Welp, looks like you guys broke Tommy Refenes when you destroyed Super Meat World
"When will we be able to upload levels to Super Meat World?"
Honestly I don't know. I got an email earlier today about this and I sort of broke it down to them this way which I think is the best way to explain it:
The development process for SMB was hard on me physically and emotionally. Once the game was "finished" I continued working on it for about a year. The reason I kept working on it was because we promised the editor and Super Meat World before we launched the game. It's hard to go from an insane crunch (Xbox Launch) to another launch a month later (PC) to intense bug fixing. All of December 2010, I spent doing tech support...even on Christmas. This was all fine because I needed to do it and I needed to help people that had problems with the game.
After that died down a bit I then had to start on the Editor and Super Meat World. Durning that time I was moving around trying to find a comfortable place to live. Fun fact, in 2011 I moved 4 times. Our year anniversary was coming up and we desperately needed to do the Mac version...which I had not had a chance to do. So we reached out to someone to port it for us. For 3 months we were told everything was going great and we would have our Mac version for our anniversary sale. 1 week before our Anniversary Sale was going up on Steam, I email the guy asking where it is because I wanted to test it and have a smooth launch. We get an email from the porter with the work done so far and he was no where near being done with it. We went back and forth for a few days but weren't getting any more assurance that the port would be done any time soon. So...once again I had to put myself into insane crunch mode. I had 3 days to do the Mac port and I did as best I could...the process however emotionally and physically hurt me because physically I stayed up for 3 days straight getting stuff done...and emotionally I felt like I was trapped exactly where I was a year before. I remember being so frustrated and exhausted that I was seeing lines bright lines of light in my eyes...which I imagine was from my blood pressure being elevated.
Once the mac version was over we got into the Humble Bundle. This was Christmas 2012. Everything went well until some teenagers decided to wreck Super Meat World. This was partially my fault as I did not make Super Meat World secure in anyway. My reasons for this were that no personal information or actual erasable data was hosted on the server. People upload levels they to the server and they got stored in a database. They are still saved on their side so it isn't like anyone's hard work was at risk for permanent removal and I knew that if the database went down it would be my burden to bring it back up. Also, I kept nightly back ups just in case someone did destroy it...which I knew was a possibility but I honestly though that because we aren't a huge company and because our service was free that no one would really want to mess with it. I was right for 9 months. Two days before Christmas I get an email from one of these teenagers telling me it was insecure and I needed to fix it. I told him "thanks for your concern but it's fine...there's nothing I can do about it". There literally was NOTHING I could do. I was at my parents house in North Carolina two days before Christmas. I couldn't have fixed it, submitted to Steam and uploaded to our servers without flying back to San Francisco and even then everyone was gone at Steam so I couldn't even serve an update if I had one ready. I emailed the guy back and just said "please leave it alone, I can't do anything right now but I'm planning to fix it"...which I was. Unfortunately for me, he and his friends decided to take it down while I was sleeping. I woke up the next to Super Meat World being gone...I was supposed to be on my way to meet family that I hadn't seen in about a year, but instead I was on the phone with our server company trying to get a roll back done on our server. Once the rollback was completed I locked the database out. To be honest, it really upset me and still does to this day. Super Meat World wasn't made by some giant company, no one was being charged to use Super Meat World, it was something I wrote and paid for to give PC/Mac users more levels to play and the ability to upload their own. What they did was the equivalent of walking into a playground and burning down the playground equipment for no other reason than there wasn't a gate around the playground. It's really sad...but people that can't create need to destroy. Super Meat Boy was gaining popularity because we were closing in at 1 Million sales and some people can't stand that. It's a shame but it happens.
So, that's why SMW is down. The reason I can't fix it is because of after the Mac stuff I have developed severe anxiety towards anything Super Meat Boy related. I would get on Skype with Ed...almost in tears (and sometimes in tears) and say how much I didn't want to do this any more...this being Super Meat Boy related code. Back during development I used to have anxiety when it came to looking at my bank balance...because I had no money. I now have the same anxiety when I go to open the folder on my PC called "SuperMeatBoyBuild" which is the main folder for Super Meat Boy development when it comes to pushing out updates and making builds. It sucks, but it is what it is. Thankfully I don't have the same anxiety when it comes to development in general. I've been working on tech for our new game and I've been developing some side project semi-indie game related things as well. I can tell you this though. If the day ever comes up where I can open that folder without feeling tons of anxiety, I will make it so SMW levels can be uploaded again.
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