Games publisher 505 Games has apologised to cricket video game fans and withdrawn its Ashes Cricket 2013 title from Steam, promising refunds are on the way. The action follows a botched launch of a “clearly unfinished” game which was so bad as to be “farcical” reports the BBC. 505 Games puts the blame on Australian-based developers Trickstar Games whom had previously given “all assurances” that it could make a cutting edge modern cricket game across all the major gaming platforms.
As things stand Ashes Cricket 2013 is withdrawn from its PC release (it launched on Steam on 22nd November) and development for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U has also been stopped. That November PC release was already much delayed, it had been expected for July.
505 Games issued a statement yesterday, which said that the development of the game had been “fraught with challenges almost from the outset”. Even though the chosen developer had years of experience in creating cricket games, the new graphics engine they chose threw up unexpected challenges causing multiple development time extensions.
The statement continued by saying that overall a full two years has been wasted on the Ashes Cricket 2013 video game as it “couldn’t meet the quality benchmarks of either us, our licensors or our customers”. 505 Games concluded issuing a thorough apology to licensors, the ECB and Cricket Australia, and to fans of cricket and cricket games worldwide. Buyers of the game will most probably be happy to be assured that they “will be contacted very shortly with details of a full refund.”
Example unedited gameplay video below:
