Well, with the tradition of FNAF games releasing earlier than we were told, it was bound to happen sometime. The creator pulled his latest game FNAF World after stating that he jumped the gun on its release.

The Five Nights at Freddy’s games have been quite successful since the first game shot to success about a year and a half ago. Sequels quickly followed and from the start, fans of the series have joked about creator Scott Cawthon’s habit of giving release dates that he then ignores by releasing the game early. Hell, he even began joking about it himself when he announced FNAF World, with the game’s final teaser image reading “Coming 2016 (seriously.)” at the bottom. The release date was set to be in February but once again Cawthon jumped the gun and FNAF World burst onto Steam on January 21st.

The problem is that FNAF World was an RPG but an awful lot of little things were missing, leaving players to figure out what attacks did for themselves among other things. This was a problem for some and despite Scott patching these things in he ultimately decided that he had made a mistake releasing it early and needed to pull the game.

“Hi everyone, I wanted to make a post about the fate of FNaF World. Even though the game had a “Very Positive” rating with 87%, I was not satisfied with the reviews and ratings it was getting.

For that reason, I’ve decided to remove the game from Steam. I’ve also asked Valve to make it so that the game can be refunded regardless of the amount of the time it has been owned, meaning that anyone can get a refund at any time. It may take them a while to set that up, but it will be in place soon.”

He is now working on polishing the game up and will re-release it on Gamejolt once done, with the game being free now as an apology for its incompleteness. Among other things it will include a 3D overworld for navigation.

Like the other FNAF games I didn’t get FNAF World, but the difference is that this one I was going to get. I was just holding off until the patching was done and was sad to see it pulled, although I do understand why this happened. Time and again we see the result of games rushed to release and although FNAF World is far from being the worst example of this (who can forget Unity’s issues?), it’s still a problem. That being said, Scott is a developer I’ve always had respect for so kudos for recognising the issue and admitting the fault. No matter how much he’s made from the FNAF series, he’s still an Indie dev and couldn’t have made the decision lightly.