Coral Island developer Stairway Games has thrown doubt on the future of the game’s Switch port thanks to the recent “restructuring” of publisher Humble Games.
In a letter to “console players” and “Switch backers especially” released on X (formerly Twitter), Stairway says that the recent chaos at Humble leaves “consoles in a place of uncertainty”, as the developer doesn’t handle updates and changes to Coral Island on non-PC platforms.
The studio says it shares players’ frustrations regarding the lack of a Coral Island Switch port, and that there are a lot of things it’s wanted to say “in the spirit of transparency”, but that it’s been unable to do so “because of the publishing agreement and NDA” it’s got in place with Humble.
Stairway goes on to say that the fate of Coral Island on consoles “remains uncertain”, whether that’s porting to new platforms or pushing updates and fixes, as Humble Games is responsible for these platforms.
According to Stairway, the studio only has access to Coral Island‘s Steam backend, and so updates like the upcoming hotfix for Coral Island‘s 1.1 update can’t be released on other platforms because the developer has “no idea how to get this update out”.
Conversations are currently underway between Stairway and its lawyer in order to “figure out how to navigate this new situation”, but sadly, that means some bad news for Switch backers.
If you backed Coral Island for a Switch code, then Stairway says you should email it or join its Discord server in order to swap your Switch code for a Steam key. These codes will be available for “as long as [Stairway is] able to” provide them.
Other studios have also been affected by Humble Games’ apparent dissolution, although perhaps none more so than Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus developer Squid Shock, which has pointed to potential console delays as a result of the Humble fiasco.
There’s also been an outpouring of support from other Humble-associated studios, although most of them say that the games they’re making, or have already made, won’t be affected by Humble’s crisis.
We’ll have to wait and see whether the ongoing Humble Games issue causes any other problems for studios releasing games in the near future. Stay tuned for more.
