We Happy Few was revealed to the world at E3 a few years back, and it showed a dystopian world where the people of England used a drug called “Joy” to make them happy, and even see the world change around them to reflect that joy. Though it only released recently, the game lived up to that dark dystopian promise, but there was a catch in terms of the games price on Steam. And that has led to the game being pulled after a series of reviews dropped the review score down to one point.
This was announced last year, as Gearbox was brought in as a publisher for We Happy Few, and due to that, the game was raised to $60, to match the versions that were announced for console. But as developers Compulsion noted on Reddit, that wasn’t good enough for some gamers:
“However, several YouTubers weren’t interested in that argument, and instead just saw a price rise,” Compulsion said. “We weren’t review bombed for the first week, until those videos came out. There was a great deal of Gearbox hate, that I don’t think was reasonable, and we were left between a rock and a hard place: Endure months more of review bombing, or just stop selling it.”
They went on to note that while it may not have been the best thing, it was important to do so:
“One thing I will say was that the early access version of the game wasn’t worth $60 – that’s for sure. We had none of the story content available. It was coming, and we publicised that on the store front and center, but I don’t fault people for being confused. It’s never been done before to add this much content between last early access patch and release. It’s always more difficult to try new things than just ‘do what we’ve always done,’ and definitely this is one of the most unique/strange situations a developer has ever been in.”
We Happy Few is back on Steam now though after the reviews were cleaned up for the spam that they were. You can also get the game on Xbox One or PS4.
