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When a successful studio gets backlash for announcing a new game

"Our strategy at the moment is to hire talented people to make the games they want to play." - Facepunch founder Garry Newman responds to criticism about his studio's latest game Riftlight.

Mike Rose, Blogger

July 28, 2014

1 Min Read
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"Our strategy at the moment is to hire talented people to make the games they want to play. We’re not asking you to fund this. We're not starting a Kickstarter and begging you for money – we're funding it."

- Facepunch founder Garry Newman responds to criticism about his studio's latest game Riftlight. The game company revealed space shooter Riftlight late last week, and internet commenters quickly began claiming that the studio was abandoning huge Early Access success story Rust in favor of this new game. Newman took to the Facepunch blog to explain that Rust is far from being abandoned, but rather, Facepunch is looking to take on multiple projects and hire lots of new people to create games under the Facepunch name. "Should every person in the company be working on the same thing?" He quipped. "Should HBO make one TV show at a time? Should Warner Brothers make one movie at a time?" No, he says -- and Facepunch is currently using the cashflow it earns from Garry's Mod and Rust to fund the development of Riftlight and other prototypes. "Arguing that we should be re-investing that money back into only those games is like telling Apple they can't spend the money they made from iPhone and Macs to fund the development of the iPad," he said. "Keep in mind that we spent money Garry’s Mod made to develop Rust – and that turned out pretty good, right?"

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