Ebb Software is looking to make a worthwhile game and given that yours truly is a fan of Zdzisław Beksiński, and H.R. Giger it should come in as no surprise that you will see Scorn pop up here. Well, the devs have released a new update explaining what’s going on with the beautiful game and why Scorn will not end up being an Epic Games Store timed exclusive.

Firstly, on kickstarter.com we learn a bit of what’s currently going on with the game after the Kowloon Nights partnership.

According to developer/collaborator Nikola Rakic, we learn that this recent update did not make it on time due to Ebb Software meeting an important internal milestone in July of this year. Upon completing this goal means that the devs are making progress.

On Facebook, a dev further details the importance of reaching this milestone in question and explains:

“The milestone that we have just completed is a content milestone defined in our contract with Kowloon Nights. As we do have a contract with them, you can find us on their website kowloonnights.com. Most of the industry work with milestones: you hit a milestone you get the money unless the studio is already swimming in cash. Hitting the milestone on time means that everything is going well. As this game is not just another multiplayer shoot em up for kids, we’re very careful with the info we publish online in order to avoid spoiling the game for our players as most of the people dislike spoilers.”

Sadly, Scorn will not release this year since the environment is not fully complete, animation and sound still have a ways to go, and the team is doing a lot of work improving the game’s systems.

On the flip side, though, the Kickstarter page reveals a summary of progress made so far:

“We made general improvements to the game’s in-game inventory and save game systems. We also fully implemented the healing system for the main character and various animation systems to improve the full body awareness, an important feature we use for storytelling. All existing levels have been manually inspected for holes, errors, and places where characters can get stuck. We developed three more huge puzzle systems, some spanning the entire levels.

 

We added new AI characters and expanded the character behavior of existing NPCs. They can now work in groups against the player. We did a lot of AI testing and implemented some balance changes and bug fixes. Less exciting but equally important are walkable surface tester and custom world browser that we have developed for our own development purposes.

 

There are heaps of smaller tasks that were finished in the last couple of months, mostly environment assets, new level layouts and so on.”

Like clockwork, some people were screaming “SCAM!” at the top of their lungs to show displeasure toward Ebb Software and Scorn due to Brightlocker shutting down and the sparse updates on the FPS game, to which another dev came out to explain that they’re not making Scorn to scam people but because they want to share a unique game with the world which takes time:

“[…] If we were a scam we wouldn’t stop crowdfundings, we wouldn’t offer refunds, we wouldn’t publish new stuff and we would just continue scamming people or vanish into thin air. But we’re not a scam and we don’t have a marketing team to handle updates. We are game developers, plain and simple, and we’re doing what we love. We started this project a long time ago and we haven’t given up in the most trying times, and we are going to see Scorn through. It’s alright if you don’t trust us, or if you think we’re a scam, there’s a lot of great games and developers out there that could use your support – helping them build something that you believe in would be far more valuable than questioning our work.”

To prove their legitimacy and that their word means something, Scorn will not become an Epic Games Store timed exclusive due to a prior promise — in that the title in question was set to hit Steam along with a DRM free version years back — as explained by Rakic:

If you can’t see the above image showing the exchanging of words regarding exclusivity and the Epic Games Store, you can see the message below:

“We’re not looking for exclusive deals, especially since this Kickstarter campaign was made before the Epic game store and we promised Steam and DRM free versions of the game.”

I should explain that this doesn’t rule out the idea of Epic allowing Scorn to do a Cyberpunk 2077 — where it can magically be on both Steam and Epic — but if it deals with exclusivity, it looks like a no-go from Ebb Software since this Kickstarter campaign was live before the Epic Games Store and the devs promised Steam and DRM free versions of the game beforehand.

Lastly, on August 8th, 2018, Ebb Software announced that Scorn was to release as a complete game (which means no part 1 or 2). As of now, the game has no release date and was mentioned to release on PC via Steam and have a DRM free version. If the game does well, a PS4 and Xbox One version will go into production.