After dealing with backend bugs for 14 months, acclaimed Metroidvania dev scraps Xbox port that could’ve taken “less than two weeks”

One indie developer has scrapped an Xbox port of its acclaimed Metroidvania platformer, claiming that certification bugs have extended a two week port job into a 14-month wait. 

HAAK is the side-scrolling action-platformer set in a magical “cyber-wasteland” that came out in the summer of 2022 and steadily climbed to a ‘Very Positive’ Steam rating based on over 2,000 user reviews thanks to some acrobatic movement and nail-biting bosses. The game has since come to Nintendo Switch and mobile, but the in-development Xbox version is now canned.

“During the process of getting our game on Xbox, we encountered numerous obstacles,” developer Blingame recently tweeted. “What seemed like a simple procedure turned into a nightmare due to many bugs in the Microsoft Partner Centre, preventing us from successfully completing account registration. Even Microsoft’s support service system had bugs, making it impossible to initiate inquiries about our issues. This is simply unbelievable for developers.”

Blingame writes that it raised the issue with the company’s indie program ID@Xbox, “but they were powerless to help as it apparently falls outside their scope of responsibility and seems to be a Microsoft issue.”

“In reality, porting the Xbox version of our game would have taken less than two weeks, but we spent over 14 months trying to ‘apply for game publication’ and ‘complete Microsoft partner identity registration.’ This experience has been terrible because we can feel enthusiasm from the Xbox community players,” the tweet continues. “Although we very much want to share HAAK’s adventure with more players, our development funds are extremely tight, and we can’t afford to wait any longer. As a result, we’ve ultimately decided to abandon the Xbox platform release.”

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