Temtem Has Some Serious Problems
Temtem, the first of what is sure to be an avalanche of Pokemon-inspired games, has some serious issues. Every game does, but Temtem's were put under the microscope thanks to the game's newfound popularity. Upon launch, everyone wanted to see if this MMO would give them the experience that Game Freak just wasn't able to provide. This led to a rocky launch on Steam Early Access. Now the devs at CremaGames are reckoning with the difficult duty of disposing of cheaters.
When the game launched, very few were actually able to play. Servers were overloaded with new TemTem tamers who wanted to see what all the excitement was about. In the words of one tweet from the official Temtem Twitter page, "Zadar is a small village, it's not ready to receive 20k new tamers. Aina can't cope greeting you all! Hotfix coming soon!"
Prospective players found themselves in queues with upwards of 13,000 people, but true to their word, Temtem devs eventually allowed everyone to try their hand at Temtem taming. More recently, however, the issue with Temtem is one related to cheating.
Temtem isn't messing around when it comes to cheating
The official Temtem Twitter account took a strong stance, saying that there was no place in the Archipelago for cheaters.
"We just completed our first batch of banned users," reads the tweet that started a flurry of worry from fans. "Almost 900 players have been permanently banned from Temtem. Bans are final, we won't answer or review any ban appeal. We've made 100% sure that every banned user is either a cheater or has abused exploits intentionally."
In reply, however, fans expressed that they felt this was a little extreme. Shouldn't there be some way to appeal bans? What if someone is wrongfully banned? These concerns apparently reached CremaGames, which quickly clarified that each and every one of the bans were legit. But the fans persisted that this opaque, ironclad ban policy was a bad idea, despite reassurances that they wouldn't get banned for "casually finding a bug or an exploit."
Even so, hours later, the Temtem account relented to the concerns of fans, saying, "We've decided to review ban appeals, even though every single one of the ones we checked are legit. Like you said, having a 'no appeal' policy is not good."
One problem Temtem will no longer have to worry about is non-cheating players possibly getting caught up in these sweeping bans. But hey — the game is still just in early access. There's plenty of time to run into more problems as CremaGames prepares for an official release.