The Hiveswap Fiasco – 2020-2021

  • 21 min read (36 min w/ quotes)
  • Posted by GiovanH in fandom

This point, early October 2020, is when I originally published this article. Time keeps ticking on, and Hiveswap updates continue to slowly drip out.

October 2020

Act 2 Trailer

A new trailer is posted for Hiveswap Act 2. It opens with “years ago, but not many” as a reference to how slow the development process has been going, I guess?

Hiveswap Act 2 is delayed to November 2020.

Hiveswap.com is also updated with a more “streamlined” design. The new design removes many links to other projects and independent artists that were previously only accessible through the Hiveswap home page, so all of that content is now inaccessible unless you have a direct link already.

In the background, the entire whatpumpkin.com domain now force-redirects to hiveswap.com, breaking innumerable important links like this one and this one and that one.

New Troll

The new website also has a screenshot with this troll who has not previously been seen in promotional material or as part of the Troll Call. This is Fefsprites’ fantroll Idarat Catlaz, in the game due to them winning the comic contest. Nice!

November 2020

Fellow Traveller closes social

This message was posted to the Fellow Traveller discord server on 11/01/2020:

Hey @Homestuck Traveller, we hope you’re excited for the release of Act 2 in November!

We wanted to give you an update on some business housekeeping.

As the release date of Hiveswap: Act 2 nears, Fellow Traveller and What Pumpkin have made a few adjustments to our publishing arrangement. What Pumpkin Games will be expanding its operations to take a more direct role in player support for Hiveswap. This means that going forward, any questions and concerns about Hiveswap should be sent directly to What Pumpkin Games. Fellow Traveller will continue to work with What Pumpkin as the publisher of Pesterquest and Friendsim.

With these changes, we will be closing the Homestuck and Hiveswap channels in our Discord. We will close the channels on November 9 2020, but What Pumpkin has created a new Discord to make sure you can continue your conversations, memes and theories. Once everything in the new Discord is set up, they’ll be handing over moderation to you, the fans. You can start making your transition with this invite: https://discord.gg/krfzwma

The Pesterquest channel in our Discord will remain for discussion of Friendsim and Pesterquest, and we’ll have some news to share there soon.

Keep an eye on What Pumpkin Games social channels for news about future Hiveswap community projects.

Fellow Traveller announced that they would be shutting down their discord channels for Homestuck and Hiveswap, so that What Pumpkin could take a more aggressive role in managing community forums for Homestuck.

The links for Hiveswap acts 1 and 2 were still on the Fellow Traveller website, with no indication of any changes in publishing.

Act 2 Release Date

On November 15, the @homestuck twitter account uploaded this youtube link:

They teased this especially hard, and promised that the release date (which, again, was already announced to be sometime in November) would be revealed at the end of the video.

However, instead of announcing this directly, they used YouTube Premiere to delay the video and have a live announcement. The video itself went live at on the 16th, a full day later.

Act 2’s new release date is November 25, as announced on Twitter with this screenshot of the youtube video.

The body of the video itself is all gameplay footage of Act 2, complete with mouse cursor a la YouTube LP.

There is also a new press kit for Act 2 with both Act 2 trailers and gameplay screenshots.

Act 2 Release

Act 2 released on November 25, 2020.

If you want my reactions to the game itself, I made a (spoilery) twitter reaction thread about it:

Act 2 Credits Outcry

When Act 2 released, people immediately realized something was wrong; the game released without any crediting of any kind. The credits button was missing from the main menu, there was no postgame credits reel, and even the soundtrack DLC didn’t have the artists listed.

After prolonged outrage on Twitter and Reddit, as well as targeted review bombing on Steam, the new “homestuckteam” curiouscat account posted this statement:

Members of the Hiveswap development team quickly responded saying that they did not agree to only credit the studio initially, and that this tweet was a lie. Former members of the Hiveswap development team, whose work was used uncredited, were also not consulted, and agreed to nothing of the sort.

I also talked about this myself on Twitter:

Suffice it to say, nobody bought that.

The game was silently patched with credits one day later, on November 28. Metadata for the credits page was actually in the game all along, but the credits slide itself had been removed, indicating that the credits functionality was implemented but later specifically disabled for release. The soundtrack was not updated, and still does not credit the musicians, although James Roach later posted the credits himself.

No announcement was made on Steam or Twitter, nor was the “targeted harassment” issue brought up again. A few entries on the credits page were, however, left anonymous or pseudoanonymous. As was discussed on Twitter, leaving credit entries anonymous or pseudoanonymous is an effective way of handing this.

Act 2 Cut Content

Act 2 also had a significant amount of cut content, including several minigames and entire characters who were heavily featured in promotional material.

Charun promo Zebede promo Sirs not appearing in this game

One of the few remaining minigames, a bee-themed rhythm minigame, was retroactively (and silently) removed from the game several days after release. It was simply cut, and not replaced with any sort of explanation. teamhomestuck made the following statement about this when asked:

Q: What drove the decision to remove the bee minigame? I really liked it :(

A:

We received reports that the bee game was a hard block for people with certain mobility issues. Engineering solutions like a skip button might’ve taken several more days to implement. We preferred to get out an accessibility solution ASAP so we opted to just remove it. But we’ll consider our options about what to do with it in the future.

We have had limited availability from a handful of people to take care of urgent issues as they come up due to the holiday, so we apologize for the delays.

Starting this week we’ll take a good look at what improvements we can make based on your feedback. Thank you all for your patience and help tracking down the last few bugs since launch.

On Twitter, they followed this with

As I brought up at the time, just a few days prior, James Roach himself tweeted about finding the bee minigame really hard. Then WP said they were blindsided by accessibility needs and had to scramble to make the game playable. I have a hard time reconciling those two facts.

Either “the bee game was inaccessible because nobody told us” is a lie or WPG is extremely dysfunctional. or both. probably both.

Also, WP turning around and framing this as “we’re indie devs, people are making unreasonable demands of us” is insulting and absurd given they had ample time to do testing themselves but choose not to. But “we are the victims of this problem we caused ourselves” seems to be the go-to line from WP

Despite their implication that fixing the accessibility issue was an urgent priority that would almost be enough to drive them to work over the weekend, the bee minigame would not be fixed until 2021-01-14, when the game was patched with no update description on Steam and no announcement on social media.

Key reselling scheme

On November 30, @homestuck made an announcement:

Although the announcement does not specify the cut What Pumpkin is claiming to give to charity, the web page linked says 10%. This is only a third of Steam’s 30% cut, so What Pumpkin actually makes 128% percent of their usual profit when you buy from their site directly, even though they’re giving a cut to charity.

(Although December came and went, it is unclear whether the 10% cut is still going to charity, or if now that the specified charity period ended, What Pumpkin is now pocketing the full amount of new purchases. The storefront page has not been updated to reflect a change, but this could be in error.)

While Steam does provisionally allow key selling, they explicitly reserve the right to deny keys to developers who misuse keys in various ways. Steam may take action against What Pumpkin for explicitly working to cut Steam out of the loop and keep them from getting their fee, although they have not done so yet.

January 2021

I wrote the Debacle article with a report on new allegations about The Odd Gentlemen and what happened during that timespan. What Pumpkin later confessed to several of the allegations broken in this piece.

February 2021

Psycholonials

Andrew Hussie began publishing promo materials for a new project. This would turn out to be a new episodic visual novel called Psycholonials, apparently unrelated to Homestuck or Hiveswap. (This didn’t stop the official Homestuck Twitter account from promoting it, though.)

Psycholonials gameplay screenshot

According to a schedule on the Psycholonials web page, the ninth and final episode is scheduled to release on 4/20/2021. At this point there is not an expected date for Hiveswap acts 3 and 4, nor is there a schedule for Hauntswitch. Psycholonials, however, will be fully published within two months.

(At time of writing I have not played Psycholonials and have no particular comments as to its content. If I do play Psycholonials any comments I have about its content are probably not relevant to the history of Hiveswap anyway.)

HS2 Patreon Cancelled

Homestuck^2, the comic, had been on an announced hiatus since December 2020. According to the team,

We’re taking a bit of a break to recharge and refresh, and to do some reshuffling of tiers, update schedule, and bonus content.

The hiatus had no planned end date, and it continued through February.

On February 11th, the previously discussed Homestuck Patreon posted an announcement from Andrew Hussie. This long post blamed misogyny, transphobia, racism, “internet bullying”, and “large segments of the fandom” for the general failures of Homestuck^2. Ultimately, this led up to Andrew cancelling Homestuck^2 as it currently exists and ending the Patreon funding model. Homestuck^2 will now be posted all at once when the comic is finished. There is no estimated schedule for this. This post also did not address previous assertions on behalf of HS2 that the serial format was intentionally chosen and a strong part of Homestuck^2 as a work.

The Homestuck^2 website was also updated to remove the “news” section and replaced the “About” page with the single blurb:

Homestuck^2 is an officially commissioned story which explores a continuation of the narrative after the events of The Homestuck Epilogues. It began in October of 2019 and updated regularly for about a year until it was paused indefinitely. The creative team is now being commissioned to finish the story privately. All content will be posted here at once when the story is complete.

According to the post, it will be funded by “previously saved Patreon funds”. It seems unlikely that there is a vault of Patreon money that could fund the rest of the comic by itself, but notably absent is any sort of financial support from What Pumpkin.

April 2021

On 4/12/2021, one day before 4/13, Homestuck Inc.’s “Hauntswitch” trademark was marked as abandoned with no use statement filed.

Act 7 Answers

Update #36 (Backers only)

On 4/13/2021, seemingly in response to a video essay that includes a summary of my Hiveswap research, the Hiveswap Kickstarter posted Update #36, for backers only. It is a very formal document that addresses some of the accusations made about Hiveswap development.

(On the same day, What Pumpkin threatened the video itself with legal action of some variety, as they are known to do. As of writing, neither What Pumpkin nor anyone claiming to be associated with it have contacted me about inaccuracies, discrepancies, or “libel” in any of my articles or research. What Pumpkin still seems unwilling to directly accuse me of any misconduct, but does seem more than willing to slander me behind my back.)

It appears to have not been written that day as a reaction to the video, but rather something What Pupmkin had on file as a nuclear option, in case they were forced at figurative gunpoint to be transparent to backers. Andrew later confirmed this:

From my perspective, it seems like backers only began to get transparency after [the Sarah Z video] came out, which seems a bit odd to me.

I think there’s an implication behind this statement which I’ve seen a few times in other places. Which is something like, if WP was able to respond so quickly after [the video] with a new Kickstarter update sharing that information, why not just share that information a long time ago, which could have theoretically averted a sitaution like this?

The answer is that the recent backer update really wasn’t as trivial as it seemed. It was more of a measure of last resort. WP had a post like that on file, which is why it was able to be posted pretty quickly. It was just somewhat edited to suit the purpose, and address some of the specific claims. More thorough accounts like that have been prepared in advance to post in case anything unforseen happened, examples being like, if TOG began sharing some distorted version of events, or if Gio and his accomplice started doing really insane stuff instead of just posting misinformation on a low-traffic blog. A backer update like that was a measure of last resort because posting it at all carries risk.

The first half of this is a confession. “Yes”, Hussie says, “we had this information available in a form that was ready to be shared to Kickstarter backers, but we withheld it because we really didn’t want to share it. We weren’t planning to ever admit to any of this, and the video — not our obligations — is what forced us to.”1 I don’t need to tell you how far this project has devolved from “weekly backer updates”, do I?

In an email between Sarah Z’s management and WP President and CEO Cindy Dominguez, WP claimed that posting this required WP to “invest significant time and resources into combatting [disinformation]”, and that they “may need to pay thousands in legal fees in the process of reviewing the necessary documentation related to our settlement”, but this later turned out to be mostly bogus, as Andrew mentioned above.

This almost feels like low-hanging fruit at this point, but I’m just going to note here one more time that Andrew Hussie is saying here that they intentionally withheld information from people who were entitled to it in order to make a profit off that deception, which, among other things, is an actual dictionary definition of fraud. And that’s not even something I’m going out on a limb and accusing them of, that’s what they’re saying here! That’s their excuse! At the risk of editorializing here, that’s astonishing.

Then there’s a personal attack against me and my work (mixed in with a thorough misunderstanding of how journalistic sources work) and offhand remark that there are even more transparency reports that have been pre-prepared, but WP is still choosing to withhold. It ends with a mention that “posting it at all carries risk.” I’ll talk more about this “risk” at the end of the blow-by-blow, because “risk” is something the announcement touches on too.

Let’s get directly into the content of the Kickstarter update:

Over the years, a lot of misinformation as well as deliberate disinformation has spread around about the history of Hiveswap. The purpose of this post is to clarify these matters for backers who’ve been wondering what the truth is.

The post talks here for a bit about George Rohac, WP’s former Director of Business Development (as of Namco High). (I’m not sure why they choose this moment to involve him, but they do.) I went back and included this information with the campaign details.

Then we get some detailed financial numbers from the Kickstarter campaign. For the first time, although the campaign was nearly a decade ago.

The crowdfunding campaign finished out at a gross total of $2,485,506, as well as a gross total of $207,930 from PayPal pledges. But because of platform fees, as well as the costs of producing and shipping merchandise to backers of the campaign, the effective budget was significantly lower than the gross pledged total

Budget spreadsheet

This finally, for the first time, confirmed the actual total amount of money raised by the campaign: $2,693,436. This chart also includes detailed breakdowns of platform fees and merch costs, which leaves $1,627,004 in the game development budget, before taxes. And this confirms that the number this article reported was correct.

After determining the final budget for the game, What Pumpkin signed an agreement with the contracted game company (hereafter “[TOG]”) to develop Hussie’s game concept. WP and [TOG] entered into a development contract on November 30, 2012, shortly after the conclusion of the Homestuck Kickstarter. WP paid $788,000 to [TOG] in late 2012 for development.

They won’t mention the name “The Odd Gentlemen”, for some reason (likely the settlement), but we get more details about the contract: $788,000. This is exactly the number in ipgd’s story, confirming that much. They don’t confirm where the rest of the money went at this point, whether it was set aside for future Hiveswap work or simply added to regular Homestuck operating funds. This is an odd thing to leave ambiguous, for reasons which will come up later.

But then we get to the real meat of the story. What Pumpkin addresses the allegations that TOG did contract work on the Homestuck comic, specifically Act 7.

Because there was an understanding that delivering the complete game development documents would take some time, during which it would be difficult for [TOG] to make meaningful progress on the Hiveswap game build, [TOG] inquired about getting involved with other Homestuck-adjacent projects to do immediate work. WP let [TOG] know about the Act 7 animation plans. With an assurance that this work could be done in parallel with a flexible timeline and would not impact the development cycle of Hiveswap itself, Hussie and What Pumpkin saw this as a good opportunity to establish a working relationship with this organization prior to the start of development and agreed to contract [TOG] to do animation work for the Act 7 project.

WP and [TOG] agreed that this project would have a separate budget from the Hiveswap Kickstarter money, paid for from WP’s regular operating funds. As the existence of this animation itself would not be revealed until its release in 2016, this was not publicly announced at the time. [TOG] and the lead animator on the project specifically requested not to be credited upon release of the animation.

What Pumpkin unequivocally states they secretly contracted TOG to do significant work on Act 7, but claim that the funds used were separate from the $788,000 game contract. Instead, they claim the money used came from “regular operating funds”, which they imply does not include any of the other money raised from the Kickstarter campaign. Oddly, this is merely implied; the word choice used is weirdly ambiguous about this, given its importance.

What Pumpkin also claims that the reason TOG’s involvement was kept a secret was that TOG specifically requested that the studio not be credited. They don’t say when this request was made, which is extremely significant. They’re implying that this request was made around 2013, before the unpleasantness and settlement, but it is entirely possible TOG made this request nearer to 2016, not wanting to be publicly involved with WP because of the painful legal battle, or even due to the terms of the settlement.

Hussie initiated the “Megapause” on April 14, 2013 in order to devote his full attention to finalizing the Hiveswap development documents. What Pumpkin soon provided its story documents so that [TOG] could formally begin core systems development. … In 2013 following receipt of WP’s deliverables, [TOG] enthusiastically assured WP that it was positioned to begin development.

Now we get back to the design documents. What Pumpkin says here that the “story documents” were provided sometime around April 2013, and WP submitted the deliverables in 2013, as opposed to the previous estimate of October 2014. This… can’t be correct. We know WP hadn’t completed all of the Hiveswap deliverables by 2013 by WP’s own account; Andrew posted that the documents weren’t done in Update #15 on June 2014, making that the earliest possible date they could have been submitted. Either this 2013 number is false or one of those earlier updates was.

The Prototype

[TOG] would deliver its first prototype in early 2014. [The attached prototype] was sent to WP on 2/18/14. At this point, it was becoming a significant concern among backers that WP had yet to show proof that the game was being made, so WP was looking for any sort of tangible progress update from [TOG] that was suitable to share with the public. But Hussie and WP found the quality of the prototype somewhat alarming, and decided that sharing any shots from the game would only cause embarrassment for [TOG].

Here we get the astonishing: a playable build of the legendary broken 2014 prototype. It is indeed not very good, and it’s entirely understandable that What Pumpkin didn’t release any gameplay screenshots or footage at this point. Also, this is just generally a really cool artifact to have.

Prototype screenshot: room Prototype screenshot: words

The prototype build is essentially as advertised. HiveSwap_1stPlayablePrototype.exe is a stock 3D unity game where you can move a t-posing Joey around in an untextured room and examine a few objects. There are a few conversation stubs consisting of fixed camera angles with placeholder text. There’s no pathfinding, so trying to move to certain objects gets Joey stuck on geometry and softlocks the demo.

Under the hood, the demo seems to be written entirely in Adventure Creator for Unity, a Unity asset store toolkit that advertises itself as a way to “Develop a 2D or 3D adventure game in Unity without writing a line of code.”2 The code itself has class names like KickStarter, so it’s possible this version was more of a proof-of-concept than a serious base game the developers meant to iterate upon (especially given the presence of Adventure Creator). There is a surprisingly robust menu system with a save/load system, but I suspect this is Adventure Creator built-in functionality, rather than work done specifically for this demo.

Back to the announcement, WP then repeats the claim that TOG didn’t end up improving on the prototype or producing a good game which, at this point, is pretty much established.

There’s an email here from part of a chain trying to coordinate an office visit:

May 15, 2014 - from [TOG] to Hussie

That’s awesome about being on the west coast. It’d be great to have you come to the studio.

Dev has slowed a bit on our end, as we wanted to take a step back and really evaluate what was needed and the best way to achieve the features that have been coming online in the docs. We’re continuing to break that all down so we can build and plan most effectively moving forward. We also wanted to find some simple formats for input from your writing team for dialogue content and are getting that squared away.

The best time to come by would actually be right after E3. Things are a bit nuts until then.

Here TOG apparently admits that development progress has been slow, claiming that the work was spent more on design. They also mention that they’re extremely busy due to E3 (presumably with Wayward Manor, based simply on the date) and ask to postpone the visit. They continued postponing visits from Hussie and representatives through August.

TOG produced the concept art from Update #15 over the summer. Update 15 focused on the art and design rather than detail the development troubles.

And then the document suddenly and abruptly changes gears. Remember Act 7? The secret contract for Act 7’s back, and we’re shifting gears to aggressively defending that choice and keeping it secret. I’ll let them make their case:

There was no indication from [TOG] that the Act 7 animation project was in any way in conflict with Hiveswap development. [TOG] was enthusiastic about taking on this project, and bidded against other animators for the contract. They saw it as a useful tie-in to concept art work on Hiveswap, as [TOG] leadership conveyed in an email to WP in early 2013:

It was great chatting with you. We’ve been running through this and we think we have something that will work well for everyone.

We’re with you and totally want to make this something that has way more legs than just the animation — though, of course, we want that to stand alone as something incredible and work as a fantastic lead in to the game using this same style.

To that end, what we think works best is that with this animation not only will me make an amazing finale, but we will also utilize this time to fully define and lockdown the style of the game while using this added conceptual time to increase the overall fidelity by defining pipelines and getting a head start on all of the art

WP also does not have any reason to believe that the Act 7 project in practice created a conflict that was not disclosed by [TOG] to WP. Act 7 was a 2D animation project, and Hiveswap at the time was a 3D game, so it did not pull [TOG]’s programmers or 3D artists away from work on Hiveswap. [TOG] never mentioned the development needs of a separate project at all to WP, or cited any such reason as distracting from work on Hiveswap; [TOG] instead repeatedly provided WP with various assurances that everything was still fine with Hiveswap.

Had [TOG] communicated that they had scheduling conflicts or some other impediment preventing them from developing Hiveswap, WP would have terminated the contract even sooner.

So that’s their story. The Odd Gentlemen worked on Act 7 (according to WP, with funds that are implied not to be from the Kickstarter), but What Pumpkin thinks this didn’t create a project or conflict. Since Hiveswap and Act 7 required different skillsets, TOG could divide their staff between the projects without under-staffing either. And, had TOG experienced a conflict and told WP, WP says they would have cancelled the contract. (They don’t acknowledge how this incentivises TOG to keep news of problems from WP, though.) Even today, with the benefit of hindsight, WP doesn’t believe there was a conflict or distraction.

One obvious oddity with the idea of avoiding conflicts and doing both jobs together: earlier in this same update, one of the reasons Act 7 was an appropriate contract was because they knew it would take time to get design documents together. If the goal was to have two teams working together, working on Act 7 and idling until the design documents are ready doesn’t accomplish that.

One thing to note in that quoted section: there were, in fact, plans to coordinate the Act 7 animation with Hiveswap, somehow. It’s unclear exactly how this would have worked, but this matches details of the original Act 7 allegation that Act 7 was meant to be more tightly related to Hiveswap than what ended up happening.

Next the update summarizes the termination of the agreement with The Odd Gentlemen and the establishment of the WP NYC studio. There’s not a specific reason given here, other than Hussie presumably being dissatisfied with their performance and responsiveness, as previously mentioned. This was around the time of Update #16.

What Pumpkin says “at this point, negotiations were very amicable”, but implies that recovering the unused money from the contract was surprisingly difficult. They don’t go into detail about this at all, presumably due to legal obligations. They do specify, though, that the funds recouped were much less than they originally expected.

What Pumpkin then says that the NYC studio ran into trouble because it was established with the expected budget, but TOG ended up returning less than the expected amount.

The WP NYC project manager had designed the schedule based on the good faith presumption that most of the development funds would be recouped. When it was finally revealed the return was far short of what was expected, and the repayment plan could in no way keep up with the schedule as currently drafted, it threw the project into a period of chaos as plans were quickly redrawn. The length of Act 1 was slashed, and other modifications were made to try to fit the rest of Act 1 into the newly shortened runway. But in the end, the revisions still weren’t enough to save the game as it existed, and the studio needed to be closed in order to reserve what funds remained to finish the project in some form.

This may have come across as a sudden or spontaneous decision. Part of this is because the WP NYC senior staff and WP ownership were doing everything in their power to save the project, including injecting WP regular operating funds into the project, until it was determined that going any further would be disastrous for the future of Hiveswap. Another is that WP was legally unable to give any detailed disclosures about the financial troubles, even to many of the WP NYC staff.

The way this is described, upper management had an understanding of the problem in advance. But why were the employees blindsided? Why were backers? What of the horror stories of people getting fired and losing healthcare? What Pumpkin pins the blame on… the TOG settlement, the details of which are still secret.

They then claim that they were originally going to re-open the studio (if they could put together a new budget). It should be noted here that while the studio was meant to be frozen, the staff was really truly fired, not put in any sort of limbo. But the re-opening itself ended up not happening because… an employee was ambiguously bad?

It should also be noted that originally the NYC studio was not going to be permanently closed, but only frozen for a reassessment of the project. But during this freeze period, there were some dramatic events. One staff member behaved in a destructive and threatening manner. … This version of the project was then abandoned for many reasons, including these events.

There are really no details here for me to even comment on, but this is… just an odd thing to partially attribute the studio closure to, no? I’d be interested in hearing more about this, although I realize that’s highly unlikely due to the potentially personal nature of the issue.

Next, we get an explicit response to the various accounts that the 3D Acts 1 and 2 were shippable and in-progress, respectively:

Some misinformation claims that at the time the WP NYC studio was shuttered, its iterations of Act 1 and 2 were complete. This is wrong. Act 1 was very far from a shippable state and absolutely no work on Act 2 had been completed besides some concept and 3D art. Here you can see a video documenting one of many major bugs with critical path progression in the final build produced by WP NYC, where it becomes impossible to re-focus on the Simon Says toy if Joey fails and then exits out of the puzzle: Link

That response is a resounding “no they weren’t.” The footage linked shows a near-playable version of the game, but there are still clearly missing text labels and game-breaking bugs. This is clearly not ready to ship, and they were right not to. There is, however, most of a game here, it just needs more work. But it seems that the claim “at the end of 2014 the first act was in a shippable state” was at least an exaggeration. Likewise, the “Act 2” being worked on would not have been comparable to the current Steam release of Act 2, but would look more like the second half of Act 1.3

To WP’s knowledge every artist whose work was used in the final release of Act 1 was included in the credits. The final version of Act 1 was in large part built off concept art and storyboards drawn during the WP NYC era, and many of the artists who made them continued to work on the team that produced the final version of Act 1; the roadmap for the completion of Act 1 was specifically planned because WP had determined that the existing 2D concepts could easily be refined into a final product that would both be visually appealing and more economic to produce. Unfortunately due to the transition to 2D WP no longer had a place for the 3D artists or the original 3D engine, and all of those assets were dropped. They were not used as a basis for the finished assets in Act 1, and visual similarities to WP NYC 3D assets are due to the fact that final Act 1 assets are in large part refinements of the original concept art. Any artist whose work was used incidentally was included in Additional Contributions.

This appears to be a direct response to my criticism of Act 1’s crediting. There’s a lot here: implicit dismissal of the artistic legitimacy of design work, how many 3D resources match up exactly with the final game except with a style shift… Most obviously it directly contradicts Update #22, where What Pumpkin says the WP NYC team produced a stockpile of 2D assets that were used in the 2D version. In the middle of this very paragraph they explicitly say that some 3D concept art, storyboards, and 2D assets made by people who didn’t stay at the company is in the final game.

What Pumpkin makes the claim that they credited all the incidental artists, but I’ve spoken to ex-WP employees who have told me, straight-up, that their work was used or traced but they aren’t named in the credits. I can’t force you to believe the people instead of the company, but that’s just not what I’ve heard. I’ve spoken to multiple people who directly testified that they weren’t credited for their work or offered a position at the new company. If they’re all to be believed, What Pumpkin is simply lying here.

As an addendum, WP has identified the primary source of a disclosure to a well-circulated document of the Hiveswap development process. WP has been aware of a pattern of false claims this former employee has made since the end of their employment at the beginning of 2014. As this individual was not present during the end of the development contract with [TOG], nor the WP NYC development period, all of the information they have shared is based on speculation and conjecture.

I believe this person to be my primary source for the Act 7 article. According to What Pumpkin, this is a disgruntled ex-employee who left the team in early 2014, meaning anything they said later than that is speculation. In addition to the obvious — that a whistleblower doesn’t like the practices they’re whistleblowing — this would mean they were not privy to the events of 2014 or later, making anything they said about that only semi-informed speculation.

This makes sense. For instance, “Act 1 was in a shippable state at the end of 2014, and Act 2 was nearly done” turns out to probably be incorrect, as mentioned above. The source was wrong about this, but exaggerated to make What Pumpkin look as bad as possible.

That being said, they made significant claims (TOG working on Act 7, for instance) that this very update confirms. I’m editing the article to note the additional unreliability, but the source’s contributions cannot be entirely discarded.

At this time, WP does not wish to invite more controversy into the lives of anyone previously involved with this project, and considers these matters to have been resolved long ago.

These matters should have been resolved long ago. This is ancient drama, and the fact that it took what it did to get this level of transparency is shameful. Instead, I’ve gotten threats and targeted harassment by the core team over simply acknowledging the history. The drama around Hiveswap and Hauntswitch is kept alive by What Pumpkin, and no one else.

Since preservation of the project was the primary responsibility to the backers, making destructive disclosures that put the project at risk along the way would have been at odds with that responsibility.

Here’s that risk again. This makes it very clear: the risk What Pumpkin fears is to the company, to the “Hiveswap project”. Transparency creates risk to the project, because the facts about what What Pumpkin did and does is so hideously bad. What Pumpkin isn’t willing to do right, or meet basic obligations, or just generally be decent to the few people who actually like it. It’s too far gone, too committed to itself to do anything. The only thing left for it to try to manipulate is the optics of the situation. Somewhere the goal became to lie and omit for personal gain. This is the goal that any truth poses “risk” to.

What Pumpkin:

It’s not true that your primary responsibility is to the preservation of the project. It’s not true that your primarily responsibility to the fans who funded your project was to ensure your own survival first. Your responsibilities are not to the company, they’re to people. Listen to yourself. Keeping the “project” alive and saving face was not worth the expense of your own artists and employees. You say disclosing what happened would have been “destructive”? That the thing that put the Hiveswap Kickstarter at risk would have been the disclosure? You’re seriously ending this update by saying you did everything right? That you made all the right choices?

Well look how that turned out.

All in all this is an astonishing press release (is it a press release if it’s labelled as for backers eyes only?); perhaps one of the ballsiest things WP has done. It simultaneously says that some of my claims were lies (even legally actionable!), admits that they did many of the things I claimed they did, and insist that it was fine and good that they did all of them.

Andrew quits Homestuck

On 4/20/2021, the What Pumpkin website was silently updated. No announcement tweet was made, no email or other announcement put out; the text was simply edited into the website. The content of the announcement was also not part of the Kickstarter update a few days prior.

In early 2020, Hussie officially left What Pumpkin to work on new projects unrelated to Homestuck. In the time since, they completed a new project called Psycholonials. The final chapter of this visual novel was just posted today, and is available on Steam and mobile platforms. While Hussie still retains ownership of the Homestuck IP, they decided last year to fully discontinue their creative involvement in any future Homestuck projects, and instead plans to continue independently developing more projects like Psycholonials.

This announces that in “early 2020” (a full year prior), Hussie “officially left” What Pumpkin. It’s not entirely clear what “officially” means in this context, since it was done without announcement and kept secret for a year. Hussie still “retains ownership of the Homestuck IP”, but has discontinued “creative involvement” in “any future Homestuck projects.”

The “early 2020” time period mentioned may be May 2020, when “Hiveswap” was transfered from What Pumpkin Games, inc to Homestuck Inc. Andrew Hussie still personally owns the “Homestuck” trademark, as the site says.

This leaves a lot very unclear. Is Andrew to be involved in the completion of Hiveswap or Hauntswitch? Are they considering the two games to be a “future” project or an old one? Will the Viz hardcover book collection continue, or is Hussie refusing to finish the commentary? Who is in charge of What-Pumpkin-the-company now, if Andrew left? Cynthia Dominguez, the other co-founder? Aysha Farah, who does at least still work there? These questions are conspicuously unanswered.

Despite having supposedly What Pumpkin and quit Homestuck circa May 2020, Andrew made the Future Approach to Homestuck^2 post on the What Pumpkin patreon account, signing it by name in February 2021. In the post he repeatedly describes himself as the executive in charge of the project, and personally dictating the future direction of the project: both in form and in content.

A few notes have filtered in about the commentary, but no official announcement has been made. Viz lists the Homestuck collection as being a 6 book set, with all six books published, even though that collection only covers Side 1 (only about 50% of the comic). A few people who contacted Viz directly (myself included) got answers like “At this time, we do not have any news regarding other future releases of Homestuck” and even one time “The 6 book set covers the entire comic”, which is of course false. I have emailed Viz myself asking about this, but have yet to get a response.

  1. As you can read, I’m paraphrasing here. ↩

  2. I won’t detail the whole attribution process here, but if you load up Assembly-CSharp.dll in a .NET disassmbler, you can see the AC namespace, which you can match to the Adventure Creator API. ↩

  3. This assumes the build provided by WP really is the latest NYC build of the game. It would be possible to deliberately present an footage older build here to exaggerate the point that the game wasn’t ready by lying about the footage presented. There’s no evidence that this is fabricated, though, only that it could be, and WP is incentivized to do so. ↩

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