Tiny Speck unlaunches Glitch and takes it back to Beta

Vancouver’s Tiny Speck announced earlier this week that their flagship game Glitch is being unlaunched. Huh?

Turns out the developers have recognized that there are some things that the game lacks. Namely, the team wants “to make the early game reveal itself more easily to new players” while also adding more robust creative tools that can be used “to change the world in more tangible ways.” They explain their move back to beta in this blog post.

MMObility’s Beau Hindman got a chance to check in with Tiny Speck founder Stewart Butterfield and while he still remains a bit confused about the announcement, his commentary is worth a read.

The first thing I wanted to clarify with Stewart was how players have reacted to the announcement. “So far, so good,” he said. “The Twitter response has shown that people are pretty positive, and there have been a lot of ‘congrats’ and stuff like that.” He also acknowledged the biggest concern that came from the community was concern about a possible game reset. “A reset is super unlikely; there’s no real reason we would have to do it. A lot of the fundamental mechanics are up for change.” A reset would mean that much of what the current playerbase has worked hours and hours over the last two months for might be wiped away. Stewart stressed that this was very unlikely.

During the interview Butterfield assures Hindman that Glitch fans need not to worry – the game will still be live and players will still have access. And they have a lot more to look forward to in 2012.