Haak Xbox Series X|S port canceled due to “nightmare” with Microsoft’s certification
This past weekend, Haak developer Bingame announced that it has “decided to abandon the Xbox platform release” for its Metroidvania-platforming game. The developer reported on Saturday, that “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.” Blingame claims that it was “impossible” to initiate enquires with Microsoft due to bugs in Microsoft’s Support services and that the team contacted ID@Xbox about its issues but “they were powerless to help as it apparently falls outside their scope of responsibility and seems to be a Microsoft issue.
“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,” Blingame says. “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.”
Blingame followed up on Sunday with a screenshot reportedly showing some of its conversations with Microsoft in April and May, as well as an email from Microsoft that appears to have been sent shortly after Blingame’s initial announcement.
“I have spoken to my team to better understand the situation and we think the issue is due to a backend error that needs to be resolved by us. It is not an issue that you have had to deal with and for that we are sorry,” the email reads. “I would like to ask if you would be open to reconsidering bringing your game to Xbox if you get close support and monitoring from myself, a dedicated developer partner manager, and more. We will try to also expedite it so it will not take so long.”
It doesn’t look like Blingame will reconsider, however, as another statement from the developer reveals that it has “ultimately decided not to publish on the Xbox platform.” Blingame says, “We are very clear that similar issues (needing to wait indefinitely for their email responses to move forward with problem-solving) are likely to occur again in the future, which is very inefficient, and this is just for completing the account registration process for game publication.”
The statement also claims that Blingame’s initial announcement was met with some skepticism, with some users questioning why other developers hadn’t had similar troubles. According to Blingame, “some other developers have encountered similar problems as ours. They spent at least six months or more to complete the Xbox publishing process (without collaborating with a publisher), and most of the time was wasted on ‘waiting for email responses’ and ‘waiting for game reviews.’ The skeptical voices make us realize that the fundamental reason for the inefficiency of some large companies is precisely this mindset. When facing exposed problems, they habitually choose to ‘ignore these problems’ rather than truly solving them.”
There has been no word from Microsoft on the matter, but while it certainly looks like Haak won’t be coming to Xbox Series X|S, there are still some other great experiences to be had on the platform — check out our list of the best Xbox Metroidvanias for more.
