The Entire Tales Of Kenzera: Zau Team Has Been Put On Redundancy Notice

That (thanks VGC) seems a bit out of place, as if they’re the ones to blame that the whole team has been put on redundancy notice.

On topic: i liked the game, but I’m a metroidvania fan. And it was released a bit too close to Prince of Persia (looked a bit similar). hope they’ll find a fundraiser soon

Ah well there goes my hope for a physical.
But with a score of 6/10 hmmm

Now that's the EA Original treatment I expect

It feels slightly misleading to frame it as the studio’s fault, this is the tightrope that you walk without a rich beneficiary.

That absolutely sucks. I loved ZAU. I hope they get a new game green lit soon. I will be there day one.

not every game can be successful. they probably missed their target group by a small margin....

Zau is a good Metroidvania. Not sure what else the team could have done here. I hope they continue receiving funding.

I had hoped to pickup this game Physical but maybe because it's digital killed any excitement to pickup. Harassing your programming team isn't good company to have - hope they get someone like the BG3 Team that want to invest in good game and not culture of poisonings work place.

Disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. It was a good, but not stellar, game.

They shouldn't have hired Sweet baby inc the kiss of death in gaming because of that gamers will not support it.

@Gamergirl94 tbh I doubt too many gamers will be aware of sweet baby. if a game isnt great why would anyone wanna buy it. take metaphor refantazio - allegedly there is some wokeness in it and yet the game is doing great. cant wait to get it on switch 2

@Chimichanga not that bad actually. it has almost reached a 300 player peak on steam

@Poco_Lypso Sweet Baby Inc Detected, the steam curator list, is about half a million strong. It's no joke and the creator has a website called DEIdetected at this point. That's more than enough gamers to at the very least make their voice matter.

Probably because their game was a classic wait til it's on sale sort of release. A team js going to need a lot more than bog standard Metroidvania mechanics to stay afloat these days. Hopefully if they stave off the issue they'll gun for something a little more ambitious.

@Lightsiyd oh, dont get me wrong, I am not saying it doesnt have its impact, on the contrary. but the sales numbers are usually so abysmally low it cant just be chuds 'responsible' for this. people just dont have the time to play everything and will tend to pick the cherries. if a game is mediocre, u need some connection to even consider buying it. Like for example I bought princess peach on sale recently but probably wouldnt have necessarily bought it if it wasnt nintendo. people know a bad game when they see one.

@Friendly
I don't think it's a matter of release date, the game simply wasn't that good compared to other metroidvanias.

SBI is also not a factor in my opinion, there are plenty of great games where SBI was involved and still sold like hot cakes.

I didn’t play this game and don’t know much about the drama around it (although, I get it), but from that statement it sounds like the company wants to repeat what they did before with their second game if they can find funding (as they sit their handing out redundancy letters and already announcing layoffs earlier).

Is that a smart or sound business decision?

@Anguspuss Ahh so do you take everything the chuds claim seriously? What's so preachy about the game? The same people crying about SBI/DEI also think that a game is "woke" simply by having a POC or an unattractive woman as a protagonist.

Zau is based on Bantu mythology and set in Africa. What do you expect the protagonist to look like?

@GarlicGuzzler Unfortunately, we're at the point where that crowd has gaslit themselves into fighting a never-ending culture war, regardless of whether or not the rest of us cares to participate.

And ironically, with "woke" being such an ambiguous word that can be applied to anything they take issue with (despite the obvious pattern), they've effectively become the very "SJW" caricature they used to hate/clown on over a decade ago.

@Anguspuss Yeah, I'm not sure I get this modern business fad of misreading your customer base, alienating them, then blaming them. What are they teaching in business school?

Not surprising but it sucks for them nonetheless. But the devs are all individually talented, so like any of these situations, I'm sure they won't have any trouble finding work elsewhere if need be.
Stay clear of EA next time. I know they're not involved in this specifically, but they are like the poison touch of video games for this sort of thing.

@Gamergirl94 There it is again. I see no difference between people calling it Sweet Baby and the Illuminati. At this point I wish for people to give me a list of games they deem as "DEI Free" which is just a bunch of Flash games for some CHUD Podcast,

I'm all out of tin foil, sorry y'all are gonna have to go hatless for the time being. In the meantime, I have my "ignore" button at the ready.

This bland just ok game (based on reviews ive read) came out at a time and in a genre where it just wasn't going to sell. Prince of Persia had just come out, by the time I went to check it out the developer had already been a baby about it not doing well sales wise. So a lot of people moved on

@Coalescence yep, I felt the same way. I love metroidvanias but it is a crowded field.

Their game is just okay, and considering the golden standard we got from indie now, it's a death sentence for an indie game to be "just okay".

@GarlicGuzzler Yes.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/10/croc-comparison-video-shows-a-solid-yet-familiar-graphical-evolution
People didn’t complain about woke in this article about Croc for example.

@HOUSE

That type of game is just overrepresented in the Market, here you have to make something very outstanding or just accept that you can't take the biggest part of the cake with the decision of doing such a game.

The Artstyle seems promising and the not overused Setting.
So they would have to make more Advertisment for that.

If you than have to do something with very controversial companies with extremist attitudes, you'll even lose more potential customers.

So is see the Fail in the Management

@NatiaAdamo I found evidence SBI was involved with this game. Here is relevant quote from SBI’s newsletter from January "Our friends at Surgent Studios dropped the trailer for their upcoming action-adventure platformer, Tales of Kenzera: ZAU. We had the utmost pleasure of working with Abubakar Salim and the Surgent team on this poignant story, which has been heavily inspired and influenced by Bantu mythology. We know you’re gonna love it as much as we do."
https://sweetbabynews.substack.com/p/january-brought-to-you-by-baby-power

I remember being interested in this game when it was announced as it's not often we see a game (or any media really) based on African mythology, But I changed my mind when I saw SBI was involved.

Seems like I was not the only one.

@Tobiaku Yawn more conspiracy theories and half truths. SBI is simply a consultancy agency which are a dime a dozen. Plenty of multinational companies hire them as some sort of image enhancing exercise, to pretend that they care about social justice, but in the background it's the same old corporate structure.

Yet according to chuds, SBI is some sort of shadowy conspiracy organization trying to take over gaming and brainwash everyone, the gaming equivalent of George Soros. Yet there is nothing that suggests that SBI is responsible for gameplay changes, nor that all of their suggestions are implemented 100%. I've seen the same people blaming SBI for Suicide Squad's microtransactions, which was 100% WB's doing. And there are plenty of games that SBI consulted in that came out quite successful, like Alan Wake 2 and GOW Ragnarok, so there goes the notion that the majority of gamers give a damn about SBI.

@Lightsiyd honestly? Those lists is just a meme with the games they choose to have in it. The allegations of any game that have a woman, gay or black being called woke is so clear at this point. They are being the SJW they hated so much but with the triggers reversed.
The fact that some people out there take this so seriously is really sad.

@ottoecamn Case in point. This.
People are so deep in conspiracy theories at this point with this SBI ***** that it is just sad. I've looked at those lists and plenty of great games are in there. Games that they are deciding not to play because of idiots screaming online being really important apparently to their game choices.

They also cherry pick their examples to prove their point. Plenty of "SBI games" were successful. Plenty of "woke" games were successful. But it doesn't matter. Baldur Gates 3 is clearly "woke" and Alan Wake 2 had "SBI involvement" or whatever.

@PKDuckman SBI and their kiss of death is going down in video game history and publishers are probably slowly taking note.
As I mentioned earlier, it would be sort of foolish to believe a group of chuds is responsible for the failure of a game, games have to be really bad or super unappealing (concords design for example) to sell this poorly. Either way, if publishers wants to sell millions, they need to realize 'chuds' are a force to be reckoned with - unless they have infinite sources of money they can pulverize.
At the end of the day its quite amusing to watch all this go down.

@Poco_Lypso The main way to avoid "chuds" honestly is to be successful with your game. That's pretty much it. Because after SBI, they will make up another conspiracy theory, after "woke" they will start spamming new buzzwords. If your games get in their target, they will hate on it and not being a success makes it easier for them. And at this point, even just having a woman on a game can be a "red flag" for them. If one search for witches they will inevitably find them.

If they can't use your game to justify the "go woke go broke" mentality then they will ignore you.
Hence why Starfield was the one that was criticized for having pRoNoUnS in their character creator despite Baldur Gate 3 being from the same year and also having them alongside much more "woke" content. The difference is that Starfield already had bad press so it was much easier.

@Azuris when they contacted SBI it wasn't even decided that it was the next controversy online btw. Just saying.

@Tobiaku

*Claims that there is no conspiracy theory
*Uncritically cites the Gamergate mouthpiece Niche Gamer

You are engaging in what is essentially cherry picking. You deliberately exclude Alan Wake 2 and GOW Ragnarok because don't fit your "go woke, go broke" narrative, with both being critically acclaimed and sold well. And then you falsely blamed SBI for Suicide Squad flopping, even though the biggest criticism against that game is its reliance upon microtransactions despite being a single player game, something that is heavily criticized even by the likes of Jim Sterling. Concord flopped because frankly it was a paid hero shooter when its competitors like Overwatch 2 are free to play. And even Overwatch 2 has its fair share of LGBT characters, but of course since it's still widely played it goes against the SBI conspiracy narrative.

@jowy_sw Yep the lists are just laughable at the moment. One I saw actually claimed that Civ 6 is woke because it includes female historical leaders and non-European civilizations which the writers claim are "historically insignificant". And there's the can of worms know as transvestigation, where even fictional female characters like Lara Croft from the upcoming animation are supposedly given masculine features.

@jowy_sw exactly my point. if a game is good people will buy and play it. not everyone checks some dei detected lists or cares about any of this.

think its less about games having some 'woke' content but more about 'wokeness' being the main selling point that can make a game fail, as can be seen in the current unknown 9 fail.

But when it comes down to it, its solely the (shill) media thats responsibe for the whole situation imo by trying to interfere with stuff nobody asked them to interfere with. And when people voiced their concerns they made full use of some leftist dictionary and kept polarizing.
Kingdom Come deliverance (didnt play!) had one problem, lack of diversity, PoCs. For real? A game set in Czechia during the middle ages, made by a czech studio, and you need PoCs?

Or black myth wukong, first SBI tried to extort the devs for $7 million threatening to cancel them and when this attempt was ignored a smear campaign was launched. didnt work. but was noted.

Kamala Harris had a Fox interview recently. She mentioned something about leadership, one is trying to beat down and the other one is trying to lift up. And this can be perfectly translated into gaming journalism. If a game doesnt have inclusion, or anything else thats on your checklist, dont mention it! Just mention the things that you like! If a game has stuff thats on your checklist, try to positively reinforce them.
Also, if there is obvious forced inclusion, it would surely help to start critisizing that as well. And that woud help (shill) media gain a bit more credibility and we wouldnt be in the situation that we are in rn.

@PKDuckman actually AW2 flopped hard, not as hard as concord or maybe unknown 9 but it flopped.
AFAIK the game devs get 50% of profits. But the game will never break even. Unless you are calling this a success....

@PKDuckman
Correct, I claim I didn’t mention any conspiracy theory.
SBI’s cofounder did say to terrify them. Here is a link to a clip of her saying that, which was mentioned in the Nichegamer article.

https://x.com/GamesNosh/status/1764802262017183761

I excluded AW2 and GOW Ragnarok because they came out before SBI became infamous. Which was late February or sometime in March 2024. SBI was not well known at the time those two came out in 2022 and 2023.

As far as I know SBI was not involved with Overwatch 2. They were involved with Suicide Squad. I didn’t blame them for Suicide Squad’s sales. They worked on it. I used that as a example of a game they were involved with.

So what if Overwatch had LGBT characters? OW2 having LGBT characters does not go against any narrative regarding SBI. You can add LGBT characters to games without involving companies like SBI.

@Poco_Lypso I do know what "'wokeness' being the main selling point that can make a game fail, as can be seen in the current unknown 9 fail" actually means since I believe that game had 3 dollars of advertising budget in the first place.

In fact, this is just more proof that people are trying to claim that game failed due to "woke" or whatever when it is just a game that was destined to fail (and the publisher knew it, hence the lack of advertising) and people are trying to claim it was because of "woke" to get another "go woke go broke" example.

I do not care about "gaming journalism bad" arguments since it's just one side doing bait articles for clicks and the other side using that article for ragebait and I'm sick of it. Specially since due to that it is impossible to discuss certain topics at all in gaming spaces (just look at any comment section in this very webside when the BIG GAY are mentioned).

I guess that the main thing you can do about all of this is basically ignore it. Do "woke" content if you want but try to not mention it much during the advertisment in social media (since it will just bring negativity unfortunatelly) and make good games that couldn't be used in the "go woke go broke" argument.

But I want to also mention again that if your game ends in the target of some chud with any type of following, it doesn't matter what you do and how you advertise it, they'll find something to hate you (or they will just lie).

Even if it sounds stupid, "woke" content can't afford to be bad or mediocre due to all of this. It has to be great. So being the gayest game even and the greatest game ever is probably the best way to shut them up, even when your game is brought up by them.

Fun fact, Nintendo games have been brought up by them too but because those games are good they just make a tweet or a couple of ragebait videos and move on. This very year we had the Vivian in Paper Mario being uncensored as being trans thing and Splatoon 3 DLC reminding people Pearl and Marina are "very good friends" for like the third time at this point (oh and a character in the Splatton 3 DLC usign neutral pronouns because grammar is scary).

Also, I'm not from the US so I can't vote for Kamala and therefore I didn't watch the interview. Good for her? Although I don't think this is a good example to bring up here seeing how toxic this conversations already are. Introducing US partisian politics is not really a good idea to make civil conversations about gaming.

Ad, just like a lot of things mentioned as critism against "woke", what even is "forced inclusion"? When it is "forced"? Because at this point, just having that inclusion period gets those complains.

@PKDuckman Yeah, this is a great example of them using buzzwords without thinking.
They saw a game with an old setting and resorted to the classic "mah historical accuracy" without even thinking. Apperantly woman leaders and black people were invented in 2015.

And the transvestigation thing to pixels is getting to an extreme. Like, how is Aloy from Horizon "ugly"? How is Lara Croft "ugly"? It doesn't really help that they are photoshopping them to be basically models with anime boobs. Which, I'm sorry, but it is not "historically accurate".
One of them is in a world full of wild robots that she has to fight them constantly and the other is a.. tomb raider. It is fine for them to not look like models with anime boobs. And a woman doesn't have do be like that to be a woman.

@Lightsiyd Can you be any less specific with your comment, please?

I believe I explained myself quite well about my reservations with people that scream stuff like this non stop online. And comments like yours just reinforce that even more for me honesltly.

I compiled plenty of information about the topic. In fact, I saw an "anti woke" attack in real time in a small game I was following (a small indie visual novel about a gay couple that was attacked because... take a guess). I believe I know plenty of stuff about the whole "anti woke" thing.
In fact, right now I'm even seeing people praising Daikatana advertising saying the ads nowadays are "woke" compared to it. People right now are focusing on ads, claiming they have to be about s** or like a game that failed when it launched. A new attacking point that is less than a week old.
I do know about what they actually discuss (mainly because it is insane plenty of times) and I didn't dismiss any facts at all. Not even one.

And how much information did you compile before making such a statement about anything I said? Specially one that is so non specific. Did you even read my comments here?

@jowy_sw "Those lists is just a meme with the games they choose to have in it."

These were your own words. If you expect me to respect what you say on this topic after saying something like this, or assume you know what you're talking about, perish the thought. Let's just agree to disagree.

@Lightsiyd Like I said, I haven't said s lie at all. That list has Civ 6 as woke because it includes female historical leaders and non-European civilizations which the writers claim are "historically insignificant". I can pull more examples if you want. I can't take that seriously.
If I take that as not a meme and that they wrote that 100% seriously then it is even sadder.

@Lightsiyd I literally went to Civ 6 on Steam, looked at list no reccomending it and multiple of them mentioned how it has "pro-DEI" messaging. List like "Woke Content Detector", for instance. In fact, that list to me is the most meme worthy out of all of this that I know of.
For example: It doesn't reccoment GTAV because "Contains overtly Woke messaging. Multiple VCPR shows feature exaggerated versions of right-wingers who are made to seem ridiculous and ridiculed. No show features exaggerated versions of left-wingers."
They exist, stop denying that it does. And they use the exact same message and "totally valid complains" people use when talking about "woke" in games or whatever.

(also, of course it doesn't appear in th SBI list since SBI didn't participate in the game in the first place so that example is stupid)

@jowy_sw If you reread the first post from @Lightsiyd he specifically mentioned SBI detected and DEIdetected.
You are the one who called them meme lists and said that list had Civ 6 as woke. If neither list has Civ 6 its not really relevant to his comment about those two lists.

@jowy_sw It's not a conspiracy when you can find video of SBI employees making presentations where they say with their own mouth that their goal is to burn the industry to the ground and bring up how they're needed because otherwise the industry will be filled with people like Quentin Taramtino (their words, not mine). Not to mention that now we have heard straight form people like Yuji Horiie about how Americans have this narrow minded idea of what's appropriate and force it on japanese game developers.

Also, what SBI defenders such as yourself dont understand is that There's a difference between having diversity happen naturally in a game or even political themes in a story and shoving american left-wing current day politics in a game to lecture players. Baldur's Gate 3 gives players freedom to express themselves and doesn't try to lecture the player, And Alan Wake 2 was a financial flop.

@ottoecamn You are 100% correct

@jowy_sw
Since you're on here commenting it's safe to assume that you're a gamer who plays games for fun.

@ottoecamn and @Tobiaku are on point. Please do a little YouTube research on this so that you can make an informed decision on this topic. It might save you some money, and even if it doesn't, you'll be debating on a more firm foundation.

@jowy_sw actually I am not from the US either but her words made sense to me in the given context.

'woke' as the main selling point is ofc meant a bit jokingly. probably because i didnt know about the game until i saw a yt vid with sbi stamp attached. marketing at its finest i guess, lol.

I believe Bandai Namco realized at some point just how bad the game was and any more investment would be just sunk cost fallacy. the SBI publicity may just have been the final nail in the coffin.

Obviously, there is a whole spectrum of people out there. Some will try to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking and some may view everything as 'woke'. Forced inclusion is ofc a bit subjective. Take kingdom come deliverance for example, a game set in medieval czechia, having lots of diversity in it (when it tries to be historically accurate) would seem a bit forced imo. But thats what the game was critisized for and this somehow applies pressure on the devs, its sending a message, we want you to do better next time.
Wouldnt it feel forced if you had a diverse cast of protagonists in that game?
And now imagine there is a sequel to that game and it would be fully diverse in every respect. Some people may rightfully ask the question, what happened here?
It would lead to the perception somebody has interfered here, forced something onto the developers.
I guess thats one way to look at it.
Ofc there is also other games which have an abundance of woke elements and that leads to the assumption a checklist has been used to include as many as possible while at the same time trying to not offend anyone (unless its a christian).

@Lightsiyd You haven't answered anything at all.

But, yes, I play the games for fun. That's why I actually play the games instead of making and following Steam lists and YouTube channels that make money about complaining about "woke" (and therefore surely don't have an incentive to continue doing it... surely) about how many minorities you can include in a game before it becomes "politically correct DEI SJW feminist woke garbage" or whatever.

That visual novel about a gay couple that I mentioned earlier was relly cute and felt authentic but it got the same complaints that I mentioned earlier and that anyone here should be able to imagine. They even called the dev himself "degenerate" and "mentally challanged" and called GOG and Steam to delete the game (truly anti censorship, huh?). All because he made a small game about his life and the relation that he has with his partner.
To me, any culture that leads to that is toxic. And your non answers about how I lied and apperantly don't know anything without specifying at all or explaining why I'm so wrong for thinking this don't really change that view. Good day.

@Poco_Lypso I just looked at that Fox interview and looking at the context I'm surprised she went there and that she actually seemed to do fine. Huh... Good for her I guess. Anyway, this is not the place for discussing that so I'll stop here.

The thing about that game tho is that there is no "woke" stuff at all to my knowledge. Like, yeah the protagonst is a woman but I don't think that is enough to be "SBI" or whatever... right?
Like I said, Bandai didn't really advertised this game at all. It just looked like a mid game that they knew that in an overcrowded market like this would fail so they just didn't advertise it at all.
Like you said, I learned from this game first because of desperate for witches anti woke YouTube channels accusing them of being "woke" or whatever.
And, like I said, it is also perfect as sacrificial trash. It is a mid game with a woman in it that was going to fail so it makes sense to just push it as an example as "go woke go broke" despite not being "woke" in the first place.

And I know that there is a whole spectrum of people out there that complain about "woke". But what I mentioned come from the biggest voices or for tweets and posts that gets ton of engagement. This views that I mentioned are what the "anti woke anti DEI anti SBI" or whatever think. And to me, I believe that there moto is that if they see a gay person, POC person or even a woman that it is not an anime model, they will complain about "forced inclusion" unless the games turns out good. In that case they will ignore it or pivot to say that it was never woke in the first place. You can deny it if you want but I've seen it so many times it is hard to ignore. Remember the inicial trailers to the Amazon Fallout series? I do. They were disliked a lot because of the woman protagonist. It came out, it was good and people just moved on.

Even the "historically accurate" critism that could be used against Kingdom Come Deliverance with a great point is used for cases when it doesn't make sense. Like people complaining about the Civilization games having woman leaders or black and indigenous leaders. Despite literally being based in actual history. They do that because their logic is that history=medieval=white people only.

And your whole thing about "abundance of woke themes" being badly recieved because that gives people the impression of a "checklist". Why?
It is literally the same thing SJW did that so many people complained about. Looking for gay people or whatever and then claim it is anti heterosexual or something. I find it stupid, point blank.
Like, what If I want to make a game about gay people? I can't because "woke" now? It is fine for me to get hate for it because other people feel "triggered" when they see gay people on it?

@jowy_sw definitely an interesting topic to talk about. I totally agree with you, Artists (game devs) should have the freedom to do anything with this art medium. I mean its not like you picasso hire consultants and asked them what he should do, right?

If an artist decides to make a game about gay people then thats what it is.
But at the same time, if an artist decides to not make a game about gay people, then that should be a viable option as well.

Its never fine to get hate i assume but art will always be critisized. Lets face it some art is designed to trigger people, to provoke thought.

But videogames are also a different kind of artform, in that it relies on mass production and mass sales numbers - contrary to a painting in a gallery that can only have one owner. Videogames require at best millions of owners.

Consumer expectation and demand can make a game success or a failure.

Either way, the situation has gotten a bit heated with each side polarizing. Thats pretty bad for the industry as a whole.

Honestly. Disagree with you almost compleatly on almost every point, impressive.
First of, if the dev wants to hire consultants then... why not? If it is their desition then it shouldn't matter, right? It's not like devs just make their games in a vaccum a lot of the times. They seek plenty of outside opinions because that is where you can hear different perspectives.

Is there an "anti gay curator list" on steam that singles out games without gay characters on it? Come the *** on, really? What is this both sides stuff? Yes, if somone wants to make a game without gay characters then go ahead but, let's be real, that is not an issue here.
With that I mean, the same example I made with a small indie visual novel about a gay couple getting hate would not have happened if that game featured a hetero couple. I guarantee you.

And don't go arround "well, if it's critism it's fine actually" stuff. That game in particular was getting HATE not critism. And it wasn't made because the gameplay or even the story but because the character are gay. In fact, this hate makes hearing critism from the audience more difficult because guess what the loudest voices critizicing a game with LGBT themes are. But, hey, I guess having gay characters in the game is not a safe pandering thing anymore (it never was)?

That point about videogames being different kind of artform that just HAS TO relies in mass production and mass sales numbers is also bu***. There are plenty of indie games out there with moderate numbers that create moderate successes. In fact, this is actually a big critism of the AAA market nowadays. A former PS literally came out a couple of days earlier to say that the death of the AA is actually a bad thing.
Also, what is your point with this? That games with gay characters can't even achieve comercial success at all? Never? Well, guess Baldur Gate 3 was an exception or something?

And, yes, it is polarizing. One side is creating conspiracy theories and looking for witches to do witch hunts because they saw a gay person and they are told they have to be angry about that and the other says that the curators lists are cringe.
And I know at that last point it's an exaggeration but... my god. There is SO MUCH toxicity with the "anti woke" ***. It's worse that SJW ever were.
Even here, a place much less toxic than Twitter formally X or whatever, just having the LGBT words mentioned fills the comment section with "discourse". It's tiring.

The simple answer is that over the past 20 years, we have been flooded with top-tier games which have turned into a backlog of very CHEAP top-tier games that current studios need to compete against. Add on to that multiplayer and mobile games that seem like a second job and you have a market drowning in time and money sinks. Then you have Youtube, streaming, TV shows, movies, books, comics, etc I am honestly surprised there are so many people who are buying these games.

The whole controversy thing barely matters whatsoever when it comes to sales. Most people are not even aware of it. If anything, for such a small, niche product, having that exposure is probably a boost. The reality of the situation is that the game simply was not enticing enough for people to buy in its current form. The creators did not read the market well and created a game very few people were interested in. That's all there is to it