Atari’s mod status was removed from the largest Atari VCS subreddit after deleting criticism last month, and it’s now facing further backlash from backers of its Indiegogo campaign regarding its seemingly stifled console development.
The Atari VCS console was announced over two years ago, and was successfully backed on Indiegogo on June 30, 2018 by 11,623 backers. The total funding amounted to £2,448,295. Since that time it would seem very little has been seen of the AMD Ryzen-powered throwback console, and some of its backers have taken to the 642 member strong, fan-made subreddit to vent their frustrations at the lack of effective communication on the console’s development.
However, that initially didn’t go down too well, The Register reports. Wielding moderator status on the unofficial forum, Atari started to ban users that were speaking up about their concerns. One user, WhereThePDivides, listed the marketing output of Atari during the last few months and was banned due to “abusive, toxic, and repeated fraudulent posts and spreading misinformation in the forum.”
That ban didn’t last long, and the forum has since revoked the official Atari account’s moderator status.
But that’s not the end of this story. Atari went on to create an official subreddit, Atari_VCS_Official – which currently has 129 members – and has been facing further queries from the community there, too.
In response to a question regarding promised summer updates, Atari wrote: “Hello! Fear not, we certainly have something in the works! We did not specify it would be on September 22-23 exactly. Sorry for the misunderstanding! We appreciate everyone’s patience as we craft an exciting announcement to share with you all!”
This response did not go down well with the forum community, and the thread is filled with outcries from fans looking for concrete information regarding the console they backed more than a year ago.
Also queried by customers was whether Rob Wyatt, the system architect for the original Xbox, and the Tin Giant team were still a part of the project seeing as it’s also now working on another crowd-funded game console, the Gameboard-1.
“Hello! Unfortunately, this rumour is circulating on the web,” Atari responds. “Rob Wyatt and Tin Giant work on many different projects. Atari fans should be excited for the Gameboard, too!
So whether or not we’ll see the Atari VCS system anytime soon is still up in the air. While Atari continually promises updates very soon, even its committed community doesn’t seem so sure it will deliver.