Dead Cells "abrupt termination" was a bid to promote publisher's new game, ex-dev says

Former lead designer Sébastien Benard has further discussed the decision made by publisher Motion Twin to end Dead Cell's development - something he previously dubbed "the worst imaginable asshole move".

Benard originally shared his sentiments on the end of Dead Cells development via the game's Discord server, where he said the official statement from Motion Twin was "total marketing bullshit" from a company he called "greedy".

Now, Benard has shared an update with further thoughts on his blog, in a bid to shed more light on his previous words.

Benard said after seeing the "abrupt termination decision" from Motion Twin to stop development on Dead Cells at developer Evil Empire, he could "all but extrapolate on what happened behind the scene". "The kind of obvious reason for all this fuzz is certainly to leave room for Windblown," Benard concluded.

Motion Twin announced Windblown, an action roguelite, at The Game Awards last December, which will launch in early access sometime this year.

Most of the "true" Dead Cells developers had either since left or remained at Evil Empire not working on Windblown, according to Benard. Thus, he said, the cancellation strategy was a "logical marketing stunt" to "get rid of Dead Cells to leave room for Windblown".

Last year, Dead Cells passed 10m copies sold, and Evil Empire revealed it had a roadmap of content until "at least the end of 2024". In its statement on the end of Dead Cells development, Evil Empire said the studio is working on "a new game (or two)", which are believed to be the next installments in two "massive" franchises.