Dungeon Keeper has had the internet in an app-fueled frenzy over the past week. TechRadar's Stuart Houghton says it's a perfect example of how in-app purchases are killing mobile gaming, while Peter Molyneux says the game's mechanics are "ridiculous".
But the game might not have been bashed so harshly if it wasn't already such a loved franchise, according to mobile gaming developer Big Fish Games, the name behind almost 400 mobile games on iOS alone.
"With Dungeon Keeper, one of the problems is that it does have a legacy," Big Fish vice president Susan Lust told TechRadar.
"Because the game they had in their head was not the game they were getting for free - that was the biggest downfall."
Fee-to-play
"People who loved Dungeon Keeper in the past, they were expecting that, and then when they got a completely different that was free to play there was a lot of controversy," she added.
But wherever you stand on the game's approach to free-to-play, EA's decision to filter out low-scoring user reviews on the Google Play store has only added unnecessarily fuel to the fire.
The company's got a lot of work to do if it wants to win back a lot of its (and Dungeon Keeper's) fans.
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