Spoilers: it’s not because they’re called Innersloth.
The story of Among Us really is the stuff of fairytales: originally released back in 2018 by a dev team of three, last year it suddenly became one of the most popular titles in the world after several high-profile streamers began to play it. In a year of lockdowns, Among Us appealed to many as a way to entertain themselves on video calls, and even some American politicians got in on the action.
But this massive spike in players brought challenges – a wave of cheaters being one of them – and developer Innersloth had to make some serious changes to the way it worked. In a new blog post, the dev team has addressed why some features are taking longer to implement than some expected.
“Among Us gained incredible traction pretty late into 2020 that we weren’t expecting, and that meant a lot of change for us,” Innersloth explained. “…Not only did we need to switch back to working on Among Us after thinking it was done, but we also needed to set ourselves up more sustainably to work on the game. We had to spend two months just restructuring, figuring out new processes, and getting external partners to help us manage on board.”
Let’s Play Among Us – Costume Edition, featuring Outside Xbox and Dicebreaker
Innersloth noted it had to streamline to work long-term and allow for an increase in team size, which meant a lot of behind-the-scenes work and “time away from the game”. On top of that, bringing the game to new platforms like Nintendo Switch and Xbox required additional support. The work being done now, however, should ease development in future.
As for those who suggested simply hiring more people to speed things up, Innersloth explained it wasn’t that straightforward. Rushing to hire people could be financially damaging, Innersloth said, while onboarding newcomers is also a time-consuming process.
“We never expected all of this to happen (thank you!!!), so we’re taking it slow and steady to make sure we can keep sending good things your way,” Innersloth added. “Thank you so much for the patience as you wait for the next big update! We want to do more for you to show you how grateful we are, but without sacrificing on the quality and values we had before this blew up.”
The blog post promised a new 2021 roadmap would be unveiled in the coming weeks, while new map The Airship is also due to arrive in early 2021. I’m glad this one’s about to get off the ground.
Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-01-20-among-us-devs-explain-why-updates-are-taking-so-long
