The widely panned Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of the Kuma had mysteriously started disappearing off online stores at sporadic times during this month. After disappearing from Xbox Marketplace, Playstation Network, and Steam without a trace an explanation was finally given by the game’s publishers. The reason simply was “the game was a failure.”
In an unusually honest move, General Manager of Versus Evil Steve Escalante made that comment to CGMagazine at the Montreal International Gaming Summit when asked about the game’s disappearance. “We could not do, in good conscience, volume 2 and volume 3” stated Escalante. In an even more surprising move Escalante talked of plans to give players who bought the game refunds for their troubles.
So we’ve begun the process, it’s been a long process to figure it out because Sony has never really had to do this in this way, but we’re returning all the money. So across the board we’re putting out an apology saying ‘sorry about this.’
The game released in September for Playstation 4 and PC platforms with the Xbox One version coming a month later in October. Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of the Kuma initially debuted as Volume 1 with plans for a trilogy to come later down the line. Lovers of the anime were hyped as a RZA original soundtrack was composed along with unique characters and stories being promised.
Escalante also commented “if you look at the reviews, it wasn’t that the game was broken or buggy, people just didn’t like it”. Framerate issues, a terrible story, and more bugs contributed to the game widely receiving negative reviews so this clearly was not the case.
A very admirable move by Versus Evil to give players refunds when they easily could have taken the money. A respect for consumers satisfication was cited as a reason to make the move and will definitely help in rebuilding the company’s reputation though the consensus amongst gaming publications is that the game should have never been released in that poor state in the first place. No word on how or when refunds would be coming.