"One day we were crossing our fingers for rent money and the next we had millions of players": REPO devs get candid, say the game "literally made semiwork as a studio survive" and insist future updates won't take so long

Yahoo

5 hours ago

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While we're all fawning over Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, let's not forget 2025's other surprise hit, REPO. The viral horror indie game absolutely blew up after it was released back in February, with almost 150,000 reviews on Steam (96% of them being positive, I might add). The popularity took the game's developer Semiwork by surprise, with the lead dev saying, "We slept once and have been awake ever since" as it works away at the game's first big update (that's currently in beta).
However, the update has taken quite a while in beta, causing fans to wonder when it will be released. And – despite not really owing us anything – Semiwork has released a video titled "we're sorry – again." Semiwork dev Pontus Sundstrom opened the video by saying "we are aware that you guys are longing for the first update – we are as well. We're still on the home stretch, and there's still stuff to be done. But we want to apologize for all the waiting" before being heckled by the little REPO robots.
But despite the video being dedicated to apologizing, Semiwork took the time to thank the player base. "As you all know, REPO took us by surprise," Sundstrom says, adding, "literally made Semiwork as a studio survive." He recounted that "One day we were crossing our fingers for rent money and the next we had millions of players storming our servers to play our game."
Sundstrom mentions that the explosive success was both a blessing and a curse as it required a lot of bug squashing, paperwork, and hacker-proofing the game. He explains this is partially why the first update has taken so long, as this work has "pulled our tiny team away from all the fun stuff, which is to create actual content for the game." However, he assures that future updates won't take quite as long as this one has, with the dev promising a mountain of new surprises.
REPO devs say "we've heard your feedback" and you can chill a bit: the Museum is "not finished," and the difficulty's going up with "Moon Phases" because "the game needs to keep up with you."