Sports Story: Removed criticism of the development process from the game

Golf Story has been an indie hit for many gamers, combining lawn sports with a charming role-playing game. The expectations for the successor were correspondingly high Sports Story.

After countless postponements and a strange silence surrounding the highly anticipated title from Australian developer studio Sidebar Games, Sports Story finally came out in December 2022 – plagued by technical problems. Reason seems to be bumpy development process to have been, which was addressed and criticized in the game using a secret room.

Sports Story: Criticism Removal is listed in the patch notes

Although this secret room is still in Sports Story after the current update, it should no longer be accessible as it was in the official patch notes called. However, it remains a mystery why the development studio Sidebar Games specifically points out that players are denied access to the intentionally placed criticism of the development process.

The matter is doubly strange because one player still managed to enter the secret room, but encountered altered texts. Originally, the criticism found there read as follows (via Eurogamer): “One could say that we are experiencing a problematic development. You could also say someone is asking for new features all the time and my original vision no longer exists.”

The Sports Story dev room is actually still accessible, but the dialogue has changed #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/h8Ch5Z6f2X

— tendog (@tend0g) January 29, 2023

Apparently, though, the criticism has been turned into a tongue-in-cheek hymn of praise, as the same character in the secret room now proclaims, “Not only are we ahead of schedule on development, but we’re setting records for employee satisfaction. Our employees are rested, fed and their confidence is through the roof. I can assure you things are under control here. Promised.”

It remains unclear who changed the texts. One can only speculate about the reason: perhaps the developer responsible for the criticism wanted to stay out of the management’s line of fire and therefore obviously didn’t mean serious reassurances. The top floor is clearly aware of the secret room – otherwise they would not have tried to deny access to it, even if they were clearly unsuccessful.