Madmind Studios' first title, Agony, has experienced nothing but agony when dealing with the press.

First off, the game reviewed poorly due to contextless shock-value content and the fact that it simply wasn't fun to play. Then, the team was forced to remove some censored material due to legal issues. Madmind released the cut footage on YouTube shortly after release. It was later taken down as the visuals were too grotesque for the platform.

After the cut content fiasco, the team got the go-ahead to develop Agony Unrated, a new version of the game that includes the cut content alongside some extra goodies. Unrated was set to come out in a few months, but according to a Steam news post, development on this new version has been canceled due to financial issues:

Hi Gamers, We regret to inform you that our company is currently struggling with financial problems. Due to technical and legal reasons, Madmind must cancel the development of Agony Unrated. Part of the team will continue to support Agony on Steam and consoles by publishing new patches. Regarding the Xbox One patch - we have managed to find and fix the bug that was present on the Xbox One X console. We have sent the improved update to our publisher, who will pass it to the Microsoft today or tomorrow and we are expecting it to be approved in the next couple of days. PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC will get another patch this week. It will introduce many fixes and a highly refined lighting system. Kind regards, Madmind Studio

For a game about exploring Hell, Madmind is certainly going through hell in portraying their full vision of Agony. With the title doing so poorly, the future of the studio is uncertain. However, we can probably expect this to be the last we hear of Agony's cut content. But then, we've thought that before.

Quick Take

It's never good to see a studio struggle, but the story around Agony and its fight to stay uncensored brings up some interesting discussion. There's been a lot of debate around whether or not the game deserves to have its vision compromised. Regardless of what we think, it shows that there is an audience for this sort of game.