Kickstarter Backers Fuming Perception Devs Cancel Physical Copies

Last month, Developer Deep End Games announced the May 30th release date for their Kickstarted horror adventure, Perception. Funded back in June 2015 for $168,041, Perception tells the story of young blind woman named Cassie who must unravel the mysteries the abandoned estate at Echo Bluff. The game has garnered considerable attention for the unique echolocation mechanic that allows Cassie to “see” her surroundings.

Backers were looking forward to finally getting their rewards. Some tiers even included a physical PC disc of the game. At least, they did until Deep End Games published a backers only update on May 8^th where they revealed they had different plans for this reward. From the update:

“Now, if you ordered the Physical Digital Dabbler or the Physical Collector’s Edition, plans have changed slightly, but we think it’s for the better. With a physical copy of the game, we realized it would be harder to patch, and as a small team, we don’t have the resources to do it as well as we could. Therefore, all the digital extras and goodies will be on the disc, but the game itself will come to you via a Steam code in an email on launch day.”

Since physical rewards won’t begin shipping until May 30^th this change actually ensures backers have their copies of the game on release day. Of course, the flip-side of this is that anyone who specifically funded the project with the hopes of getting a physical copy have (without any warning) lost out on their promised reward. Physical tier backers have not taken this slight lightly.

Scrambling for some measure of damage control. Deep End Games released another update on May 23^rd to announce that a DRM free version of Perception would be available at launch through GoG. Despite hastening to make this adjustment, they insisted they were simply unable to have the game printed on the disc along with the extras.

Good Intentions, Poor Execution

“We had already started the manufacturing process and cannot make changes to what will be on the disc at this point or in the future. Additionally, changes would mean splitting what is put on what disc, along with unforeseen delays, costs, and many issues that we are not able to address.”

While some backers applauded Deep End Games for trying to salvage the situation, others weren’t as forgiving. The developers waiting until just before launch to make changes to the rewards definitely looks shady. The issue has soured what was shaping up to be a very promising release for the highly anticipated game.