My heart goes out to the developers at 2XKO. Fighting games are a tough genre even when you have a killer team and make a lot of great choices. We know it for sure as we let go of a quarter of our team this past month so our company could stay operational. Social media has made this kind of news worse, because everyone is so sure they know best and they feel obligated to share it to the void. But there are hundreds of reasons behind any success or any failure in this industry. Little details within the control of the development team and some outside their control that determine which games succeed and which games struggle. Go read any discourse on social media when a game shuts down or a new game pops off. You’ll find people simplifying down to one reason that makes sense from their perspective. This game was free to play and this one wasn’t. This game was 2d and this game was 3d. This game had too many samey characters and this game didn’t have enough. This game was too similar to that other game I like and this game was too different. But the truth is somewhere in between all those opinions. And there are likely many more reasons outside the common discourse, which often focuses on the surface level issues. We see so much more discussion around negative news because people feel validated when something didn’t click with them. You see less people arguing why Street Fighter 6 or Fortnite are doing great because “it’s obvious.” But if you asked 10 people who play those games why they like them, you might get 10 different answers. But the way social media rewards sharing dunks and I-told-you-so’s and arguing about them as much as possible only creates a bigger rift between developers and players. Developers know what they were able to achieve with the time and resources they had. They know what their strong points are and where they wish they could improve. What they don’t know is if the good aspects will resonate enough to make up for the bad or allow them the funds to improve the game as time goes on. Fans have the benefit of hindsight in a lot of these cases and even then, you can find so many takes that age like milk when a game has a great launch week then tails off or struggles out the gate then builds up momentum over time. I guess what I’m trying to say in this long rant is that maybe Sakurai was onto something when he asked Max Ketchum if he had ever made a game. I’d also like to say good luck to all those affected in today’s layoffs. If I was in a position to hire anyone, I would be sending messages right now. But unfortunately fighting games are hard and we’re only focused on keeping our team together for our next big update.