Studio apologizes for delay by pledging 90+-hour work weeks

There's a delicate art for developers breaking bad news to a dedicated community of gamers. In announcing a delay for the full release of its Early Access game Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr, Hungarian studio NeoCoreGames decided the best course of action was an apology accompanied by a promise of penance.

In an update to the game's Steam community, NeoCoreGames producer Zoltán Pozsonyi explained that the full launch of the game had been delayed from May 11 to June 5, or about three and a half weeks. The delay was attributed to technical issues on the game's console versions and a desire to have a simultaneous cross-platform launch.

"Again, sorry for this as we kindly ask for your further patience and hopefully it won't be a deal breaker for any of you," Pozsonyi said. "In return, we promise we'll push this extra three weeks in 90+ hours per week so it'll be very-very useful for Martyr."

The game has been available to play through Early Access since August of last year, and has been updated nine times with a number of additional hotfixes since then. As a result of the delay, a 10th update for Steam players will be released on May 21.

[UPDATE]: After the original post drew criticism, the promise of 90+ hour work weeks was removed and NeoCore head of publishing Linda Bozoradi dismissed it on Twitter as "an unfortunate joke."

"Thanks for your concerns but what we meant was that we do our max in the given extra 3 weeks to make Inquisitor better," Bozoradi said in a separate thread. "We don't force ppl to work 90/7, even the 3 producers/owners don't do it and they have the longest days. It sounded ironic in Hun, I'm sorry it didn't work and made everyone upset. We at NeoCore all consider Inquisitor as our own love project and it's true that we're working hard on it but we gladly make it for a great result. I kindly ask you not to judge the company and the game on 1 unfortunate statement. Thank you."

If the statement was a joke, it's one the studio has told before. After missing a planned November content update, Pozsonyi's note explained, "The next content update for Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr will be released on January 10. Seriously - we'll release this patch even if the whole company has to spend Christmas and New Year's Eve in the office."

In March, another update from Pozsonyi explained that the team would not release any more updated builds of the game on Steam until it's full launch, which was then-planned for May 11.

"Of course, we still have tons of work to do, and many of us are already pulling 80+ hour weeks, as it usually goes during crunch time," Pozsonyi said.