‘Any Update Is a Bonus Not a Right’ Says Peak Dev in Response to ‘Lazy Dev Cycle’ Accusations

'Any Update Is a Bonus Not a Right' Says Peak Dev in Response to 'Lazy Dev Cycle' Accusations
'Any Update Is a Bonus Not a Right' Says Peak Dev in Response to 'Lazy Dev Cycle' Accusations
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The developer of 2025 surprise indie “friendslop” darling Peak is asking players to be a little more gracious to the studio when requesting updates. In response to a tweet saying developer Landfall has a “lazy dev cycle,” Landfall’s official account clapped back, “Neither us or [co-developer] Aggro Crab are live service studios, any update is a bonus not a right.”

This sparked via GamesRadar (the original offending tweet is no longer visible), which reports that this comes in the wake of “Landfall Day,” Landfall’s annual bevy of announcements on April 1, during which an exceedingly silly April Fools’ Day feature that has players kicking each other off mountains instead of helping them climb up was revealed. While most replies are excited about this, the inciting reply was less than thrilled: “Y’all are mad at Landfall for not releasing a game, I’m mad at Landfall for their lazy dev cycle for Peak when they could be doing so much more with it considering they’re ending development of it this year,” they wrote.

In response, Landfall’s official account didn’t hold back:

“PEAK has had sooo many updates tho! Neither us or Aggro Crab are live service studios, any update is a bonus not a right,” they wrote in a direct response.

Another reply complained similarly, “But why? Its an Online Game for 10 bucks. It would be so nice to get new bioms or Features. Thats how the gaming industry works these days”

To which Landfall said: “We have done a lot of updates with biomes and features 🥰 and we have at least one more. The industry used to be no updates – just release as is. We have gone way beyond that.”

For all the complaints about a lack of biomes, updates, or whatever the case might be, Landfall has been exceedingly busy adding things to Peak. It’s had three major updates, plus numerous hotfixes, patches, and a handful of smaller updates since its launch not even a year ago. Two new biomes have been added since launch, and a third new one is planned for later this year. Both devs are also still actively patching bugs and keeping Peak alive, all while also working on other new games. And they’re small teams, too. Landfall is seemingly just around ten folks per LinkedIn (though that number is probably short by a few) and Aggro Crab looks to be about the same.

Perhaps also relevant is that the devs didn’t expect nor prepare for Peak’s runaway success. It both reached a concurrent Steam playercount of over 100,000 people and sold a million copies within the first week, prompting Aggro Crab to remark, “why did this stupid jam game sell more copies than another crabs treasure im gonna crash out” on socials at the time. It eventually reached an all-time peak (heh) of over 170,000 players, and still consistently gets between 20,000 and 35,000 concurrent players at any given time. Neither Landfall nor Aggro Crab had planned for that level of success – why would they have a stack of infinite updates in the chamber?

In a video earlier this year, Aggro Crab shared that updates on Peak would be a bit slower in 2026 than in 2025, because both studios have other plans in the works for the year such as other new games (Crashout Crew from Aggro Crab).

As Landfall concludes in another post: “Last year was our busiest ever, with the PEAK release, Haste, TABS: Pocket Edition, and ROUNDS ports. We worked on something new for this year, but in the end, it didn’t work out.

“We’ve stretched ourselves too thin, and the pressure to deliver a new game every year can be a lot on such a small team. Despite this, we’re extremely proud of what we delivered this year’s Landfall Day – with Haste and Content Warning launching on consoles!

“Don’t worry, we’ll still be working on new projects, just maybe at a more reasonable pace.”

So, be nice to your beloved indie devs – they’re working hard!

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.


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