HAAK devs give up on porting popular Metroidvania to Xbox because they wasted 14 months trying to apply to be a Microsoft Partner

Super-popular indie Metroidvania game HAAK may have been out on Steam since 2022 but since that time its devs have been trying to also bring it to Xbox and have had a huge amount of support from the community to do just that.

Now though in a post on X from the devs at Blingame – who have already pushed HAAK to Steam, Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android had some bad news to share with the fans.

Leading with, “We are deeply sorry that we have failed to meet the expectations of all Xbox players. HAAK will not be coming to Xbox. Thank you.”

The devs then went on to put the boot into Microsoft, sharing some of the development traumas that have been happening behind the scenes.

“What seemed like a simple procedure turned into a nightmare due to many bugs in the Microsoft Partner Center, 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.

We informed ID@Xbox about our predicament, but they were powerless to help as it apparently falls outside their scope of responsibility and seems to be a Microsoft issue.”

We are deeply sorry that we have failed to meet the expectations of all Xbox players. HAAK will not be coming to Xbox. Thank you. https://t.co/nLfuYNmE37 pic.twitter.com/upXWIh0Ogq

— HAAK (@haakgame) August 17, 2024

Would have taken less than a fortnight to complete port

The statement goes on to say. “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 the enthusiasm from the Xbox community players, yet we struggle to resolve the problems at hand.

Although we very much want to share HAAK’s adventure story 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.

We deeply regret this outcome, but we’ve truly done our best.”

That would appear to be the end of that then for hopes of Haak, which has a Very Positive rating on Steam making the leap to the Xbox, where it would have been a perfect fit. Meanwhile, a PS5 version is also in the making which the devs say “is proceeding relatively smoothly.”

The post HAAK devs give up on porting popular Metroidvania to Xbox because they wasted 14 months trying to apply to be a Microsoft Partner appeared first on ReadWrite.