Despite being promised a prominent place in the Game Feast promotion, Microsoft failed to promote Super Meat Boy, and even forgot to put the game on the marketplace for half a day, causing Team Meat to openly disagree with the way Microsoft treated them. Another developer has now come forward to talk about the positive experiences they've had with the platform holder – something that has blown into a rather public argument on Twitter.
Pinball devs Zen Studios started by tweeting:
We keep reading about all these negative Microsoft XBLA experiences from guys like Team Meat. We've had quite the opposite experience – Happy to talk about it but I bet the lack of controversy will make for headlines that will grab eyeballs – We put out our #PinballFX2 post-mort last week outlining a very positive XBLA experience with MSFT.
Did not make a big splash. I bet if we said "HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE" we would have made headlines. – You have made your experiences perfectly clear to everyone. Sorry it was so terrible for you. – Then give them some credit? Why all the hate all the time? – I was floored when I sat in your GDC keynote and heard what you had to say. – When I read the Gama piece yesterday it made me do this. I mean, when is enough enough? The MSFT guys are awesome, they work – Because "personal positive experiences with MS" do not get headlines. there is no controversy. to make this point I needed to call you out – and BTW, was very much looking forward to meeting you at Indie Game the Movie premiere in Santa Cruz until it got cancelled – it's in defense of Microsoft. we get plenty of headlines on our own. if you make a good game, headlines will come.
The company then said:
that will be our new strategy. RUMORS of near death experiences & brain damage. AND, we'll keep it a secret that we made MILLIONS!
To which Team Meat replied:
so, what the fuck is your problem? you obviously have no fucking clue what we went through to talk shit like that publicly.
MS has been asking devs to speak up about this..so thats why they have. time to talk to Zen now! – for another dev to directly attack us as an attempt to get on MS's good side without even asking us about our experience.. nice.
then why are you making shit up about us hiding the fact that our game was successful? and implying MS didnt fuck us? – you guys a fucking straight up assholes, im floored by how ignorant and blind your comments were, theres no excuse for that – its not hate man, its simply facts and information so others dont fall into the same holes we did – we are trying to help devs who are new to this like we were do they dont make the same mistakes, we feel the truth is important
What really pains me is we have been trying to cool down on the MS stuff but now we have to explain it again because of you… – so if you were upset by our GDC speech, why did you guys wait 7 months to comment on it? – the MSstudios guys are awesome, if you had listen to the podcast you were have heard that. our issues weren't with them. – when you are in an interview and people ask you about something you talk about it, we didn't come out saying lets bash MS!
Luckily, the whole incident seems to have a happy ending, with Team Meat saying:
so, now that that's over… how about a meat boy pinball skin!? 🙂
And Zen replying:
WOW! you know what, I tweeted to you last fall to try and do it, you probably missed it. but that would be RAD
All's well that ends well.
