Megabonk creator faces a moral dilemma as the roguelike heads to the moon: Robinette is a broken character, but "I don't really wanna nerf her because it's fun af"

monkey in megabonk
(Image credit: vedinad)

Megabonk's creator has asked the community about nerfing Robinette, with the eternal struggle between she's broken and she's fun.

Megabonk has become one of the biggest hits of the year selling one million copies within two weeks and amassing a high Steam player count beating out AAA releases like Borderlands 4. After its leaderboards were compromised, Megabonk is back with a new patch. However if you look at the game's new leaderboards you'll notice a trend. In the top 10 performances in the world, eight of them use the character Robinette who has the Stonks passive ability.

This ability gives her a 1% gold gain per level, however, the real power is in the damage increase the character gets by having gold in their inventory, so by the endgame you can become a beast. This has naturally made them a contentious figure.

In a post on Reddit, developer Vedinad asked "What are your thoughts on Robinette?" They added "My initial thought is to nerf the passive late game so it doesn't scale beyond all other characters." But despite being an obvious favorite, Vedinad said "I don't really wanna nerf her because it's fun af, but that leaves us with (probably) an undisputed character and a character that will always dominate the leaderboards."

And while the developer said they can "buff all other characters" it "would require ALL other characters to be buffed with some insane passive that can match Robinette, which will probably throw all balancing out the window... That's not a balancing patch I can do overnight." One possibility was to nerf the character and turn their passive gold = damage buff into an item, however the developer said it can't be as powerful as Robinette's or else it would be the only viable build to top the leaderboards.

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Scott McCrae
Contributor

Scott has been freelancing for over three years across a number of different gaming publications, first appearing on GamesRadar+ in 2024. He has also written for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, VG247, Play, TechRadar, and others. He's typically rambling about Metal Gear Solid, God Hand, or any other PS2-era titles that rarely (if ever) get sequels.

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