Double Fine Turn Lemons into a Beta Test

Earlier this week, Double Fine’s first mobile game venture, Middle Manager of Justice, escaped into the wilds of the iOS App Store. And we do mean ‘escaped’: the release was an accident and quickly pulled, but not before many eager iOS device owners had managed to download their own copies of the unfinished, still bug-riddled free-to-play management game.

Out of some publishers, this could lead to a lot of corporate double-talk and stilted news briefs. Lead developer Kee Chi, however, was refreshingly candid:

“Yeah, it was totally my fault,” he told Gamasutra. “Once we submitted the game, we realized we had a lot of things we still needed to tweak and fix, but […] we didn’t want to remove it from the [submission] process in case Apple catches other things we need to take care of, and we didn’t want to do a double submission.”

Finding egg on his face and thinking fast, Chi decided to treat the opportunity as an unscheduled beta test. He and other Double Fine staff hit the message boards of both Double Fine’s official forum and neoGAF to ask players who had downloaded Middle Manager of Justice prior to its removal from the App Store to “become impromptu playtesters.”

As Gamasutra reports: “Even just a few days later, Chi says he’s received a ton of valuable feedback that’s helped Double Fine eliminates bugs, and makes the game’s free-to-play elements less restrictive for non-paying players.”

So, was it really an accidental release? Because it sounds like Double Fine have made out like bandits on this one.

The final version of Middle Manager of Justice will grace the iOS App Store in the next few weeks.

Via Gamasutra.