The people over at Compulsion, developers of We Happy Few, which I wrote a glowing preview for not one week ago, have announced a partnership with Gearbox to bring the game to a full, multi-platform, retail release. And there was much rejoicing! By which I mean a slew of negative reactions.

According to them, it’s not feasible for a studio, any studio, to release a game at retail without the assistance of a publisher. Which is complete tosh. Not to trivialise the cost involved, because having a publisher behind you is certainly something that helps, a hell of a lot, with that kind of thing. But to say it can’t happen? Yeah, no.

There’s a lengthy update on Steam, going into details of what this new partnership will entail, as well as explaining why this week’s price increase put the game at such a weird price point. The final price is going to be a full blown $60, but until release, they’re knocking 15% off. Not sure why they didn’t just do that, rather than setting the price at $50.99, but whatever.

The rest of the details are mostly about a Season Pass for the inevitable metric fuckton of DLC that Gearbox like to throw at everything and their uncle. This will be given, at no extra cost, to all Kickstarter backers, but Early Access purchasers will have to splash out…some presently undisclosed amount. There are also only the vaguest of details about what the Season Pass will actually contain, primarily because Compulsion say they don’t want to start working on it until the game is fully released.

Personally, I have no fucks left to give. Whilst I have no problem, at all, with We Happy Few‘s consistently increasing scope and scale, that’s all great actually. I have significant problems with Gearbox as a company. As, it seems, does the vast majority of the game’s fanbase. They’re just not a nice company. Just look what they did with Aliens: Colonial Marines! So I, like many people, find that this is the point where we shall part ways.

There are so many other, good, publishers out there, not to mention all the questionable, but still acceptable, options. Why not go with, say, Deep Silver or THQ Nordic? They’re a bit scattershot in so many ways, sure, but they’re a generally well trusted groups that have put out some great titles. Or, my personal favourite, Focus Home Interactive, who Compulsion already worked with for Contrast?

Eh, whatever, your call.