oh here’s something of interest from the namco high press release

“As What Pumpkin Studios and ShiftyLook are both purveyors of imagination and full of longtime gamers, NAMCO HIGH is an excellent place to commence our partnership.”

it sounds like they see this as the FIRST collaboration between namco/shiftylook and what pumpkin

so this is just speculation but i think what happened was hussie and the other what pumpkin homies talked to namco about developing and/or publishing the homestuck game and then they were like “all right, we can do that, sure. but you gotta make something for US in return” and hussie was like “okay why not”