The co-founder and one of the former lead developers from Dead Cells studio Motion Twin, Sébastien Benard, recently vented some fairly unhappy feelings concerning the recent announcement that the popular Metroidvania will be getting its final update in the near future. Benard left Motion Twin in 2020 and has been developing indie games for a one-man studio called Deepnight Games ever since, but still, it seems the vet has a strong attachment to Dead Cells and some harsh words as its development draws to a close.
Dead Cells Final Update Announcement
On February 9th, fans of the cult-hit Metroidvania Dead Cells received the unfortunate news that Update 35, a release date still undetermined, will be the final update the game gets. On the surface, this seemed to be a logical conclusion to many fans and wasn’t met with any real pushback. Motion Twin just announced its new project Windblown last year and it makes sense that the company, along with its partner company Evil Empire, would want to phase out Dead Cells as it moves into this new era. Sébastien Benard appears to have confirmed that things aren’t so amicable between Motion Twin and Evil Empire regarding this decision, however, and vented his grievances on the official Dead Cells discord server.
In a lengthy Discord message originally reported on by PCGamesN, Benard wrote “[Motion Twin] did the worst imaginable a**hole move against Dead Cells and [Evil Empire],” in response to a fan asking his thoughts about the recent announcement. Evil Empire is a studio founded by former Motion Twin developers that has been handling all of the recent updates for Dead Cells while Motion Twin has been working on Windblown. Benard seemingly confirms that the decision to stop new Dead Cells wasn’t really up to Evil Empire, though, and was rather strong-armed by Motion Twin. “The official statement is total marketing bulls**t,” Benard continues, “I never imagined my former coop studio would turn out to be such greedy people.”
Motion Twin has yet to issue any response.
