The team behind Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus has turned to community funding after the rapid collapse of its publisher left the studio without any support.
Squid Shock Studios posted on Twitter that they had a hectic two weeks after the release of their first game. The launch was full of challenges for them. The publisher’s shutdown also meant they missed out on critical post-launch support, and as a result, the sword of Damocles hangs over the studio’s future. According to one employee, 36 people have been laid off from Humble Games, and according to former Humble employee Chris Radley, the entire team has been replaced by an outside consulting firm. Quoting the Humble Games statement, nothing in it is true, given the example of Squid Shock Studios.
Quoting Squid Shock: “On July 25th, without warning, we lost access to the pipeline of critical systems. We are currently only able to manage the game on Steam and were able to push out an update this week. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for consoles. Porting and QA support was tied into our deal with our publisher, and at the time of writing, we still do not have that pipeline restored. However, steps are finally being taken to restore access.”
https://x.com/SquidShock/status/1819405518831518064
Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus started its funding on Kickstarter, but the team needs to turn to the community again. So they started a Patreon. A dollar a month is the minimum funding level (Seedling), which gets them a digital thank you card with exclusive art, access to Patreon posts, and access to their Discord server. The most expensive level is $100 per month (Kami), which gets you a unique in-game collaboration to name or design your character, attend a virtual launch party, and receive a personalized thank you note from the team.
Squid Shock is not only planning small updates to the game, because it started as a community project when backers on Kickstarter believed in it. Hopefully this will get them out of the mess after the Humble Games collapse…
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