Lemme preface this with something I’ll probably be saying a lot over the next handful of articles: this is a bit dated/been a long time coming, and I’m finally digging through my backlog of ideas/articles/rants.
If you’re not lurking in their Discord (and let’s face it, even before the “Discord ID Verification Exodus,” you probably weren’t unless you were a Kickstarter backer), you – like folks on Steam – might be wondering why Goner just… vanished.
(For the uninformed, Goner was the dinosaur survival horror game from studio Loco Players.)
Short version? It’s supposedly tied up in a legal fight over the IP.
According to someone labeled as the community manager – and/or one of the developers? – and posted only on Discord (because why inform, you know, anyone else… including the people who backed your project!), Goner halted development while the team reportedly battled to retain control of the intellectual property.
(Here’s a Discord link directly to the post in question, also pictured below.)
Maybe this is my skeptical nature talking (it happens!), but this story sounds familiar – almost like we’ve heard it time and time again. But unlike other shit I’ve looked into, the sources here are sparse. (Or really, nonexistent.)
As stated in the first photo, apparently the publisher requested that the game be de-listed in February of 2025. But the Discord announcement informing the community of what was going on wasn’t posted until nine months later.
And sure, you’re probably thinking, “Well yeah, it’s a whole legal thing, right? They couldn’t say anything about it for a bit.”
Au contraire!!
While, at various times in this entire cluster, it dissolved into other developers/moderators on the team mouthing variations of “we’re totally working on it and hope to have more news to share soon.”
Poking around their Discord and Kickstarter shows that the lack of communication wasn’t anything new. They posted five updates to Kickstarter backers throughout the entire span of 2024. (No updates since.)
In Discord, community members noticed the game was removed from Steam within a week of the SteamDB update, but at that point the main developer was still assuring everyone that everything was fine. (Outside of a couple more scattered posts, he hasn’t been heard from since November of 2025.)
My thoughts:
I think Goner, as a game, is dead dead dead. With no hope of coming back. And while they originally tried to keep community hope alive:
It just lead to community angst and anger:
Which turns to apathy and resentment.
(Huh, sound familiar? *coughderelictscough*)
(BTW- see below- there was also this like…random publisher proxy drive-by + developer snark that was NEVER really explained but there must be all sorts of interesting shit in a locked channel somewhere.)
Months have rolled by with no word from anyone involved in the project, so I think we can put the final nail in that coffin.
But. (To play hopeful devil’s advocate, which I so seldom get to play!)
Assuming the footage/assets shown over the past couple of years aren’t bullshit and, somehow, they regain the rights to use them, maybe a new dinosaur game could be launched. (Somewhere in the mess of chatter someone mentioned something about the IP going up for auction??) Or hell, maybe they can even try for a redemption arc!! After all, studios have tried to recover from worse – and much more publicly. (The Day Before, anyone?????)
But, yanno, the entire process – including their big announcement in Discord – is still a giant middle finger to everyone that backed them via Kickstarter. And that’s what’s annoying about this situation: not the death of another “survival” dinosaur game – they’re becoming distressingly common, though I did like the inventory system in this one – but the fact that EVERY fucked-up Kickstarter campaign poisons people against backing future titles which leads to how many amazing game campaigns never taking off because folks are spooked from backing. *rage exhale*
Who knew that the most realistic survival mechanic in this dinosaur game would be watching community trust go extinct in real time? ☠️
It’s a real shame because there’s so much hope out there and this stuff hurts that. I don’t know why they have to push the narrative hyperbolically that their Devs are all good, hardworking people… they still got paid to deliver nothing. Maybe one day they’ll actually issue refunds to backers…
Yea, I don’t know. There’s the reference to “bankruptcy courts” in the announcement, so perhaps they burned through the 30k or whatnot and then had a falling out with the publisher? No idea!
While I don’t see the Kickstarter folks ever getting back their cash, it would have been nice if the devs pushed that message (of the main announcement) out to their socials/whatever, so that folks outside their Discord bubble were clued in as well.
what was the game premise? like hunt dinos?
From their KS campaign, “Goner is a first person perspective survival-horror game that promotes self-management and exploration style gameplay. You will have complete freedom travelling through a large island, but you will need to be prepared accordingly to survive the many dangers it hides. Face feral dinosaurs and the remaining members of a lost civilization gone wild!”
There was supposed to be a survival mode, story mode, blah blah blah. And then somehow it was also a horror game??? So it was trying to be many things.
Here’s the descrip from their YT: “Goner is a FPP semi-open world survival horror game. You will travel to a mysterious location following the steps of your missing mother. You’ll need to fight -and run- for your life while you try to figure out what is going on and find her. In your adventure, you’ll clash with a lost civilization and a mix of present and extinct fauna. In the end, an unsettling truth will be revealed that will change history as you know it…”
Lordy lord, yeah, I heard about this game Goner. I had it on my follow-up list. Then forgot about it. Is it just me, or are game developers and publishers taking players for a ride now more so than before? Brazenly! Lol yeah I see sighs of Derelicts being on that list this year.
Supposedly Derelicts will be releasing some info next week to backer – we’ll see!