Cult Steam Hit Fortune’s Run Might Be Cancelled After Developer Loses Control Over The Game

The extraordinary story behind boomer-shooter immersive sim Fortune’s Run has just taken another tragic turn. The cult-hit game that once saw its development paused while its lead developer, Dizzie, went to prison for a year is now reported to be “cancelled” entirely, on account of her claims that Steam is allegedly making payments to a former colleague, someone against whom the developer makes accusations of domestic abuse. Now the game is being review bombed, with the suggestion that the source of said review-bombing is Kiwi Farms, and has seemingly been pulled from sale entirely. Content warning: this article includes references to sexual abuse. Among the many accusations made against a former partner, Dizzie’s central claim is that Valve is “refusing to let me take legal control of the project.” She insists the company is holding back $9000 and insisting it can only be paid to the person Valve considers to be the person who “owns the game,” someone she calls Kim. And this became even more complicated when Dizzie was recently rearrested and spent a further 25 days in prison. “Hi everyone. Things got even worse,” begins Dizzie’s latest incredibly personal update on Steam. In the first post since April’s announcement of her release from prison (Dizzie says she was imprisoned for acts of violence committed years previously when she “lived a very different life”), the developer immediately makes a long list of allegations. “Kim abused me and stole all of the project’s money,” the post claims. “She lied about everything. She was doing drugs and cheating on me with Grindr dates and going out with my bank card making thousand dollar ATM withdrawals. She bottomed out all of my accounts including Patreon, PayPal, anywhere that there was money, she took it.” Obviously Kotaku has no idea of the veracity of any of these claims, and takes no position on any of them. The post continues on in a similar vein, making further accusations of abuse, while acknowledging all of the remarks “could be described as defamation in court,” adding, “That’s because the law protects narcissists and domestic abusers. Fuck this planet.” Dizzie’s situation is certainly a complex one. On parole and living in a halfway house, she says she’s unable to apply for ID “because the police won’t let me out for long enough to apply for the god damn paperwork,” while saying that she’s being demanded to pay taxes on the Steam money she didn’t receive. On top of all of this, Dizzie claims that when she called the police to try to press charges against Kim for “fraud, death threats and sexual abuse,” she was told it was a civil matter, and she accuses her parole officer of using this as the reason for her recent return her to prison. Again, we’re not taking any position regarding any of this. The missing update However, when it comes to the future development of the game, there is some hope. According to remarks made on Discord, Dizzie has stated that while she cannot find a way around the issues with Steam, it should be possible for her to claim ownership and continue development on GOG and Epic. However, these produce a fraction of the money. She states that Fortune’s Run has made about $200,000 on Steam, but only $5,000 on GOG in the same time period. As such, it seems she’s abandoning the possibility of the game being a commercial project, but still wants to seek these avenues as she has a sizable new update for the game and wants to be able to release it. In a further post to Steam, Dizzie includes a screenshot of a message from Valve’s Steam Support team in which a clearly bemused member of staff tries to wrestle with the situation, while asking how it is that Dizzie is making the attempt to transfer the game’s ownership from what appears to be Kim’s Steam account. “This calls into question who is initiating the transfer for the app from one partner to another. The signee of the Steam Distribution Agreement for Steamworks partner group named [redacted] needs to be the one to initiate the transfer.” They then add a link with ways to prove ownership of the account. Dizzie adds below this, Valve is removing my access from the game. I’ve made it 1$ and discounted it maximally. Goodbye everyone. Unfortunately, however, despite Dizzie’s seeming intention of setting the game’s price to a dollar, at the time of this writing it doesn’t appear to be possible to buy at all. Fortune’s Run is now the subject of some review bombing, albeit on a small scale. Its “recent reviews” are listed as “Mostly Negative,” though they only number 63, against its “all reviews” rating of Mostly Positive from 599 reviews total. Dizzie claims on Discord that this flood of negative reviews is coming from Kiwi Farms. Accused by many of having a “public meltdown,” Dizzie believes she is just “matter-of-factly” reporting “the incidents as they occurred.” She says that when she told Valve that “the person that currently owns the platform sexually abused me,” the company “asked me to get written permission from them in order to re-gain the accounts. It’s just silly.” We’ve reached out to Valve to ask the company what its possible approaches can be in messy and complicated situations like this, and whether the game will return to sale.