Star Wars Jedi: Survivor director refused extra development time to avoid competition

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's director refused extra development time to avoid competition during the game's release window.

Despite mostly positive reviews on consoles, it’s not been the best of times since its launch last week for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, especially on PC. There have been seemingly endless reports of bad performances, bugs, and glitches. In an attempt to let their voices be known, fans have taken to Steam to review-bomb the Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order sequel. What’s more, the game hasn't been safe from criticism on aggregate websites such as Metacritic with one user review saying, “WE NEED TO TAKE A STANCE. The gaming industry cannot keep taking our money and delivering unfinished products. This needs to stop.”

Take a look at our Star Wars Jedi: Survivor review below.

Developers Respawn Entertainment have tried to reassure fans that fixes are on the way. In fact, a patch to fix some reported issues was released this week across PC and consoles. Fans still feel that it's not good enough and this highly anticipated sequel should never have been released in such a poor state.

However, in an interview with IGN, the game's director Stig Asmussen revealed that he'd refused extra development time from publisher EA to avoid Jedi: Survivor having a more competitive release date alongside the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. He said, "When first started having conversations about extending the date, they asked 'How much time?' and I said six weeks. That was exactly 28 April. We stress-tested that date. We looked at what else was coming out in the same time period and we felt like it was a really good landing spot for us, so we stuck with it."

"There was an option," he continued. "Do we want to extend it a little bit longer? But no, we stuck to six weeks." Sadly, this news will come as no surprise to us all, because this kind of practice is nothing new with countless games released in a poor state with the intention of being fixed at a later date. That being said, it’s perhaps not as common to hear a developer refuse the opportunity for a game to have extra time to cook in the oven when granted by the publisher.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is certainly getting a bad rep and this latest story does Respawn Entertainment no favours at all. It’s still worth keeping in mind that not everyone is having a bad experience with the game on PC. As we know, gaming PCs can be very temperamental systems, even those that are higher-end. Still, let’s hope that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will be fixed ASAP across the board because this sequel deserves better.

In our review of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, we said it’s “an exceptional sequel, improving on every gripe fans had with Fallen Order while adding countless new features that'll keep players engrossed for a long, long time. It’ll take something really special to come out to stop Survivor being the best action/adventure game of 2023.”