The SEGA mobile closures continue, as the infamous Puyo Puyo!! Quest reskin Cranky Food Friends is closing on March 31st. Both Cranky Food Friends and Puzzle & Glory were announced at the same time, but unlike Puzzle & Glory, Cranky Food Friends experienced a much harsher time. Not even getting past the soft release phase and having reports of being very buggy to the point of being game breaking, Cranky Food Friends being closed down was not a surprise. This is especially good in the case of Puyo Puyo fans out there still bitter about the game.
Hello,
I can now officially confirm to you that on March 31, 2016, Cranky Food Friends will be shut down.
This decision was not made lightly; the Cranky Food Friends team put hard work and long hours into this game, but in the end, it did not gain a robust enough following to make the game viable over the long term.
If you have any questions, please contact support here: https://help.sega.net/hc/en-us/articles/205095604-Submit-a-Cranky-Food-Friends-support-request
Thank you so much for playing
Unlike Puzzle & Glory, there is no period to spend your remaining materials due to closing much more abruptly. This game and the closure of Puzzle & Glory in April is somewhat disappointing in the case of SEGA’s mobile division in the west, but the lessons learned from the failures of these games should hopefully create better handled mobile games in the future. Meanwhile, SEGA’s mobile division in Japan is still going strong with games like Puyo Puyo!! Quest and Chain Chronicles pulling in a lot of support and money. Cranky Food Friends may of left a bitter taste, but at least there’s still a silver lining.
[Source: SEGA.net Forums]
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I really ripped into it in that Sega quality survey thing they posted. There’s no reason to abandon an established franchise, especially Puyo Pop. It was reskinned for its first western release by both Sega and Nintendo, but we finally got proper releases in Puyo Pop for GBA and Puyo Pop Fever for almost everything. Why work backwards and reskin the game? Why reskin it as some sort of winking ripoff reference to a Cartoon Network show? Why not just hire a couple translators and be done with it? It’s not rocket science. Heck, they don’t even have to be real translators; make stuff up and keep the Puyo theme. It’s a game series almost exclusively driven by humor, so half of the Japanese-centric cultural jokes and puns would have to be rewritten anyway.
Again, it’s not rocket science.
The entire game was doomed from the beginning. It was apparently very confusing for new players to navigate the game, and the game did have glitches in it that made the entire experience very impractical. There were reports of pieces being stuck causing a no-win situation, and the game tended to crash randomly. Why the game was even reskinned in the first place if it was going to be plagued with problems and have shoddy support anyway, I have no idea. I suspect a focus group situation forced this change, which backfired a lot worse then expected.
The worst part is that the game wasn’t going to magically be better if Puyo Puyo Quest was left intact. These type of games are often hated in the west by a majority of players due to their pay to win nature. Granted Puyo Puyo Quest is very generous when it comes to getting materials, the only time you really need to dump in stones in the gacha is if you want a character really badly and want to increase the odds. There are bonuses constantly given to you from daily events and money is not hard to grind for, and that’s not even getting into multiplayer making it easier. But you know, “MOBILE GAMES SUCK” and all that.
Thanks for the heads up in game… It only says Communication Error when you start the game, nothing about cancellation.