Them's Fightin' Herds Last DLC Is a Tragedy

Not long ago, it was made known that the development of Them's Fightin' Herds was over. Staff laid off, there will be no more support. The news hit the community like a sack of bricks. There was still a lot of left unfinished. The ambitious story mode was in its early stages, and there were still more DLC characters to be released. With a strong and dedicated player base, it seemed like TFH would be able to go on and become one of the shining examples of high quality indie fighters.

It the promised characters were simply released, and the game was left as is, it could've been a bittersweet moment. Yes, the journey is over, but the polished and beloved game would remain intact, and the community would be able to enjoy it for years to come, with great developers hopefully finding new projects to contribute their expertise and experience to.

Sadly, that is not the case, Mane6 was canned in the middle of the QA pass, a vital stage of development that is meant to ensure that what you get actually works properly, from bugs and glitches to unintended interactions and other questionable things.

Twitter (currently X) is teeming with just ridiculous examples of how broken then new characters are. And I don't mean broken in a gaping face YouTube thumbnail "This character is OP!" sense, I mean infinites, unintended invul, and actual game-breaking bugs.

The player base unanimously understood that competitions will have to be held on older versions of the game, or with the new characters banned, there's simply no other way around it.

The game's publisher, Maximum Entertainment, have responded to the issue several days later, saying that they've noticed it and are actively working on as fix. It's not clear how they are doing it, since Mane6 was laid off in almost its entirety. Perhaps some of the staff were brought back, or developers from Diesel Legacy or their recently announced Avatar: TLA are helping out on it, for now we just have to wait and see.

The fans are justifiably upset, since it's unlikely that Maximum was not aware of the game's state when they decided to fire the Mane6 developers, but at the very least, if they deliver the fixes, it could mean that the game will end on a less tragic note.