being individually paid for the art in the DLC pack because it's all work for hire, instead they have a salary with the studio instead of doing individual jobs piecemeal. Again, I'm not saying this is the case, just that it could be. Especially if the company has other big patches or a new game in their pipeline, they may want to hold on to their artist for consistency of style. As an aside, this is also why it's very useful for artists to learn some programming skills. Make yourself more useful between projects and it's more likely you'll be on salary rather than contract.
i was in the industry and left a while ago: it's always the suits. business and marketing ruining the cool stuff for everybody by talking about things they know nothing about and make up features and goals on the spot? typical. always remember that capitalism is the antithesis of good art/entertainment. i almost got this game on the switch but decided on moonstone island instead because people were making a fuss. thanks to the community.
Loved Sun Haven. Still kind of do. But 2 bugs that annoyed the crap out of me and my friends in multiplayer: I couldn't see myself when I went to change my hair or character. My preview screen would be solid black. Friends could see themselves in the preview window. I couldn't. Marriage bug in multiplayer that persisted for months (maybe still does?) Where the world owner's marriage partner is in everyones home and overwrites anyone the other people married.
This game has been sitting in my wishlist for a while now because I was going back and forth on whether I should get it or not. Mostly because I watched some reviews and the crafting system seems super unappealing. But now I will just go ahead and remove it
I tried to contact Sunhaven devs or staff or discord mods, anyone about german translation being discriminatory in various ways. They never reacted. That was back in summer 2023.
I never played the game but saw the hype surrounding it as art concept and initial gameplay was being introduced. I feel like I dodged a bullet with how I prefer to buy games after they prove to be good (like years later). Sad to see this happen to the game that had potential, but maybe it wasn't worth it because of who ran it into the ground anyways. Hopefully everyone can move onto another game that doesn't take advantage of everyone involved.
Thank you for this video. I've been on the fence about getting Sun Haven for a few years after finally getting into Stardew and other cozy games but after watching your video, I'll be saving my money for a more worthy developer
My heart is broken T_T Edit: Thank you for revealing all this though because I had always heard things but no one would ever fully explain and I never liked that. Welp another cozy game that broke my trust. Sigh.
There should be credits. There should ALWAYS be credits. I don't care how big or small the company is. The artists, writers and developers deserve to have their work acknowledged. Will I stop playing the game forever? Probably not. I paid for it, have hundreds of hours in it and I enjoy the game. Will I still throw money at DLC's and things like that? Absolutely not. At least not until they seriously change their business practices and get rid of Bruce and all people like him. Props to Kyle and his honesty and props to you MRIZ for shining a light on this. ❤
I really wish that some of the people in the Discord server would stop with the "they're just a small indie dev team" defense already. Bad/unethical business practices are still bad/unethical regardless of who does it.
23:39
As someone who was a wiki admin for years, and got close behind the scenes, it's a shit show over there. There is a reason many of us who saw behind the curtain stepped back.
Sadly a lot didn’t. I pointed out my displeasure at a lot of the shady actions a while back and got met by a wave of fanboys parroting lines about how they are a small team like that excuses everything.
Do you regret wasting your time on the saddest thing imaginable?
HOLY SHIT, IM THE HALI IN QUESTION!!! Ive recently been thinking about my Sun Haven exposé again and on updating Kyle - I had some more health issues and college stress inbetween and the leads I had had run a bit dry. With Tav suddenly being fired I thought I'd resume my investigative work on Pixel Sprout Studios in around two weeks, when my exams are done. Im honestly surprised and honored Ive been mentioned :-D I dont have a youtube presence at all, I was thinking of posting an article summarizing all my findings and then presenting all of them in video form for accessibility/detail and linking to it in said article/posts. But youve done a fine job yourself too!
❤🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄
It's such a shame how a fun game like this can get tarnished by bad business practices. One or two mistakes is forgivable, but at this point it will be hard to trust any of their future projects. You brought up so many great points. Another thing I really did not like is how they put their new team members on a brand new game (Sun Down), which was not only really bad, but they launched it before the 1.0 of Sun Haven.
Tom the quality assurance guy is no longer with pixel sprout. He got fired around the same time tav did, right when the team came back from the 4 week long silent treatment. I know tom did some sort of announcement but it was immediately deleted.
Edited to also point out many backers who chose the switch key either never got one, got an invalid one, or one for the wrong region.
I quit playing a while back. The constant bombardment of DLCs with every update sent up red flags to me. If only all developers had the integrity of Concerned Ape the world of gaming would be a much better place.
This alone isn't a big problem to me... It's cosmetic DLCs to support the continued development of the game (at least on the surface). That shouldn't raise red flags on its own. But if the studio is unethically treating its employees, then it is what it is.
They did back before 2015 but you know. Also harvest moon also know as story of seasons was the original from the 80s still going till this day. Stardew was not the first or best xD
As a game dev, thank you for reporting this story on the dev's behalf. Our stories get overlooked and untold too much. Yes, it's a dream job but that just makes us even more vulnerable to exploitation cuz we want it so bad. May the Sunhaven devs find better studios 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
@Amaiguri well said!! 🫶🏼
Hiding how many real employees they have and paying a lot under the table is definitely a way to avoid some laws about having to pay healthcare and taxes.
Thank you so much for making this video and taking the time to interview someone. I started playing Sun Haven last year, took a break because I wanted to eventually play it on Steam Deck, and unfortunately haven’t gone back to it after getting the Deck. I was OBSESSED when I regularly played it, and was hoping that the only issues were the DLC being sketchy.
I’m so disappointed in this studio. While I never had any glitches when I played, just hearing about how piss poor the quality is especially for the Switch port and knowing how they (allegedly) treated the team makes me not want to return to it; maybe for a very long time, maybe never.
I feel like “gamers” are quick to dismiss issues like this, saying it’s just how the industry is, “that’s capitalism, baby” etc. etc. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Keep fighting the good fight and sharing the cozy content!
the first half of the video really reminds me of the state of sims 4, quantity over quality and making new content instead of fixing bugs and game breaking glitches. it’s sad when companies/studios care more about money than its players :(
I thought it sounded like that too. Like they saw what was going on over there and were like, that’s what we’re gonna do
unfortunately this is not an isolated incident in "indie" games. I've worked for some smaller studios and there always have been the same exact shit that you were covering in this video. That's why now I'd rather do commissions over working in some small, greedy studio with ceo that doesn't know how to make games but always has the last word. Artists being underplayed and uncredited makes my blood boil.
I loved SH at first but quickly bugs become so tiring that I've given up, esp that most of them were quick fix which made me irritated even more. Also as someone who have been recently left without credited under the project that I've spent 2 years on I can feel the pain and frustration of the artists. Thank you for covering this case!
Underpaid is the worst offender. Uncredited is just like 99 percent of workers.
@@drawgam2946only get credit for the final product and significant stuff added. FFS you folk are dense. Indie studios won't have no wear near as much cash as mainstream studio a of course the pays shit
@@drawgam2946 In an industry where credit is expected and has become industry standard, not having credits for the people who worked on/contributed to the game is unacceptable. It's not "99 percent of workers".
there needs to be an independent gaming union for asset creators, composers, writers, etc. I'm so beyond "enough is enough" with expecting every new cozy game to have been forged with the souls of orphans or something.
@@The_Red_Scare Its the choice of the company. As long as the contract is respected im fine with it.
That poor singular QA guy. QA is the end of the line and that means being in a hard position in general; being the only person doing the work for a game that large is unrealistic.
When you use her link for her commission please don't check or look a honey. They will steal her commission.
I'm getting Joja vibes from that company
Not even Joja in-game is this bad. Morris directly supervises the community developments, in stealth. It keeps Pierre in check. Movie theater is in a more reasonable location. Clint don't have to stare at the boiler room on Fridays.
At least Joja fix their mistakes and apologizes to the citizen
you are so right, Sun Haven grew up to be my all time favourite game. But the sketchy practices really overshadow the potential of the game. In not native in english and the game is advertised on steam for mutliple languages. Little did i know, that all the translations where made from only one person (whom i had contact with, hes a really nice guy ). I dont think they get on the right track soon. Hopefully Pixel Sproud gets backlash for their trashy switch version. All of this is such a bumer, because the game itself is really great and my cozy hideout
I enjoyed it at first...then 2 weeks later they dumped their first DLC. When I bought it with no idea they would add monitisation, and at that point I couldn't refund it. I don't care that it's 'only cosmetic' items - these sort of games are very focused on collecting cosmetics and decorating your hourse/farm. Best part is them now hiding new DLC on an ingame cash-shop 'store' (there's way more than the steam page shows).
I would never recommend the game to anyone; there's plenty of cozy games that don't paywall hundreds of cosmetics. Not surprised the devs are as scummy as their monitisation in all other aspects.
I will say this, the no credits has been a huge red flag for me since the very beginning. There is something scummy about it
I used to love this game without ever knowing what was going on. But when they released that major update I was so excited about, not only did I lose everything in my save due to bugs, but what made me never want to play again was when I realized that the translation had gotten MUCH worse, which before was not good but acceptable, but now it has become very difficult to understand anything that I was reading. I was so sad to feel cheated for all the time I loved playing this game that I even cried. I could write much more about my experience but I feel like this text is already too long. I don't think anyone will read my entire rant anyway.
It is wild seeing a video about abuse of game artists and game devs by a studio that’s sponsored by a company who gets game keys from either lying to game devs about being a reviewer, stealing credit cards, or buying cheaper keys in other markets and reselling them. All of these practices result in the good studios and their employees not getting paid. Don’t support companies like your sponsor in this video.
It's a real shame, but honestly the overpriced DLC really was a red flag for me. I honestly almost did not but it since I thought it was a scam.
Not having CREDITS in your video game, something that has been a feature of basically EVERY video game since their inception, is absolutely WILD. And unconscionable, frankly!
Oof, this is honestly a good expose on the terrible practices of Pixel Sprout Games! I won't be buying any of the paid DLC nor talk about Sun Haven anymore because it's basically free promotion. However, I will still play it as it is a fun game; This is simply a knife wound to the soul and I do hope Pixel Sprout Games get roasted on a larger scale so they will answer for all the bullshit they've engaged in. I'll be sharing your video so that way more people are made aware of the truth.
Geez, this game has been sitting quietly in my steam wishlist since 2022, glad i never got it i guess. Why is it so hard to treat employees well.
I remember back when cohost was still around ( *cries* ) and one of the artists tried to discuss just this on there. Used to have the game on my wishlist, but immediately took it off after hearing about that.
You should ALWAYS credit those who contributed to your product. That should be one of your top priorities.
Got both Travellers Rest and Sun Haven at the same time, makes me feel a bit better focusing on Travellers Rest more.
If the game looks very asian-ness stay away from it
On switch???
@@SonderGira I got both on PC at the start of last year, as even Mrix can say I focused on Travellers Rest.
Travellers Rest is really fun! I've been playing it since super early access and they've changed a ton of stuff (some good, some bad LOL). I miss being able to pickle chicken.
@@ShiniKimura sounds like a shame of a tweak, you can pickle anything if you put your mind to it lol
Thank you for the very informative video! ❤
You address exactly the reasons why I stopped playing it in August 2024, even though it is my favorite game. It is just sad how they are ruining the game with their greed. In Discord I have also noticed several times that (critical) questions are simply ignored or deleted. Especially the questions about why there are no credits yet... I am very curious to see how things will continue with DLC Haven in the future, especially because the competition is huge and does a lot of things better
Thank you for speaking on this! I stopped playing a while ago too, something always felt fishy to me about this game and Pixel Sprout. Such a shame. I feel bad for the artists and everyone who worked on the game who didn’t get credit.
Also, only 1 person doing QA?! CRAZY! That must’ve been hell.
$15 is absolutely ridiculous
The most worrisome part about this tbh is that it shows that Nintendo doesn't at all check games that go on their platform anymore, no pre-release QA, no assurance the game even runs, probably no assurance that you'll even get a game that opens. Yet Nintendo charges more than not just all other stores and marketplaces, but even more than all other consoles for the exact same games run at a worse quality. They really genuinely just do not care at all anymore. Would Nintendo even notice if you just uploaded a patch full of malware to your game?
You give Nintendo more fault than they actually have. Pricing ist Not determined by Nintendo. Nintendo, Steam and all the other gaming platforms/marketplaces do take roughly the same percentage of the price (around 30%). When Studios claim they need to charge more because of Nintendo - they are lying to make more money.
And why should Nintendo do their Work and do QA for the Game? Do you expect Steam to do that? Probably not. The QA Nintendo does IS to make Sure there is no malware, viruses, etc..
At the end, Nintendo just gives devs the possibility to port their games to another console. They will not do their work.
I am really confused that you put the blame on Nintendo, not on the studio which made that horrible game,lied and deceived people. Like... that is a huge leap.
wild take. the game is feature rich and playable, why would nintendo not host it on their store?
Furthermore do you think QA teams refer to…the people working at the storefronts? thats not a job that exists. QA exists within a studio, no further.
Also, you absolute hyperventilating panick attack, in what fucking world can you buy a fake game off the e-shop that doesnt work? And would they notice if you patched malware in, obviously not there isnt a person sitting at a desk looking at thousands of daily updates, but like…there would be massive repercussions for the attacker and for nintendo, legally.
just…relax lol. this game is bad and the people who made it are bad. This doesnt mean that nintendo is no longer a trustworthy company, theres so many other reasons thats true that actually relate to nintendo whatsoever
@@yungoldman2823 Nintendo literally used to have an internal QA team just for games submitted to their system, that is what the entire Nintendo Seal of Approval used to be for after the Atari market crash. You were getting a guarentee that any game you purchased on a Nintendo system actually would be a working game, or else Nintendo wouldn't give them access to printing on Nintendo cartridges.
You can read about in the book Game Over. Clearly they now don't even test if the game can be left idle on their normal hardware before hard crashing anymore before letting anyone sell anything regardless of functionality. Nintendo still has a submission process for putting your game on their platform but it clearly no longer has anyone actually testing the stability or quality of products anymore, ignoring that the store has been filled with shovelware adult games on top of this before.
I was considering getting Sun Haven on the Switch to add to my cozy games collection, and I'm really glad this video got shown to me before I did! I refuse to support companies that treat their staff like disposable automatons and abuses their time and good will for zero credit. Thank you for the warning.
Hmm I was going to play Sun Haven for my channel, but something about it has rubbed me the wrong way since I've seen other people play it. I'll definitely be following this story. Thanks for sharing it.
When I first played the game there was definitely so much love in it, the art, music, and writing were all great. I have been happily telling people how good the game was, and how it seemed like the company was a good one to keep following. The massive amount of DLC coming out did get an eyebrow-raise but I didn't think too much about it. But if even half of what is alleged is true... I can't in good conscience play or try to convince others to play anymore. I don't want to play a game where the "love" was wrung out of artists for as little as they could get away with, and that's setting aside how shady everything is. ... I will however thank the developers that actually made the game,for the good memories, even if the company that's benefiting from their work refuses to credit them.
Finally, people are speaking about it. I've been playing since EA and I am just so disappointed how this has all gone down. The company is shameless with how they have treated their customers and ruined what could of been something awesome.
that's 90% of gaming companies
@@solarydays ok and?
@@darssia_a knowing that helps you set realistic expectations, obviously
@@solarydays so you can’t be upset with a company treating paying customers and their employees poorly, because everyone does it?
@ if you wanna be upset you can be. that's your business
thank you for covering this. i hope there is a list somewhere of the artists who were harmed so we could support them as individuals. encouragement and other support can really help artists heal from burn out.
Thank you for making this video.
I was interested in buying Sun Haven. Now I'm going to take the eye patch and peg leg discount.
yarrrr
I am torn SOLELY in the sense that I purchased this game the moment it released in EA, and it is now FAR past the refundable date/playtime (540+ hours) on Steam.. I've always hated their intense DLC push instead of fixing game-breaking bugs, lack of controller support, etc. have also complained heavily about it in their official server, and have/will never purchase one. I was extremely excited to be able to play it on Switch but am wholeheartedly thankful to have been far too broke lately to purchase (because Nintendo eshop games aren't refundable at all) after learning all of this information! I've always been such a huge advocate for supporting Artists and their work.. To not only not credit their work and involvement, but to be soooo cheap with paying them for their service makes me so sick to my stomach. This is someone's livelihood, their job, their means to survive. I will never purchase from Pixel Sprout, again, I can't support that kind of cruel, selfish behavior.
Hi, just here to say DLC of any kind, cosmetic or not, should still be a worthwhile investment. Treating cosmetics as some sort of get out of jail free card always feels weird to me. Also, companies want you to excuse cosmetics as a free pass. Otherwise, very good video
To me there are two main qualifiers to good DLC. First does it justify what they are charging. Second the cost of the DLC should never eclipse the price of the full game unless we are talking about giant expansion level content, and even then it’s not a great look.
Sun Haven fails at both spectacularly which alongside all the other shady stuff just makes me comfortable in never buying anything of theirs going forward.
That's a lot of nasty. Dang shame when talented people get taken advantage of like that.
i applied to be a pixel artist for them, didnt get it but the people who did get hired did the work, it wasnt received well by the players, and their work was removed and the artists were never even credited. glad i missed out.
The game is honestly good, I rly enjoyed the fantasy and gameplay but what I cannot fathom is how these devs and other people who worked (and maybe even working) on the game is unfairly compensated and treated. That's unethical.
Thank you for compiling all of this information, you do a great job of making a shit ton of info like this digestible(as also seen by your videos on Early Access cozy games). I, personally, will say all these posts and the info you shared has made me definitely decide I don't wanna buy this game now. It's been in my peripheral for a while, and the size of the game has always been a daunting thing to me. But to know that it's that big and yet their are still bugs amassed in older content is just....that's unacceptable man. Hoping for the best for everyone who has worked on the project, and I hope they're somewhere now where their work is being appreciated, compensated fairly, and credited.
I hope the nintendo switch 2 has a way to report games with terrible bugs and then the games get pulled
I do want to say sun haven isn't unique in having a troubling switch port release, as it is a curse almost all indie games have to deal with. As far as I know, it's due to lack of decent communication between Nintendo and each update also goes thru a long approval time (hence why some Devs update steam releases first as they can do it whenever, with switch patches they need to fix as many issues they can in one go because otherwise waiting for individual smaller patches takes forever). All that being said it is still surprising and notable that they did little to advertise the switch release, usually that's always a big deal! Overall very concerning stuff
It's so sad to see such an amazing game mismanaged so badly :(
*Sigh* I really like the game but all of this just made me not buy more dlc's ever again, if they ever release something new in the future im not buying it until it's on at least 90% discount or they deliver quality instead of quantity, knowing the game sold that good and what they are doing with the money of the artists working, just, no.
Thank you for opening my eyes
Oooff, I remember buying this game last Christmas on Steam. While it's not my fav Farm sim since I felt the game was lacking in the Romance department, I still liked it. I did pick it back up again with the 1.4 update and lucky for me I've never had any glitches or issues. Hearing this, I won't be getting another game from this studio (it wouldn't be the first time I've done this as I refuse to play video games that use AI, if and when I find out). To those who in this company (I am looking at the Director) who mistreated others, all I have to say is, "Be careful of karma, because what you put out, eventually will return to you."
Oh I feel absolutely the opposite about DLC. In my mind, if a company makes it's money from selling cosmetics, then that's what they're going to focus on.
Yup, I found and subscribed to you and joined your discord through Sun Haven and not through Stardew Valley. It's one of my favorite games in the genre. I love the different towns and themes. This explains why I never see you make videos for it any more. This is sad news all around. I guess his economics degree didn't teach him that good products sell but great products keep selling. Exploitation is not a good look.
You could have stopped at "the pictures in the store are fake to better showcase the product". I was out at that point. It's not just the blatant lie, it's that the lie is lazy that it's insulting they think anyone would be dumb enough to believe that.
Oh no..I JUST bought this game this morning. I had no idea there were controversies 😭😭
If you haven't played it yet you should be able to get refund.
@@Toastcat890make sure they know it's crashing tho just in case
return it and get Mistria or Elin, both are very charming games I've fell for recently. Elin especially is a labor of love
@@DirgeMacBee Two different games though to be fair, if they're looking for a game like Sunhaven, definitely go for Mistria, as it's also lovingly made and extremely charming. Elin's great, but it's more akin to a roguelike adventure game akin to Caves of Qud with farming opportunities (and in very, very, very early access).
I’m enjoying Immortal Life a lot!
they had a lead artist playing goalie on Discord with ANGRY FANS both in text AND voice on their EA opening weekend??? even if he felt compelled to do it and wasn't asked it's such a red flag that it was even necessary. it's hard enough to crunch when you're not having to talk to people or worse, manage their frustrations. people forget to treat you like you're people when they're frustrated with your company so it's wild to leave the artist (or any lower level worker) there for the wolves to gobble up. sick
I've never played Sun Haven, since it's not my type of graphics, but I read about this video on Reddit so I got curious, which is why I'm here. Always ready for some hot tea.
If you already bought the game you should still play it - it's super fun. The DLC isn't relevant at all. No point dying on the hill if you already bought and paid for the game. A collective of human beings worked very hard to make this game. You can still appreciate it without further supporting the studio or buying any DLC or whatever.
Never really been interested in this game, but it's sad to hear there's so many issues with certain parts of it and sounds like the studio can be a bit rude to people 😓 hopefully this all improves for everyone moving forward.
Oh man, I just got to the part about their labour practices. Yikes. They really need to compensate everyone!
The colourful backgrounds make the game seem so appealing! Unfortunate that they're such a bad company.
Luckily we have a new Rune Factory game coming out in a couple months which should scratch that blended Fantasy RPG/Farm Sim itch. (Though they do also have a concerningly high number of marriage candidates lol, at least it's like a mid-tier studio making their second game in this engine so such lofty goals are a bit less worry-inducing than Sun Haven's)
As a long time Story of Seasons and Rune Factory fan, I'm really excited about the game coming out this may. :D
Honestly, this is kinda a common thing. The best other example I thought of while watching this video is the Star Trek: Prodigy game for the switch. It was suppose to come out months before in between the two parts of the tv show’s first season. It literally has LORE points you can only get in the game, but it wasn’t released until a while later. But the biggest gripe was that the game was STILL unplayable. Luckily not crashes as bad as this, but you could literally glitch into the level and be stuck and forced to restart the game. It was shitty overall with lackluster puzzles and environments, but the BIGGEST annoyance to me was the characters only having like 4 lines a piece. And they repeat them over and over and OVER again. It almost made me not like the show (which is impossible though definitely watch even if you’re not a Star Trek fan. Great kids show). You should look into that too if you’re interested in making more of this kind of content. Also I’ll just say this one and move on, but Princess Peach Showdown was the biggest disappointment of gaining in a long time…. Also would like to see this talked about more….
I had this game on my wishlist for such a long time but was always hesitant due to some of the reviews and from reading through steam discussions. I eventually removed it entirely cuz all those dlcs turned me off. Man, didnt realize it was waaaay worse than I thought, glad i decided to not get this game.
You mentioned this like a month or two ago and I was curious about the story behind it all... guess I'm about to find out..😬
This is an indie dev studio trying to act like a massive, profit-driven gaming company like EA.
Yeah, the treatment as of recent has been gross, but this knowledge is pretty sad. I mean I have the game already so I'll probably still play it possibly. But I might not be as willing to tell my friends about it.
Especially as an artist hearing about the treatment of artists (writers included), AND using AI instead of paying humans to translate? That's scummy.
If the artists and writers, themselves end up working on anything I would be happy to follow them, but not Pixel Sprout Studios.
So happy I never bought this game.
Idk what it was, but something felt off about it and I'm glad I followed my instinct.
Same & same
I stopped playing because of the bugs and frankly stopped engaging with the community because at least on Steam a lot of the more vocal people like to pretend like there are no bugs in the game. I haven't encountered many game breaking bugs, but I don't think one can play an hour without encountering at least one bug. And given how faux positive some people are in the forums, I doubt the devs have that much of an incentive to fix the bugs. If people are willing to tolerate them and just buy the mtx why should they fix the bugs?
Speaking from experience; it feels like a battlefield trying to voice issues. Especially when Pixel Sprouts out of nowhere wanted to change the entire art style of the characters. People against the change no one asked for and forcing 4Kids levels of modesty had everyone just calling us gooners. It's maddening. They focus on everything BUT the actual problems.
I tried to like Sun Haven but it just wasn't a vibe. Then I tried buying the DLC... ended up refunding all of it because I was disappointed. Now I don't feel as bad about not liking it and refunding the DLC 😅
well damn. definitely not purchasing any more dlc unless they get their stuff together.
Wow this caught me totally off guard! I have played and loved Sun Haven so much since i bought it last year, one of my all time favourites. Its incredibly disappointing to hear all of this. I have never had any glitch issues on my pc or really thought about the dlcs but yikes that sounds seriously terrible and game breaking. I hope the devs fix things and do what they're supposed to do as game developers which is cater and respect their consumers! Thanks for sharing this info as i have had zero awareness about this.
I never started playing this game because I found the female character design to be extremely ugly and laughably over sexualised. Like it was drawn by a teenage boy or something. I am petty like that and I only want to romance women, so things like this do keep me from buying a game. The rest of it looked like something I would have LOVED as a nerdy teenager but as an adult it wasn't enough to convince me to buy the game regardless of their character design. I know many people might disagree with me and thats okay. I kept an eye on the game to see if I would want to buy it eventually but the things mentioned in the video kept piling up, so I never tried it. I feel really bad for people who played and enjoyed this game and for the workers who were screwed over.
Nah I'm like that, too. You can tell what gamedevs really think about people by how they design them.
God Sun Haven is the biggest disappointment to me. So mucb potential wasted
It should be completely illegal to not include credits, I'm glad this game stayed in my wishlist
Thank you for the leg work you put in here. My partner was an original KS backer and waited years for the port (no gaming computer). She has played it to the crashing point a few times and is super disappointed her first game project has gone this way. Shoutout to all the artists out there, good luck yall.
I too loved Sun Haven, it was pretty much everything I wanted but after losing my entire save file and having to start over from scratch, I gave up after the bugs glitched out my whole screen. Thank you for shedding light on this.
Sun Haven is my biggest heartbreak in gaming. It had such an amazing foundation. But it was squandered and abused by a greedy and inept dev team. There's too many things wrong to even fully list. I would play this while watching One Piece. I would play it on my days off with my friend.
Using AI in and of itself is disqualifying. That crap has no place in gaming.
Especially since AI companies steal arist works and writing to train it
AI is fine when it’s a tool (also to note not all AI is generative AI). AI can be great for touching things up and helping take some of the tedium out of the process so artists can focus on more important aspects. It just shouldn’t be something that is used as a crutch to just do the job in place of actual devs but instead as a tool to assist them and make their lives easier.
This is so sad. I had so much playing sun haven back in 2021. And I love seeing unique games from small indie companies. I haven’t played in like 2 years or so so I had no idea what was going on, I didn’t even know they finally got it on switch. I had so much hope for this game
Always hated those scummy devs
I played the game when it was still in EA and ended up shelving it after a rather unsatisfactory conversation with one of the project leads on some criticisms I had for the game. It's so sad to hear about the mistreatment of artists and writers working there no matter how common that is these days. It is nice to see people finally putting their foot down on the insane laundry list of DLC at this point. Blech.
20:58 I dealt with this when I worked at a game studio, too, even once having the lead writer (???) pick the chosen design in the end. 3 weeks after the art director had picked a design.
Fields of Mistria and Coral Island are the only farming games I would recommend, besides Stardew Valley
I quite playing when my main toon was randomly gone from my save file, emailed the company and never heard back from them about it to this day (this was over a year ago). I tried playing around June 2024 and quit playing when my new character couldn’t leave the porch because it was too close to a ledge.
I had so many fond memories of this game, but all these bugs have made me not want to play ever again.
This is so sad. Off my wish list it goes. I was looking for reviews of the game and found this interesting video
Goodness i bought the game but never installed it... this is the first I've heard about any controversies. Im not a dlc girly, they were never getting any extra money outta me 😅
This is a really good video essay about this game. Thank you for this.
thank you for this! SH was one steam sale recently and had been in my wishlist forever (didn't have a computer to game on until last November), but negative reviews alluding to exactly this changed my mind about buying it. I appreciate the comprehensive breakdown here and am even more glad I spent my money on something else.
Norwegian had the same issue, booted the game up fall of last year and "Chest" was translated to "Brystkasse" aka the anatomy. But what I found the most peculiar was that the game had translated my custom chests. It had changed my chest I had named "Random" to "Tilfeldig" which is correct, but it just felt wrong, and raised alarms in my brain. It felt more like translations were "filtered" on top of the game and reading every word, idk
Regarding the DLC & artist income: I don't know about Pixel Sprout, but years ago I worked for a small game company (Facebook gaming era) and we used similar content as a way to keep our in-house artist busy. For us that meant daily icon rewards and similar, but cosmetic DLC fall into the same category. It's possible they have an artist on salary as a permanent employee. That person isn't being individually paid for the art in the DLC pack because it's all work for hire, instead they have a salary with the studio instead of doing individual jobs piecemeal. Again, I'm not saying this is the case, just that it could be. Especially if the company has other big patches or a new game in their pipeline, they may want to hold on to their artist for consistency of style.
As an aside, this is also why it's very useful for artists to learn some programming skills. Make yourself more useful between projects and it's more likely you'll be on salary rather than contract.
Thank you for the video! It's been on my steam wishlist forever but this video made me delete it from there. absolutely terrible developers!
I always got an odd vibe from Sun Haven, good to know I was at least partially correct to stay away from it
Oh neat, now i don't have to feel bad about modding the game in unintended ways.
thank you for this video, it is important info to highlight but man it's so disheartening
For the algorithm to get the word out ✊️
i was in the industry and left a while ago: it's always the suits. business and marketing ruining the cool stuff for everybody by talking about things they know nothing about and make up features and goals on the spot? typical.
always remember that capitalism is the antithesis of good art/entertainment.
i almost got this game on the switch but decided on moonstone island instead because people were making a fuss. thanks to the community.
Loved Sun Haven. Still kind of do. But 2 bugs that annoyed the crap out of me and my friends in multiplayer: I couldn't see myself when I went to change my hair or character. My preview screen would be solid black. Friends could see themselves in the preview window. I couldn't.
Marriage bug in multiplayer that persisted for months (maybe still does?) Where the world owner's marriage partner is in everyones home and overwrites anyone the other people married.
This game has been sitting in my wishlist for a while now because I was going back and forth on whether I should get it or not. Mostly because I watched some reviews and the crafting system seems super unappealing. But now I will just go ahead and remove it
I tried to contact Sunhaven devs or staff or discord mods, anyone about german translation being discriminatory in various ways. They never reacted. That was back in summer 2023.
I never played the game but saw the hype surrounding it as art concept and initial gameplay was being introduced. I feel like I dodged a bullet with how I prefer to buy games after they prove to be good (like years later). Sad to see this happen to the game that had potential, but maybe it wasn't worth it because of who ran it into the ground anyways. Hopefully everyone can move onto another game that doesn't take advantage of everyone involved.
Off topic but Wild World 10pm in the intro is much appreciated
Thank you for this video. I've been on the fence about getting Sun Haven for a few years after finally getting into Stardew and other cozy games but after watching your video, I'll be saving my money for a more worthy developer
As someone who has done pixel art for a game, having the artists go uncredited is horrible
My heart is broken T_T
Edit: Thank you for revealing all this though because I had always heard things but no one would ever fully explain and I never liked that. Welp another cozy game that broke my trust. Sigh.