And you thought the Borderlands movie's $90m flop was harsh: Gearbox is getting eviscerated for botching the first Risk of Rain 2 DLC it's made after buying the IP
The second Risk of Rain 2 DLC, Seekers of the Storm, is the first major update to come to the legendary roguelike since Borderlands studio Gearbox acquired the IP in November 2022. Everything looked promising: fresh stages, new and returning characters, more items, and a development team that seemed optimistic about the series' comeback after Gearbox canceled a mobile game spinoff which it spun up right after acquiring the series.
That comeback has swiftly turned into a comedown: with just 34% positive reviews on Steam two days after release, Seekers of the Storm is the worst-rated Risk of Rain anything by a big margin. Canceled mobile game aside, the series has had a sterling run up to this point, earning multiple slots on our list of the best roguelikes.
On the heels of a box office flop with the Borderlands movie, Gearbox is now getting absolutely hammered after this new DLC introduced significant bugs and issues. To put it mildly, the first Gearbox Software-developed Risk of Rain 2 DLC hasn't gone down well. To put it less mildly, even OG Risk of Rain 2 programmer Jeffrey "Ghor" Hunt is baffled by some parts of the update.
Hunt is active in the modding scene, and was one of many Risk of Rain 2 modders to highlight technical hitches and inconsistencies that surfaced after Seekers of the Storm went live. Speaking in the Risk of Rain 2 Modding Discord server, Hunt outlined a change to how player position is registered, simply asking, "What the fuck?" A core problem, Ghor explained, is that the update has evidently messed with "one of the systems that powers almost everything in the game."
"My feeling is that development staff likely tried their best with the time they were given," Ghor added. Fellow modder iDeathHD, a core developer on the server, said it "feels like the codebase is cooked." A collection of modder-reported technical missteps is currently one of the top posts on the Risk of Rain subreddit, which is unsurprisingly having a field day with this mess.
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