Super Meat Boy 3D Prototype Held Ransom for Charity

Aubrey Hesselgren, a developer at Preloaded, initially created his prototype of a 3D Super Meat Boy game as a bit of an experiment, to see if it could be done. And, of course, as a tribute and 30th birthday present to Tommy Refenes, one half of the development team at Team Meat, creators of the incredibly popular 2D Super Meat Boy.

But now that the very rough prototype has garnered quite a bit of interest from people other than Tommy, Hesselgren wants to do something else with it. But he won't develop it into a full game, for both practical and ethical reasons:

Releasing it as a "real" product, for money, has its own issues: I genuinely wouldn't have the time to support it as it stands, and I haven't the means or hours in the day to develop it further. And developing it further would be rather a case of "ill gotten gains", since I'm riding the success of Tommy and Edmund's fantastic game.

So he's going to hold the prototype ransom, and use the money raised for a good cause:

I'll release the Super Meat Boy Galaxy prototype for free as soon as my demands are met: raise 10,000 quid for The Samaritans, and the prototype will be released, free for all onto the internet.

Not only that, but Hesselgren will actually give the prototype (currently on Windows, though in future also on Mac and Linux) to anyone who donates regardless of whether that target is met; that's just when he'll release it to the whole world. But let's hope he does hit his goal, because the Samaritans is a good cause and I can't currently think of another developer who's done anything quite this selfless.