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Deck Nine
Life is Strange: Double Exposure was a huge disappointment for its publisher Square Enix and the fans who played it. There are several reasons for its Mixed rating on Steam, and one of them is the bizarre decision of the company to send DMCA notices to players criticizing the absence of Chloe Price, the protagonist's love interest in the original game, on Reddit.
Despite that, Double Exposure got the Social Impact Award at GDC 2025, which "advances equality, justice, intersectionality, and/or sustainability," but there was nobody to receive it.
"I sit backstage at these gaming award shows, interviewing winners as they come through with their trophies. Nearly every game that won had people coming through, beaming with their trophy in hand. It stood out that, for Life is Strange, which won the Social Impact award, there was no one," said journalist Stephen Totilo.
So what happened? The answer is quite tragic: the developers had been let go.
Developer Deck Nine suffered two waves of layoffs last year, the most recent being in December due to "deteriorating market conditions in the gaming industry."
The whole situation is a huge mess as Ballou said that "a bunch of us are at GDC, but we didn't know we were even nominated so nobody was prepared to accept anything".
This sounds like Square Enix and Deck Nine completely gave up on the game and decided to forget about it as if it were a nightmare. I don't know what kind of miscommunication happened there, but hopefully, it won't happen again, as it's just awkward for everyone involved and draws even more attention to issues inside the company.
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