The announcement of Temtem: Swarm did not go well with many fans. Crema CEO says it’s not feasible to keep adding content forever.
Temtem: Swarm combines the battling, and trading found in Pokémon games and mixes in Vampire Survivors “bullet-heaven” elements in a never-before-seen spinoff experience.
What is bullet-heaven you may ask? It’s a genre established by a game called Vampire Survivors, which itself is a roguelike shoot-’em-up where the player must fight continuous waves of enemies and survive the onslaught for as long as possible. What’s more, they unlock additional characters, weapons, and relics for subsequent sessions.
Temtem is widely recognized as an MMO. In 2018, the Kickstarter campaign advertised it as a massively multiplayer creature-collection adventure and falls under the same category on Steam. Although game director Guillermo Andrades argued it had never used the MMO label back then, it offers all the features that gamers would expect from the genre.
In a lengthy statement on the official Discord, “Whatever everyone has in its minds for when they hear MMO…. we can’t control that…We have always been pretty clear and upfront about what we’re trying to make. On the campaign, on the FAQs, and every time we’ve been approached with the question. Crema has always been very honest about what the game was and what it is…The community expects to add infinite content, which is costly in terms of time and money, and just because it carries the MMO label, but MMO doesn’t mean infinite.”
“It’s compared to other MMOs, even though Crema has clarified since 2018 that it wouldn’t be like those MMOs. But when comparing it to other MMOs, the small detail is that those MMOs have a subscription model or are free but with pay-to-win practices. They are sustainable in that way.”
Montoya added that Temtem is “a game that gives you a minimum of 50 hours of adventure and another 50 hours of side quests and different features that are not part of the adventure. In total, around 100 hours of gameplay just for a complete game that is not in Early Access and there are things still being added to it.” In other words, it’s a full and complete experience—and at this point, “it is not feasible to continue.”
Granted, Temtem has been in existence for several years now. At some point, particularly when faced with revenue generation, studios will want to move on to other things. The dispute comes from conflicting expectations. While Temtem is an MMO, it’s not a live service game, which much of the player base wants out of it.
“If you really want [the] Temtem franchise to live on and more games to be made, be it spin-offs or Temtem 2, what you would really ask for is for us to stop improving Temtem 1 and start working on something new,” he wrote. “As of now, we are improving Temtem 1 just for you, even if it never seems enough.”
On the official Temtem subreddit, people claimed the statement was “arrogant” and “short-sighted”.
Fortunately, the game will continue on far into the future. On Discord, Montoya said that Temtem “could be a living thing for decades or even more.”
“We are still working on Temtem, it will receive more updates as we are still working on the game,” a studio rep said. “Temtem: Swarm, our latest announcement, is being co-developed with GGTech. We just want to make sure it’s clear that Crema is working on both projects at the same time. We haven’t stopped focusing on Temtem.”