Everybody's Gone to the Rapture PC release 'not planned'

Everything you loved is gone, and all you can do is wander aimlessly, looking at what remains and meeting the few left behind. That's the premise of The Chinese Room's new game Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, but may also be how you feel after this. After the Gamescom announcement that it's coming to PS4, the Dear Esther creator has said it no longer plans a PC version.

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Everything you loved is gone, and all you can do is wander aimlessly, looking at what remains and meeting the few left behind. That's the premise of The Chinese Room's new game Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, but may also be how you feel after this. Following this week's news that it's coming to PS4, the Dear Esther creator has said it no longer plans to release a PC version.

The Chinese Room originally only announced it for PC, but what a difference a day makes. The big problem was that the game's jolly ambitious, and TCR simply isn't that big.

"So the thinking went like this," Dan Pinchbeck told Rock, Paper, Shotgun. "We don't have enough money or production expertise to make this game without help. We don't think we can raise enough through Kickstarter or public alpha to make this happen. We could do with production support on a game this scale. We've always wanted to make a console game."

And, well, one thing led to another. Sony has certainly wooed and courted indies magnificently for the PS4, winning many fine hearts and games. Pinchbeck said that Sony's Santa Monica Studio, who's helping out, is "great" and The Chinese Room "really like them and their attitude."

Santa Monica Studio has quietly supported and collaborated with indies for a fair few years, helping on games including Journey and The Unfinished Swan. Games it's collaborated on and even published have made it to PC too, such as Everyday Shooter and PixelJunk Monsters.

The Chinese Room left a little room for hope on Twitter. The game "will be PS4 only at launch," it said, adding "That's not an absolute no to PC, but it's not planned right now." Fingers crossed!

From The Chatty
  • reply
    August 22, 2013 8:30 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture PC release 'not planned'.

    Everything you loved is gone, and all you can do is wander aimlessly, looking at what remains and meeting the few left behind. That's the premise of The Chinese Room's new game Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, but may also be how you feel after this. After the Gamescom announcement that it's coming to PS4, the Dear Esther creator has said it no longer plans a PC version.

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      August 22, 2013 8:45 AM

      it begins :(

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        August 22, 2013 4:37 PM

        You mean, "It continues"

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          August 23, 2013 12:17 PM

          there's been kind of a reprieve in the past few years. lots of simultaneous or even PC-first releases, and XBLA exclusives have been worn down to about a month to a few weeks of exclusivity

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      August 22, 2013 8:48 AM

      It will come to PC, I am confident.

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      August 22, 2013 8:51 AM

      Ugh, I forgot how much console launches suck for PC gamers.

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      August 22, 2013 8:52 AM

      but all the fanatics will be gone so is it the beginning the new enlightened age?

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        August 22, 2013 9:34 AM

        If we're in Heaven, we wouldn't give a care about what happens down below.

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        August 22, 2013 4:27 PM

        Oh, I see. If you have religious beliefs you must be a fanatic, eh? Interesting.

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          August 22, 2013 8:18 PM

          Not at all. If you believe in something that wasn't mentioned in the Bible and was, instead, an invention of the 19th century you are probably a fanatic, though.

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        August 23, 2013 12:28 AM

        Is it absolutely necessary to pull that garbage out whenever there is a hint of religion anymore? What sort of warped lens do you see through that you find it an absolute must to harass these people at every turn?

        You guys are exactly the kind of trolls that people are thinking of when they look down on comment sections and the internet as a whole. Grow up and be a man. Be a man and learn to leave people alone who have done you no wrong. You're pathetic.

        We all have created a world of children. Petty, adolescent minds.

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      August 22, 2013 9:03 AM

      If it's anything like Dear Esther I'm not bothered.

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      August 22, 2013 3:52 PM

      Kind of bummed about this. I'm going to get a PS4 either way, but it's still a bit of a bummer to read this.

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      August 22, 2013 4:27 PM

      Won't be buying for PS4 then. I'll use my $$ on something else.

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      August 22, 2013 5:15 PM

      eff that. With the architecture of the new consoles it should be easier than ever to port to PC. This is a bad move. I really hope other devs don't do this as well. It's just turning away good money

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        August 22, 2013 5:21 PM

        Just because the consoles use x86 CPUs doesn't mean the API calls for the XBox One and PS3 are the same as in Windows / DirectX (or Windows / Linux / OS X / OpenGL, for that matter).

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      August 22, 2013 5:24 PM

      I understand people want this to come out on PC, but as someone who is getting a PS4 on launch day and also has a nice gaming rig hooked up to my TV as well, it doesn't really make a difference which platform this game comes out on. If this was a FPS instead of an adventure game that caters to gamepad controls, I would be upset, but I am fine with it.

      I also live in reality where I know not everything can be perfect and a developer can't always port a game to every platform. It is funny how people talk about the hardware disparity between the new consoles and PCs, and how they are so similar. The fact still remains that it costs money to make games, and anytime you try to do multi-platform it costs more money, no matter what the hardware differences are.

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        August 22, 2013 6:33 PM

        Well except for the fact that you generally plan to make a game to recoup those costs and then even make a profit.

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      August 22, 2013 8:12 PM

      I thought this was a BioShock dlc

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      August 23, 2013 2:10 AM

      Fairly safe to say a kickstarter would more than cover porting to PC. Also fairly safe to say it wouldn't happen until after the PS4 version has been out for a while.

      I don't think that this console generation will hurt PC gamers in the same way it has in the past, but I do think that first-party console exclusives are a faintly terrible idea as once that platform is gone it's gone. At this point, PC gamers can quite happily load up PS3/360 multi platform releases and play at 4k with all kinds of graphical tweaks. Which leads me to the biggest problem with this console generation..... why on earth are they launching JUST as 4k goes mainstream and HDMI 2.0 is about to be ratified? That's the thing that renders these consoles out of date before they even launch.

      I've pre-ordered an X-Box one, and no doubt will get a PS4 as well, for the first two years or so there'll be games that I want to play exclusive to each. However I'll stick to PC for anything multi platform as the games are cheaper, will look/run better, and continue to do so for years to come.

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