Closure creator on why it didn't come to EU PSN

Closure creator Tyler Glaiel gave us the rundown on why his black-and-white puzzler never made it on the European PSN, despite appearing on the US PSN in late March.

"People seem to be complaining about Sony and SCEE and saying that's why it was delayed, but that has not much to do with it."

Glaiel explained that in late January SCEA offered to make Closure part of its promotional Spring Fever line-up, but this meant that his team at Eyebrow Interactive would have to hustle to get the game ready by early March - about a month sooner than it was scheduled for.

As a result, the team focused all its efforts on this and didn't look into getting it on the EU PSN until after that was squared away.

"Because they're [SCEA and SCEE] different companies, you have to repeat all the business stuff with them," Glaiel explained.

"I didn't think it was going to take that long to get the European version done. I figured that it would take around the same amount of time or a little quicker than it took us to get stuff done with SCEA."

"It [the delay] was a lot of inexperience on our part and not knowing what to expect. Sony didn't do anything in particular to delay it."

Tyler Glaiel, designer, Eyebrow Interactive

Unfortunately, Glaiel and company didn't account for how much the timezone difference would delay communication.

"When you're doing contracts and PEGI ratings you have to e-mail a lot because there's a lot of questions, but when you can't send eight e-mails a day and get responses, that's stretched out to a week already."

Despite this lengthy holdup, some progress was made. "We do have a PEGI rating by the way, and do want to make use of that and release it."

When asked about the PEGI rating, Glaiel said "I think it's 7."

The rating arrived around E3 in early June. Since the main game was complete artist Jon Schubbe moved back to Maryland to complete art school and Glaiel no longer had a need for an office, so he moved everything into his apartment. This took more time away from the game.

But there was another reason the focus shifted away from the European PSN version of the game, Glaiel suspected it would sell better on Steam, a wider-reaching global market. "Most people say Steam is the way to go right now."

"We knew how much we were selling on PSN in North America and it wasn't quite as much as we were hoping for, so we really needed to make sure we could get the Steam release going."

He called Steam "a more promising platform," but clarified that "Sony has been nice to us and they're improving. They'll be ones to look out for in the next generation."

"Most people say Steam is the way to go right now."

Tyler Glaiel, designer, Eyebrow Interactive

"I don't regret doing the PlayStation version," he said. "It was a good learning experience and it's kind of cool to have a game on a console."

There's another reason the game might have sold poorly; "It was the wrong price, I think,"Glaiel admitted. "That's why we're launching it at $10 on Steam."

"We figured that's what this type of game was going for. We looked at other puzzle games of that size with those types of rewards and they were all going for $15. Then after we said that Fez gets announced that it's $10."

Glaiel said that since Closure is self-published he can change the price by filling out some forms, which he plans to do shortly to match the Steam price.

As for the MIA European PSN version of Closure, Glaiel said, "Most of the work is done, so I do plan on finishing that up sometime this year."

Ultimately, Glaiel claimed that "It [the delay] was a lot of inexperience on our part and not knowing what to expect. Sony didn't do anything in particular to delay it."

We'll have a full review of Closure up when it comes to Steam for PC and Mac on 7th September.