Former Days Gone Game Director: Sony Bend Made a Bigger Play Than It Should Have

Update:

The harsh remarks made by author John Garvin regarding Days Gone and its cast have already received a response from Sony Bend. And now Jeff Ross, a veteran video game director, has followed up. He described the studio’s “small but highly skilled engineering team who punched way beyond their weight class to finish Days Gone” in a series of tweets.

“One engineer alone coded all sound, music, weapon, melee combat, and localization algorithms,” he stated. All animation systems, physics, the motorcycle, and the horde were solely the responsibility of one other engineer, which is ridiculous. And there were many others who were equally talented.

One engineer single handedly coded all sound, music, weapon, melee combat, and localization systems.
Another engineer was SINGULARLY responsible for all animation systems, physics, the motorcycle, AND the horde–which is just insane.
And there were many more just as talented.

— Jeff Ross (@JakeRocket) December 9, 2022

Prior to setting his account to private, Garvin had said that the programming team was partially to blame for Days Gone’s less favorable reviews than anticipated.

Article at first: Days Gone has grown to be a beloved game among PlayStation fans, maybe in part because to the somewhat unfavorable reviews it received. It’s crucial to keep in mind that the undead open world never received negative reviews; on Metacritic, it received a decent 71, and on this same website, we gave it a 7/10. It’s a solid game on our scale.

However, platform owner Sony chose against creating a sequel, and the negative critical reception is said to have played a role. John Garvin, a veteran of Bend Studio, has spoken on Twitter about the game’s muted reviews. He may still be hurt by the outcome. He blamed the low ratings on technical difficulties and “woke reviewers” in a series of tweets.

A fan tweeted a screenshot of the game’s Metacritic score and stated they like it, which set off a series of tweets. harmless enough. Kevin McAllister, the community manager at Bend Studio, chimed in to say that the PC version had a higher rating, which prompted Garvin to respond.

The absurd part is that neither I nor [game director Jeff Ross] were accountable for any changes. the plot, missions, and gameplay. Code cleanup was the only thing that changed. I suppose bugs, streaming, and framerate are important. It’s ironic that Jeff and I are the only ones missing. Huh.”

In the wake of Days Gone, both Garvin and Ross left Bend Studio, but as a seasoned expert in the field, tossing the programmers under the proverbial Harley-Davidson doesn’t seem too professional. Garvin went on to explain why, in his opinion, the game’s initial reviews weren’t as positive as they could have been, citing technical difficulties, reviewers who abandoned it, and “woke reviewers who couldn’t handle a gruff white biker looking at his date’s ass.”

Days Gone did really require a number of patches to get it up to par, and this was evident in several of the reviews. Even while we ultimately like (and highly recommended) the available open world comfort food, we didn’t have too many problems with the performance at launch and mostly criticized it for its cookie-cutter look.

But regardless of how you feel about Days Gone, I think we can all agree that raving on social media is rarely a good idea.