Screenshot by Gamepur
The release of Sonic Origins this week has already seen a degree of controversy swirling, what with Sonic creator Yuji Naka weighing in on the years-long question of whether Michael Jackson was involved with the creation of the music in Sonic 3. But a lead developer on the game has aired some grievances with the way the game was released, and expressed a degree of dissatisfaction with the final result.
Simon Thomley, who also goes by the alias of “Stealth,” took to Twitter to apportion blame for bugs that appeared in the final release of the game. Thomley’s company Headcannon, the development studio responsible for 2017’s Sonic Mania, assisted Sega in the development of Sonic Origins, but in a series of tweets he insisted that “what is in Origins is also not what we turned in.”
This is frustrating. I won't lie and say that there weren't issues in what we gave to Sega, but what is in Origins is also not what we turned in. Integration introduced some wild bugs that conventional logic would have one believe were our responsibility- a lot of them aren't.
— Stealth (@HCStealth) June 24, 2022
Sonic Origins has been broadly well received by reviewers, but some players have discovered some interesting bugs while playing the game. Thomley readily admits that there were some issues with the final build the studio submitted, claiming that “some [were] actual mistakes, some overlooking, some rushjobs, some stuff we noticed but weren’t allowed to correct near the end.” But he was adamant that “integration introduced some wild bugs” that were not Headcannon’s fault.
No, I am not fighting with Sega, and no, I have not cut off Sega. It's a lot more complicated than that. I'm willing to do more work under the right conditions; whether they want to work with me again is an entirely separate matter.
— Stealth (@HCStealth) June 24, 2022
Thomley’s intention may mostly be to protect the reputation of his studio in the wake of a perceived backlash against the bugs discovered in the game, but he did later clarify that he was not attempting to fight with or cut off Sega. He claims that he is “willing to do more work under the right conditions” to fix up the game, but whether Sega will wish to continue the business relationship with Headcannon after Thomley’s public venting of his frustrations remains to be seen.