Putting out an MMO fire, Temtem devs confirm the last big update for the "MMO-lite," cut "all of the microtransactions in the game," and tease another new game

04.03.2024 - 23:13 / gamesradar.com / Austin Wood

Formally addressing community unrest stirred in part by recent comments from its CEO, Temtem developer Crema released a lengthy statement explaining the future of the game, why it's sort of but also not really an MMO, as well as the other games it's working on.

Let's get the biggest news out of the way first: after update 1.7 and then update 1.8 this year, Temtem won't be getting any more "feature-oriented" patches. Crema says it's prepared to keep the game's servers on for "a really, really long time" and will release polish and balance patches as needed, but big updates are done. 

This hammers home what was said previously: large updates are not financially feasible for Temtem anymore. This includes adding new islands to explore, new creatures to tame, and additional game modes. Crema attributes this to multiple factors, from tech debt to the size of the studio to return on investment. It says that an update that takes nine months to make may only hold players for six hours or so, with no appreciable bump to the game's permanent population, which it can't justify any longer. 

This leads into another recurring point in this statement: the curse of the MMO. Crema says it "should've acted quicker" to curb expectations set by the MMO tag, and clarifies that "from the get-go, we at Crema have described Temtem as an MMO-lite." Right as the game winds down, the studio says it's "working on making it clear in the stores to try and avoid this issue in the future." It also reckons that this MMO-lite structure will benefit the game in the long run because it means that "the game will remain enjoyable even with a low playerbase." 

"Many activities have been designed, created and included out of the community’s request for a more fulfilling MMO experience, such as Lairs, the Trading House, and Dojo Wars," Crema says. "This has made Temtem grow far beyond our original intentions, and even beyond our grasp." 

"In short, we are heavily indebted to the Crema of the past, who designed Temtem to be a finite, yet endlessly enjoyable online world, and this prevents us from being able to expand its limits to the points where everyone would be satisfied," the team adds. 

As Temtem approaches the end of its extended roadmap, Crema's looking to set the game up for its soft retirement by tying up loose ends and cutting out monetization and FOMO. 

"We also have to extend an apology for the one feature from the roadmap that didn’t come to fruition: PvP Draft," it says. "We did some initial testing of the feature, but its implementation wasn’t reaching our standards and the amount of bugs that it caused was a cautionary tale. On top of this, it would further divide the PvP player base, so we instead opted to include it as a PvE