Christofer Sundberg, founder of Avalanche Studio, expressed on Twitter that the game, released in 2015, had more potential, but the publisher didn’t let them realize their plans.

Recently, PC Gamer published a story about how George Miller (director of Mad Max) wanted Hideo Kojima to make a game based on his movie. The director didn’t like Avalanche’s game, which was released in the fall of 2015, because it wasn’t up to the standard Miller expected. He wasn’t directly involved in its development, instead handing over the source material to a company. Miller has defined himself as a man who, if he can’t do his best (or even try), would rather not do anything at all.

Sundberg wrote on Twitter: “This is complete nonsense and just shows complete arrogance. They did everything they could to make this a completely linear game after signing with an open world developer. I’m sure Hideo Kojima would make a great Mad Max game, but it would be a completely different experience. After the first year of development, they realized that they were forcing us to make a linear experience instead of the open-world game we were pitching. We threw away a year of work and were told that “players want autonomy in this day and age”. Well, no sh_t…”

Sundberg was thinking of publisher Warner, who sent Mad Max on a suicide mission. The publisher wanted to release the game on the same day as Kojima’s unfinished Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Sundberg said the studio had excellent DLC planned (it was done), but since Mad Max was not selling well, it could not be made. Warner forced a release date, and then the publisher blamed Avalanche for the poor sales.

Sundberg’s criticism is justified: the publisher expected something from the Just Cause developers that wasn’t their forte, and then gave the game a release date that immediately buried it at launch.

Source: WCCFTech, Twitter