Well, Sonic Origins is off to a rocky start. Just a day after its full release, the game is already catching flak on Twitter, Steam, and other social media platforms as players relate their subpar experiences with the blue hedgehog. Though Sonic Origins was incredibly hyped up prior to its launch, the game is already sitting around a 55% audience rating on Steam, garnering some very mixed reviews. While some players are able to look past the game’s bugs and poor performance, a majority of the player base seems more intent on pointing out its flaws and many weaknesses. 

Since players were promised a remastered bundle of four iconic Sonic games, including Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic CD, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles, many were dissatisfied when they received an unfinished product riddled with “constant crashes,” a common inability to reach the main menu, rampant stuttering, and poor graphics “as blurry as Sonic CD 2011,” even on higher-end gaming computers. According to several Steam users, the game is nearly unplayable without a high-power GPU. Even the most positive and “helpful” reviews on the Sonic Origins Steam page are comments regarding settings’ locations and how best to optimize the underwhelming experience. 

As players continue to report the troubles plaguing Sonic Origins, many of the development teams responsible for the various ports are thrown into the mix, much of the blame falling on Sega and the companies it outsourced to. So, a developer from Headcannon, the company behind Sonic Mania and the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles remaster, took to Twitter to express the frustration felt in the fallout of Sonic Origins’ release.

This is frustrating. I won’t lie and say that there weren’t issues in what we gave to Sega, but what is in Origins is also not what we turned in. Integration introduced some wild bugs that conventional logic would have one believe were our responsibility- a lot of them aren’t.

— Stealth (@HCStealth) June 24, 2022

Unfortunately for Sega, Simon “Stealth” Thomley, the developer in question, did not pull his punches. He states in his opening Tweet that “what is in Origins is not what [they] turned in,” referring to some “wild bugs” that did not exist in their build of the game. Thomley goes on to inform that Headcannon was an outside hire working on something separate that ultimately got roped into the Origins mess, and that they were aware of the time constraints and worked themselves into the ground because of it. Ultimately, however, Headcannon’s pleas to delay the project or fix the pre-release (and post-release) build went unanswered by Sega. 

I’m extremely proud of my team for their performance under such pressure, but every one of us is very unhappy about the state of Origins and even the Sonic 3 component. We weren’t too thrilled about its pre-submission state either but a lot was beyond our control.

— Stealth (@HCStealth) June 24, 2022

The developer later apologizes for what might be construed as “unprofessional” behavior but states that, despite the potential endangerment to their relationship with Sega, Thomley felt the need to speak out about the scrutiny the development teams have been placed under. Rather than simply sitting back and watching, the developer wanted fans that have “put so much hope and money into” the franchise to understand that their concerns are heard and that companies like Headcannon “care about [their] work and about Sonic,” whether Sega does or not. 

I have to apologize for not addressing anything like this sooner, but you must understand – many things of this sort are considered “unprofessional” and can hurt our relationship with Sega, meaning no origins updates, and no further 2D pixel Sonic games from us

— Stealth (@HCStealth) June 24, 2022

While Sega has yet to respond to Thomley or his assertions, fans on Twitter and Steam are taking the developer’s words as further confirmation of Sega’s continuing disregard for its fans. 

The issue is on the flip side, they too are unprofessional. The thing is, y’all have many on your side. If everything is documented and presented in a orderly fashion, it makes Sega look like fools. -cont.

— Ultra (@ultrixcrow) June 24, 2022