Premature death and overdue resurrection of the notorious blood of the captain

Protection is the most significant for many programmers and professionals in the gaming industry. After sudden sunshine Agreement in September last year and the news that Sony began Creating backups of PS5 games As part of major behavior activities, simultaneous ephemerality and invaluable cultural heritage of video games are rarely felt more than today.

But what about games that, despite hours, months and years of strenuous work, have been poured into them, have never seen daylight? Bleeding He is one of such games in which, thanks to the significant efforts of a diminutive publisher led by the fearless pair of veterans, GOG will finally see Safe Harbor next week after more than a decade of being lost at sea.

Last year, the SNEG publisher launched the Steam page for BleedingPirate action game based on the Rafael Sabatini series. Originally developed by Akella at the beginning of 2000 and planned for the release of consoles on the seventh generation, well -arranged plans of the developer were accidentally blurred by the sudden bankruptcy of Playlogic, game publishers, only three months before the date of the game in 2010 Bleeding They lie dormant on the server, up to ten years later, he leaked online and made rounds through many pages with torrents.

“Sometimes this is happening, most likely there was a kind of controlled leakage by someone who was close to development, who wanted this game to be checked by players,” said Polygon, co-founder of Sneg, Olegowski. “It was a indicator for us that, Hey, not everything was lostAnd it was additional pressure to finally check who actually owns the rights. “Shortly after negotiating with the then holder of rights, Sneg decided to gather the original team of programmers to advise the process of remastering and publishing the audience.

History between BleedingDevelopment and Sneg go deeper and further than in 2024, when Klapovsky and Sneg co -founder, Artem Shchuiko, were involved in the publication and distribution of the game during the first development. Klapovski’s story in the gaming industry is deep; He began as an early member of the International Esports organization Virtus.pro Before I finally spent over a decade on CD Projekt, working on business development and GOG operations. Before CD Projekt Klapovsky worked in Akella, the Pirates of the Caribbean Gam developer Bleeding.

“The original Windows field was such that this Akella team just released Pirates of the Caribbean Game published by Bethesda,” says Klapovskiy. Positive critical and commercial reception of this game encouraged the team to consider immediate possible projects. “We were like Hey, we have a nice engine. In the end, we know how to develop console games. What is currently the most popular in consoles? Action species, fight; The god of war is there, the devil can cry. Let’s do something in setting pirates in our current engine because it’s fun. It was the inner height: the god of war in the pirate game. “

At that time, Shchuiko worked in 1C-SoftClub, a Russian publisher who was interested in distribution Bleeding. “I looked at the same project from the publisher’s point of view,” said Polygon Shchuiko. “Not necessarily responsible for this, but I was attached to this process.” However, only years later, after BleedingSuddenly canceling that he and Klapovsky will actually meet in GOG. “I did some development works for independent programmers, and one of my tasks was to introduce a part of a series of games to the store called GOG,” says Shchuiko. “I met Oleg anyway. We actually signed a contract, negotiated it, and then got a job offer in GOG.”

After seven years of cooperation, Klapovsky and Shchuiko founded a snow together in 2020, with particular emphasis on “reviving classic games from the digital abyss and legal hell”. For both publications Bleeding And moving the game to shop windows is not only a professional opportunity, but a moment of full circumference and a chance to fix the error of circumstances. “There are many people who worked on the game and some of them are now working in large companies,” says Klapovskiy. “But they were always frustrated that the game never appeared because they put the years of their work, and years and years work almost for free.”

While former members of the Seawolf team consulted BleedingThe edition is General Porting House from Singapore and Malaysia followed the task to adapt the game to contemporary equipment. “General Arcade has been our partner for a long time, with whom we have worked on larger mastering projects,” said Shchuiko Polygon. “There is a certain problem when it comes to releasing classic games, especially those that need a full -fledged remaster or exclusive or improvements of the technical aspect of the game. Because every time you get to most portable houses on the market, you ask them, ask them, you ask, you ask Can you do it for a remaster? And they are Bright. Unity or unreal? And you tell them Well, we have a custom engine. And usually what is happening is double, because it is simply unknown and very complicated. But with a general arcade, they are like Yes, a custom engine! More problems! Interesting, tell us more! So they are really driven by a challenge; You can see the spark in their eyes. “

Running the game to the 2010 era to the standards from 2020 meant the introduction of a package of improving the quality of life, including everything, from visual control and loyalty to guides in the game and smoother intermittent animations. However, despite these improvements, Klapovsky said that the goal was always to realize the game as it was originally intended. “There are many things that we could change to make sure that the game will be better accepted by the modern generation of players,” said Klapovskiy. “But at the same time we are not original creators and we want to make sure that this is a work of art created by the original team, and I think that if the game gets lower results because of this, we will accept it. We want to simply introduce experience that was to be released over 10 years ago, and we understand that everyone may not like it, especially modern players, but we want to stick to what should be.”

Ultimately, Klapovsky and Shchuiko want to do it Bleeding Justice and allow original developers to close this long -lasting chapter of their career. “There are many such stories, but I don’t even think that the game was finally released for many years,” Klapovsky got lost. “I think this is the first such case and I feel great for the original development team, which will finally be able to at least put these loans on their CVS, because it is not that we did not work on this project, which no one has seen and spent five years on it. No, this is a game that was released, and I think that this is a thing that I will try to push, because I really think about the creators.”

“Releasing Bleeding It makes you think about all the games that have been unfairly suspended in any circumstances, “said Shchuiko. But we all know that there are many stories in which the games were in good shape towards a stunning edition and something happened. A lot of this talent and effort is simply on the server of some systems, if it is on any server and never goes out. Familiarize yourself if we will do something. “

Bleeding It will be released on May 6 at Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.