If you have not been following the Blue Box Games circus then you have been missing out on some of the juiciest internet drama of the year. After months of empty promises and feeding online conspiracies, Abandoned creator, Hasan Kahraman is fed up with internet users who are calling him and his studio scammers. Kahraman claims that everything he has done up to this point is honest and open and he has never lied to the gaming industry to make money.
The latest response from Kahraman comes after internet users started sharing a timeline containing Blue Box Game Studios’ failed developments. The list includes a range of projects that the studio supposedly started and never finished. Be it an app called Tales of the Six Swords or the most recent Steam game called The Haunting.
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According to the list, every game Blue Box Games Studios has started, ends up in failure and the studio vanishes for a while. In addition, the list of titles includes apps with stolen art and assets. Take a look at the full image below. Keep in mind that I am not stating whether or not any of this information is correct.
In a new interview with NME, Kahraman has spoken out about the online allegations and name-calling. He says that he is not a scammer and has tried to clear the air by sharing what happened during some of those previous developments.
“With Rewind we did a Kickstarter – then we had a private investor, and the game got cancelled a year later because we needed more funds. People are saying that we used that to keep the funds… but that doesn’t make any sense because the funds would then be returned to the investor, right? If you don’t return it then it becomes a debt. An investor isn’t going to say ‘Well, here’s the money – if it doesn’t work out, just keep it.’ It doesn’t work that way! I’m just trying to figure out – how are we scammers?”
When it comes to The Haunting Kahraman claims that the game was just buggy and broken. He says that he never wanted gamers to pay for an experience that was not up to standard.
“It had a lot of bugs and it felt really broken – it didn’t feel right,” he explained. “At that point we were like, ‘You know what, we’re not going to let people pay for this’. So, we reached out to Valve and asked – could we just disable the purchase option on Steam?”
As for the current game, Abandoned, which has been the highlight of a lot of internet controversy, Kahraman says he wants to just finish the development and move on. He says that even for the recently-released Abandoned PS5 app, the studio had the opportunity to charge gamers in Germany for the download but decided not to.
“The Realtime Experience app for PlayStation 5 – Sony was like ‘In certain countries, for example Germany, you can’t put it free on the store because there are laws.’ They suggested that the best thing we could do is charge 25 cents. But I was like ‘No, that’s unfair for our customers.’ Because the world will get it for free, but Germans would have to pay for it and that didn’t feel right.”
The internet hate has also affected the development of the so-called “game”. Kahraman says that the immense pressure he is under has caused mental issues in his life. He struggles to sleep and eat and is depressed. In addition, the development team at Blue Box Games Studios have also decided to stay offline and not reveal their identities. This is to avoid backlash and hate online.
It is a sad situation for the development team. Hopefully, the game will be announced soon and all is forgiven.
Source: NME
