Slay the Spire 2 devs respond to a flurry of bad Steam reviews aimed at its first balance patch: "This progress will not be linear, and no change is necessarily permanent"

Slay the Spire 2 was inundated with thousands of negative Steam reviews right after the game's first major balance patch, so developer Mega Crit has come out to explain the team's approach to Early Access for players who are new to the series or just new to Early Access games in general.

Slay the Spire 2 yesterday added a Phobia Mode to turn the game's creepiest sights slightly less creepy in the new beta patch v0.100.0, as well as sweeping changes in the name of balance aimed at making infinite builds a little harder to pull off. All tweaks were part of an opt-in patch via the game's public beta branch.

In a single day, almost 10,000 people were mad enough about an optional patch for a still very publicly unfinished game to leave a negative review on Steam. And the ones complaining that their favorite build is now trash were loud enough to catch Mega Crit's attention.

"Since we have a lot of new players that weren't around for StS1's Early Access phase and players who are new to Early Access games in general, we wanted to explain our patching methodology a bit," the developer writes on social media, noting that balance decisions are made based on player feedback, collected data, and the team's "own design philosophies." And while the studio looks at all platforms, feedback left on the in-game reporter "is more useful to us."

"This beta balance pass was the first of many to come over the next 1-2 years," it adds. "The game will go through constant changes with the ultimate goal of making it as balanced of an experience as StS1 became. This progress will not be linear, and no change is necessarily permanent."

"The beta branch will see the most experimental changes and will be tweaked each time until we feel it's stable enough for the main branch. Participating in that process is optional but very helpful. Thank you for your patience as we slowly mold StS2 into its final shape!"

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