The independent publisher Nicalis accused of ghost developers, retaining patches

Nicalis Independent developers "ghosts"

Jason Schreier, of Kotaku, has published a lengthy talk detailing behind the scenes at Nicalis. One of the complaints from anonymous and public sources that is repeated many times is that Nicalis is a "ghost" developer. If you're not fashionable with the jargon kids use nowadays, the "ghost" basically ignores people.

These are not all independent developers, remember. Devolver Digital – a company known for its celebrity status in independent independent games – had a conversation with Nicalis about working on the PlayStation 4 port for Enter the gungeonbut the agreement collapsed after Devolver was unable to contact Nicalis after this first meeting.

If this is true, it is certainly a bad look, although a former employee feels that it could be less mischief than incompetence.

"Nicalis has a habit of taking over more development projects than they have the time," said the anonymous former employee.

Ignoring trading partners and potential business partners, as Nicalis claimed, is bad enough, but one person in particular has a completely different problem.

Unfortunately, the game has not yet made what we put there. We have a stringent quality assurance testing policy before publishing releases, and we do not have enough time in our budget to do quality assurance testing so that we can release it.

– Tyrone Rodriguez (@tyronerodriguez) September 2, 2019

Complaints about missing patches

Game reviewer Indie Gamer Chick spoke to Twitter about Nicalis getting his hands on a patch Save Me Mr. Tako: Tasukete Tako-San for a while, but they have not yet released it on the appropriate platforms. This tweet prompted Nicalis President Tyrone Rodriguez to respond to the public complaint. A die game developers confirms that it was done and that they tried to broadcast it on Switch, as on PC, but had problems with Nicalis

"Unfortunately, the game has not yet made what we put in," said Rodriguez Twitter. "We have a strict quality assurance testing policy before publishing releases, and we do not have enough time in our budget to do quality assurance testing so we can release it."

Abusive comments allegedly made by the president of the company

Nicalis' president, Tyler Rodriguez, reportedly made several offensive comments via SMS, as shown by the screenshots provided to Kotaku.

Among the comments are cases where he allegedly called former President Obama a "porch monkey". The screenshots also seem to show him classifying Nintendo in the "gay" category for apparently refusing to acquire a version for an unnamed game in time for an upcoming PAX convention.

Several other comments have also used antisemitic language. At one point, he said that a man named Matt was "being joked by his bank today." He also appears to have classified the late founder of Macy's department stores, Fred Lazarus Jr., as a "Jew" and "corrupt jerk".

The Isaac Binding Dev cancels future affairs

The fallout from Nicalis' presentation may have already begun to have a negative impact on their activities. The Isaac Binding The developer Edmund McMillen said that he would put an end to his plan to work with the company for two of their future games, one of which will come out later this year.

"I will not go ahead with Nicalis regarding the port of The legend of Bum-bo or any console version of Mewgenics, "he said in an email to Kotaku. "[[[[The bond of Isaac: repentance]will still publish as originally planned, the team has invested heart and soul in this downloadable content, which is about to release it. "

Nicalis responds to allegations

Nicalis, for its part, responded to these allegations with a statement to Kotaku which we reproduced in its entirety:

Developing and publishing games is a dream for the staff of nearly 20 people working at Nicalis, Inc. Some of our team members have been with the company for almost 10 years and we work tirelessly to create an environment in which we treat people. members of our team with respect. They are what makes the company.

We do not tolerate abusive work environments or discrimination and have people from all walks of life. We hope for the continued success of our internal team and our external developers.

As for the companies under NDA mutual with Nicalis, Devolver (publisher of Enter the Gungeon) and The Game Bakers (developer of Furi), we can only say that we have no signed publication agreement and that we never did it.

We can not say with certainty how true this is (though something is true), although the number of allegations and screen shots to support is such that society really looks bad. I only scratched the surface; It's worth reading Kotaku's full text to see how things can go wrong.

What do you think of Nicalis's alleged "ghost" and offensive remarks? Do you think society will be able to survive in light of these allegations? Let us know in the comments below!

Robert N. Adams

Senior Editor

I have a controller in hand since the age of 4 and have not stopped playing since. GCC, Table Games, Role Playing Games Pen & Paper – I've tried a lot of things over the years and I'm always looking to try some more!

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