Two months ago, I wrote a post concerning the newest trailer for Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit, the first official FNAF game to bring one of the books to life in video game form.  It was all meant to be a part of the FNAF 10-year anniversary, an 8-day event that culminated in the release of Into the Pit on August 8.  It was a very big deal, as you might imagine, and better yet, it was going to be available to as many people as possible, with the release advertised not just for PC, but all modern consoles (and even PS4)!  At least, that’s what was supposed to be happen.  Because in reality, things did not exactly go as planned…

August 7 arrived, and Mega Cat Studios released a new trailer.  I didn’t even notice until later the fact that the Steam logo was the only one being displayed at the end this time.  Well, I was planning on recording this game for PS4 the moment it was released.  I sat down for dinner that evening, got onto Youtube on my Roku, and I saw the game being played by one or two well-known Youtubers.  I was confused, but then again, maybe they just got early access to the game, which is a pretty common practice.  Nonetheless, I was curious and did some quick research.  Seeing as the Steam website was the only one currently advertising the game, I decided to check on there, and lo and behold, the August 8 release date had been updated to August 7.  Shocked, I set my dinner aside and tried to make sense of this new turn of events.

I ran upstairs and got my computer to do its daily updates so that they wouldn’t interfere with recording, all the while scouring the PlayStation Store for any sign of this game’s existence.  But I found none.  “What’s going on?” I wondered, alongside many, many other people online.  Why was the game available on Steam, but not anywhere else?

Well, it turns out that Nintendo released the game in Japan early on the Switch, leading to ScottGames tweeting that the game might as well officially release early.  Okay, well that explained the early presence of Into the Pit for PC-users, but what about us console players?  Many people were asking as much on the game’s most recent trailer, with various answers.  The game is being released August 9 or 10 for consoles, some said.  Others said September 12.  I saw the same answer when searching Google, but this was actually referring to another game.  The best info I could find were several people saying that Mega Cat had stated through Discord and customer support that the console versions of the game were going to be released at the end of the month.  It took hours, but Mega Cat finally confirmed as much themselves over on Twitter (now X).

Needless to say, people were not happy.  Why did they advertise the game for all consoles if they were only going to release it on Steam on August 8?  How come the game could be released for Switch in Japan, but nowhere else?  Clearly the game was ready for consoles, right?  And probably worst of all was the feeling of being left out of a major event that many of us had eagerly awaited for months.  FNAF’s 10-year anniversary was tomorrow, and now, all many of us could do was watch others have fun while we waited several more weeks as the game’s endings were spoiled in Youtube thumbnails.

Dejected, I went to bed, but when I woke up the next morning, a small spark of hope remained.  The game did release on the Switch, after all.  Perhaps that version was ready.  Maybe they would still release it for us after seeing how disappointed everyone was.  I didn’t exactly expect this to happen, but it couldn’t hurt to check, could it?  I checked the Nintendo eShop, searched for “Into the Pit” and found nothing.  I had better luck typing in “FNAF”, but still, nothing.  Until I kept scrolling.  Scrolling as far as I could before needing to load more results, what do I find but Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit for sale for $19.99!

It was here!  It was really here!  I could not only play the game for the 10-year anniversary, after all, but I could record it for Youtube, albeit a day late.  I got the Switch out of its dock and downloaded the game in handheld mode while I swapped the wires for my capture card from the PS4 to the Switch, so flustered that it took me several minutes to remember what wire went where.  Soon enough, everything was set up, and I started recording my very first episode, completely in shock.  Everything was going exactly as planned, after all.  Or was it?  (Spoiler alert, it wasn’t.)

Things got a bit confusing when I got back onto my phone after a 2-hour recording session as I got the videos prepared for editing.  The tab I left up showing the game on the eShop had been replaced by an image of Wario and the words, “Whoops!  The info you’re looking for can’t be found!”  Searching again, the game was definitely absent from the eShop.  What was going on?  Was this some sort of mistake?  Was the game truly not supposed to be released on the Switch yet?

Well, I edited my footage, recorded more that night, and eventually, I started seeing these new posts on Reddit talking about how the game had been released temporarily on the American eShop before being taken down.  It seems I was lucky to have gotten it when I did, I supposed.  But the more I played, the more I realized that something was wrong.

Sure, the game briefly froze up a lot, and I had to wonder if this was just because I was playing on the Switch, a less powerful console than the competition.  It was a bit annoying, but nothing that really affected the gameplay too much.  Surely this would get fixed in a patch.  But then I encountered a strange glitch leading into night 3 where Oswald would say he needed to go home, but if I did so, he’d tell me to go to the pizzeria.  But returning to the pizzeria would merely cause him to suggest we return home.  The only solution was quitting the game and coming back, which resulted in the game starting in Oswald’s house on night 3.  Okay…  At this point, word was getting around on Reddit that this was a developer version of the game that was never meant to be released to the public, Ver. Dev.5.0.4.  Things were starting to make more sense.

On night 4, I exited the cameras, and Oswald slid off the map into a black void.  I was able to progress briefly by looking at the correct camera and progressing the story, creating a new save point I could return to when I reloaded my game.  But when they had me look at the cameras again, the same glitch occurred.  This time, no checkpoint was created despite progressing to a new objective.  So quitting and returning would always spawn me before looking at the cameras that second time.  I was stuck.  And so was everyone else on the Switch.  As of writing this post, no solution has been found.  So it seems that every Switch user is just going to need to wait for the game’s official release to get an update.

And if you’re curious to see this glitch, it’s at the beginning of episode 5 of my playthrough, as seen below:

When this whole situation began, many people, myself included, were very frustrated with Mega Cat Studios.  They advertised the game as being released on PC as well as consoles, and it was heavily implied this would all be on the same release date.  It only added insult to injury when we saw that Switch users in Japan got to play the game, but no other console users could.  Now that I’ve played the Switch version, I understand that the game was definitely not ready for release, hence the developer’s decision to delay it.

With that said, I do wish Mega Cat would have communicated more clearly and openly with everyone.  Advertising the game in that old trailer from June for PC and all modern consoles heavily implied the game would release on all platforms on the same day.  Maybe there was miscommunication from the start.  Maybe that was the plan, but the console ports couldn’t be completed in time.  Who knows…  But what I do know is that many people were as confused as I was, and it took Mega Cat several hours to answer our questions and confirm that the game was only releasing for Steam at that time.  Up until that point, the only way to get this info was not directly from the developer themselves, but from fellow fans who had to contact customer support for answers.

If this was any other game release, that would have been one thing.  Sure, proper communication with one’s customers is going to avoid a lot of aggravation and is, therefore, always a good idea.  But what made this situation a bigger deal than normal was because this game was for FNAF’s 10-year anniversary.  And not only that, but the most highly anticipated part of an 8-day event.  I hope Mega Cat learns from their mistakes and communicates better next time.  A lot of confusion and frustration could have easily been avoided if they had posted that very same tweet confirming the delays the moment they knew this was the case, not hours after people started to ask about it.

So there you have it, folks, probably the most confusing game release I’ve ever been a part of.  Little did I know at the time that I downloaded an unfinished developer version of the game!  Let me tell you, that has most certainly never happened before, and I don’t expect it to ever happen again.  As nice as it would have been to actually complete the game, I must say that accidentally playing an unfinished version of Into the Pit not meant to be seen by the public is a lot more interesting.  Despite being unable to complete the game, I did have fun with it (up until night 4, anyway), and a review of my experience will be posted in the near future.