Studio MDHR has announced that it’s pushing Cuphead’s “The Delicious Last Course” DLC (get it, it has the same initials) into the abyss of 2021, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as an underlying factor that’s been affecting development over the past year.
In a statement posted to the game’s social channels, the company explained that the DLC wasn’t quite matching the studio’s expectations, and doesn’t want to release Cuphead’s big finale if it doesn’t meet their standards. The full statement reads as follows:
In the wake of the ongoing global pandemic affecting so many, we have made the difficult decision to push back the release of The Delicious Last Course. For our wonderful Cuphead community, we’ve prepared a letter from Studio MDHR founders Chad & Jared Moldenhauer to share more.While the Delicious Last Course is a continuation of Cuphead and Mugman’s grand adventure, it’s also a conclusion to the story that began on that fateful day at The Devil’s casino.In true Studio MDHR fashion, we aren’t content for this final chapter to be anything less than our best work. Throughout development, we’ve challenged ourselves to put everything we learned from making Cuphead into the quality of The Delicious Last Course’s animation, design, and music.Meeting this standard has been extremely challenging for us amid the global pandemic that has affected so many of our fellow developers. Rather than compromise on our vision in response to COVID, we’ve made the difficult decision to push back the release of The Delicious Last Course until we are confident it will delight the Cuphead community the way we feel it should.We know many of you have been waiting to return to the Inkwell Isles, and our goal is to make the trip back there next year a truly magical one.
In the wake of the ongoing global pandemic affecting so many, we have made the difficult decision to push back the release of The Delicious Last Course. For our wonderful Cuphead community, we've prepared a letter from Studio MDHR founders Chad & Jared Moldenhauer to share more. pic.twitter.com/XiU57Wcn1y
— Studio MDHR (@StudioMDHR) November 25, 2020
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Since the pandemic began earlier this year, it has had a substantial impact on the games industry as developers move to work from home setups and adapt to working on a collaborative project outside of an office space. Delays have become fairly commonplace, whether they be in full games like Deathloop, general updates, or full DLC add-ons like Cuphead is dealing with here. But ultimately, doing whatever’s safest is what’s important, and hopefully companies will take this opportunity to realize that games can still be made without requiring people to move to expensive cities to work in an office. Square-Enix has announced that its Japanese branches will be allowing employees to work from home regardless of whether or not a pandemic is going on, and hopefully more companies follow suit.
Cuphead is available on just about everything at this point, having shed its Microsoft exclusivity to come to PlayStation 4 and Switch over the past two years. Netflix is also creating an animated series based on the game, which is looking pretty good based on what we’ve seen so far.
