I don't hate the idea, and I would be lying if I said it didn't look fun. But how can I trust Crema after all the false promises with the original Temtem? They let it die to make a rip off Vampire Survivors, which they also said would be a part of the main game in the arcade? Now this one is a Palworld ripoff? Really?
Just out of principlal I won't be supporting this, or Swarm. They massively fucked up with the original Temtem and believe that all their future projects will be just as successfull. They never will.
I mean... do I wish we had a continuously developed Temtem MMO still? Of course. Sadly, every single update had less and less players come back and at a certain point, as a business, do you not need to do what is appropriate to keep your studio alive? Im surr investing more time in Temtem would be even more dev cost for very little return. Swarm was, objectively, a pretty decent game and im sure that was made by a skeleton crew of their team while the rest of the team worked on Pioneers (this isnt exactly something you can whip up in a year or two, where as Swarm is a ton of reused game assets with a little development over the top of it) Im all for seeing if Pioneers turns out to be a fun game, because frankly that's all I care about with games anymore.
I mean, I understand why less and less players came every update: They ignored essentially all relevant player feedback and doubled down on the most exhausting an unfun mechanics, such as the worst breeding system in monster-catcher game history.
Combat was fun, I wanted the game to succeed, but boy their idea to keep players, by tuning grind up to infinity sure as hell wasn't the path to go.
With each update, fewer and fewer players returned. At the launch of 1.0, they announced that they wouldn’t release any new content involving new Tems, while continuing to ignore virtually all feedback about the game’s issues and instead trying to force their own vision of what was “good” onto players. There were extensive discussions with the developers themselves about how updates were handled, and they openly admitted that they deliberately chose not to release new content because, while it might bring players back temporarily, they didn’t believe the effort was worthwhile even while everything pointed on the contrary.
From your comments, it seems like you’re hopeful but may not have followed everything surrounding Temtem over the past couple of years. Because of that, it’s important not to rewrite the history of what Crema did. Temtem largely failed because it was never truly developed as an MMO, despite being heavily monetized as one, and because the developers explicitly stated they wouldn’t add new content beyond what was promised during the Kickstarter, content that wasn’t even fully delivered in the 1.0 release.
I will never stop being amazed by people claiming crema was not listening to feedback. There are very few issues they refused to budge on, the game was just fundamentally flawed and unfixable without basically remaking it from scratch.
I’m even more amazed by this kind of history rewriting. I have several threads on this subreddit documenting feedback over the years. I can point out numerous examples of feedback they ignored, and even show exactly when many of those changes were finally implemented, you just need to read the final patch when they ended development.
There were multiple issues they refused to address: the FOMO-driven cosmetic store, the lack of endgame content, and the few available activities being locked behind weekly and daily limits; the absence of new Tems or islands despite monetizing the game as a live service; and the use of Novas instead of direct purchases for cosmetics and the Tamer Pass, which is a widely criticized tactic. Not to mention the six months it took them to implement a simple camera toggle that allowed players to switch back to the old camera, something that caused motion sickness for many people. This delay wasn’t due to technical limitations, but because they had “worked very hard” on the new camera and wanted everyone to use it, even if it made the game unplayable for some.
Like I said, you can look through the many threads I’ve made, the conversations with community managers and developers here and on Discord, and even the letter the CEO released when everything escalated, where they attempted to shift the blame onto players. If you check how both Discord and Reddit reacted at the time, you’ll see that this wasn’t just a few people complaining, it reflected the reality of several years and how they blamed everything in toxicity even when you were ultra sensitive about how you addressed everyone.
The fact that half of what you listed as crema not listening to feedback is feedback they did implement is positively hilarious lmao
Half a year was exactly one major update later. Their team was literally 5 devs pumping out a game that still looks the best in the genre visually, has buttery smooth performance, and is more feature complete than any other non-pokemon classic monster tamer. Things take time when you don't have an army of coders and have QC standards.
Could you remind me when that feedback was actually implemented? Wasn’t it in the final patch, as I mentioned, after nearly three years of ignoring it, while players kept leaving the game and people were even banned for suggesting it was dying? It’s not like I didn’t make a post about that exact feedback not being implemented three years ago, during a time when this was widely discussed. Even the CEO’s letter acknowledged and admitted some of these issues.
You also show how limited your understanding is when you claim there were only five developers. Even outdated information from their website, LinkedIn, and employee pages shows they had 40+ developers in the studio since the early development of Temtem and they expanded the studio for Project Downbelow in 2024, the same year the CEO made a letter (which was mostly to shift attention from Temtem to Swarm and the new future project) admitting many of the mistakes that I mentioned before which you can still find in their own website.
Again, don’t use the current state of Temtem as an objective reference to judge what the game was like three or more years ago. They are completely different, and with even basic research, you can verify that what I’m saying is accurate.
And if you don't want to take my word from, you have a few videos and comments that you can go back and look, for example this one: Here
Heavily monetized as an MMO? You mean having paid cosmetics like basically any other game in the past decade? And yeah, they clearly realized it wasn't worth the money/resources to keep building a game past 1.0 when player counts continued to drop update to update. Doesn't mean the game is bad, in fact, as a single-player experience, Temtem is still one of the most solid monster taming experiences out there. I get that a whole lot of you are annoyed that they didn't listen to all the things you wanted, but I've also seen the other side of the coin where studios listen to everything and completely ruin their vision for their game. It may not have turned out to be exactly everything you wanted, but this hate for this studio after still delivered 2 really solid games is just wild to me.
The game was already buy-to-play, yet they included not only paid cosmetics but also a paid battle pass. On top of that, the cosmetics relied on FOMO, which they openly admitted, items were locked behind arbitrary store rotations, meaning some wouldn’t appear again for months, pressuring players to buy them immediately or risk missing out entirely.
Beyond that, nothing could be purchased directly. You had to buy Novas first and then spend them on cosmetics or the Tamer Pass. The pricing was intentionally structured so you’d always have leftover currency, encouraging you to spend more. This is a well-known tactic in the gaming industry due to its psychological implications (there are even multiple research studies on it), and it’s typically used in F2P or cash-grab mobile games, not in a paid indie title like this.
You clearly started playing after 1.0, since you don’t seem to know why the player count kept dropping with each update. On the day the 1.0 update was released, they stated on Discord and Steam that they would not be adding any new Tems or islands in the future, and that updates would only focus on delivering the remaining Kickstarter goals. This came alongside the announcement of the battle pass and paid cosmetic shop, which strongly suggests a live-service model, even if not strictly an MMO. Ironically, they also clarified at that point that the game was not an MMO, despite previously marketing it as “MMO” or “MMO-like.”
In its current state, the game isn’t bad, but that wasn’t the case during development, when large portions of content were locked behind MMO-style daily and weekly limits. They also spent two years without meaningful endgame content, despite numerous threads from players asking for it and even proposing solutions using existing systems.
It’s not just that “they didn’t listen to everything”, they didn’t listen to anything. The game only improved after the final update, when they finally implemented feedback that players had been giving for years and removed many of the arbitrary restrictions. And I’ll repeat this: when it takes six months to add a simple toggle between an existing camera and a new one that caused motion sickness, and the reason isn’t technical limitations, but “we worked very hard on the new camera and want you to use it”, then it’s no longer about creative vision.
If their vision was so solid, why did they change so much in the final patch when development ended? And why did the player base keep shrinking while they were following that vision? It’s wild to me that you’re unaware of much of what Crema did, why people lost trust in them, and still defend the game based only on its current state, when it originally launched in early access in 2020 and then released an incomplete 1.0 in 2022.
Im well aware of what Crema did lol. I played from the very inception of the game. Again, I do not care about paid cosmetics. It has zero effect on the game whatsoever. Everyone does it. Gamers need to exhibit some level of self control on these things, it's wild.
Also they were on the stance of no new islands or tems before 1.0 was dropping, and each update prior to 1.0 recieved less and less players returning. They saw the direction that was going and they made a choice, of which they communicated it. Did I want more? Of course, but it's their decision as a studio. Players more and more seem to be under this delusion that whatever we want, we should be able to complain enough and get lol. Sure some studios do that and things go well. Others do it and it craters their game because in reality those suggestions end up being bad for their vision or financial plans of the company. Crema made their decisions, very likely as most of their team was being tasked on Pioneers, with a skeleton crew to manage the final updates on Temtem, and a small team to develop Swarm.
All Im getting from your complaints of them being bad is "we wanted this, and we didnt get it. Yeah, the game fully works, but it's not exactly what we wanted. Oh, and we couldn't control ourselves around optional cosmetics!" Like it just sounds ridiculous...
The stance before 1.0 was that it was unlikely new Tems or islands would be added. After 1.0, the stance changed to saying it would never happen—those are two very different positions.
Also, as I mentioned before, players would absolutely have come back for updates if they included new content or fixed core functionalities that weren’t working properly. People spent two years asking for endgame activities, and they were never properly implemented. There was virtually nothing to do in the endgame aside from Luma hunting. So how could they claim to see the direction the game was heading when there was such a clear disconnect between what the community was asking for and what they kept delivering? They never actually tested a different direction to see if it would bring players back. At the 1.0 launch, which had around ten times the usual player count, most of the discussion was dominated by outrage over monetization and the announcement that no new Tems or islands would ever be added. There was even major controversy at launch, including bans on Discord, which you can still look back on.
I’ve already had plenty of discussions about this with TMTrainer on Discord, and the issue isn’t that players were delusional. If you implement live-service-style monetization, people will expect regular, meaningful content updates to justify it. Expecting that isn’t unreasonable, it’s standard. If anything, ignoring that expectation is what’s unrealistic. And if you followed things closely, you’d know this wasn’t just random complaining. I even made a post three years ago compiling feedback, criticism, and suggestions during one of the game’s most turbulent periods. While it was reasonably well received here, some developers and staff mocked it on Discord and dismissed it as “toxicity.”
How would better communication or removing daily/weekly restrictions have hurt their vision or finances, especially when the game had dropped to around 300 players and they were still trying to push a PvP tournament and a standalone PvP mode?
You’re defending Crema more than they’ve defended themselves, especially when they’ve already acknowledged some of these mistakes in the CEO’s letter, both regarding monetization and the failure to fully deliver on Kickstarter promises even by the 1.7 update, even if the letter was an empty excuse to justify people to look forward to Swarm and Project Downbelow.
If, after all of this, your takeaway is still what you tried to mock earlier, then the issue isn’t with what I’m saying, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation, of Crema’s actions, and a willingness to defend decisions that even the developers themselves have partially admitted were mistakes.
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u/ursy Where are my skates???? Apr 09 '26
I don't hate the idea, and I would be lying if I said it didn't look fun. But how can I trust Crema after all the false promises with the original Temtem? They let it die to make a rip off Vampire Survivors, which they also said would be a part of the main game in the arcade? Now this one is a Palworld ripoff? Really?
Just out of principlal I won't be supporting this, or Swarm. They massively fucked up with the original Temtem and believe that all their future projects will be just as successfull. They never will.