The Double Fine studio shared information about how it used the accidental release of its first mobile game for iOS, Middle Manager of Justice, for the good of the cause.
Last Tuesday, the game appeared in the App Store, despite the fact that its release was supposed to happen at the end of September. Project manager Kee Chi explained the situation by the fact that the team uploaded a preliminary version of the game in advance (so that there would be no delays with Apple’s approval), and indicated September as the release date without announcing a specific date. But there were no delays on the part of Apple, and on September 1, the game appeared on virtual shelves.
Naturally, after a while, access to the Middle Manager of Justice was blocked, but by this time many users had already downloaded the game. It would seem that this is not a very pleasant situation, but Double Fine was able to benefit from it.
The developers “went to the people”: on numerous forums, they appealed to users who downloaded the game, asking them to send feedback, messages about “bugs”. Thus, Double Fine turned the leak into an unplanned beta testing, the results of which, according to Ki Chi, turned out to be very useful for “polishing” the project.