 Well, it has finally happened. On the 19th of September 2019, it was revealed that Xbox exclusive indie platformer Ori and the Blind Forest would be making its way to the Nintendo Switch. The delay in Ori's arrival on the platform was not for a lack of trying. The indie team behind the game, Moon Studios, had been trying since 2016 to develop something for the Switch, only to be flat out rejected by Nintendo. Ultimately, it was only thanks to the intervention of Microsoft that Ori and the Blind Forest ever made it to Nintendo, and only after Moon Studios got a cheeky form of revenge by hiring another indie developer that Nintendo had mistreated. This is the utterly bizarre story of how Nintendo burned its bridges at every turn, until finally, Microsoft swept in to save the day and bring Ori and the Blind Forest to the Switch. Ori and the Blind Forest started life in 2010, when a group of seasoned developers got together to try something new. Genadie Coroll, former Senior Graphics Engineer at Animation Lab, and Thomas Mahler, former cinematic artist at Blizzard Entertainment, decided to form their own small development team, named Moon Studios, to try to make an atmospheric 2D platformer. Because of the clout that these two developers possessed, it wasn't long before their little studio started turning heads among the industry. A year after Moon Studios was formed, it became an official first-party developer for Microsoft. Not that the team were satisfied with solely making games for the Xbox, of course. In 2016, at around the time that Ori and the Blind Forest was officially released, Thomas was growing curious about developing something for the then-upcoming Nintendo console, the NX. To his dismay, it turned out that Nintendo was far less friendly towards indie developers than Microsoft had been when purchasing Moon Studios. While development kits for the NX had been sent out to some select AAA companies, it seemed that Nintendo didn't want to deal with Mahler. They flat-out rejected his attempts to get hold of a development kit. Having a bit of a rant about the experience, Thomas said, This is actually THE singlass most annoying thing for every dev out there. We also talked to Nintendo and got absolutely nothing. I'll never understand that. And just to be clear, it's not just Nintendo. Every hardware manufacturer is treating their dev kits and their unreleased consoles like they're the second coming and are insanely secretive about it to a stupid degree in today's time. It's not even that the hardware isn't finished, duh, but you could at least give me the specs so we'd know what to build for. It's worth remembering that at this time, Nintendo was very much the underdog. The Wii U had underperformed, and the rumoured NX was to be the company's make-or-break console. That Nintendo still wasn't willing to play ball with third-party developers was the subject of general frustration among the entire games industry. It's also worth pointing out that, as the CEO of a studio connected to Microsoft, Thomas would have been viewed with extra suspicion by Nintendo, who were desperate to keep the Switch a secret for as long as possible before the console was ready. Thomas went on to blast Nintendo's restrictive, secretive policies. He made it very clear that he thought that Nintendo's new console would flop without adequate indie support. What's needed to sell hardware is good software. With Nintendo not having any dev kits out there at this point, and probably even wanting to sell it in 2016, I can already guarantee that they'll just not have any software support, since nobody can just jumble games together in less than a year. I mean, you can, but it'll be garbage. Thankfully, Thomas's predictions did not come true, when the Nintendo NX, eventually renamed the Switch, did finally release. It initially did so without very much in the way of indie support. Aside from a few games such as Snake Pass and Snipperclips, the majority of early Switch titles were made by larger studios. Over the next few months, though, the studio began welcoming all kinds of new indie titles to the device, and its native support of the Unity games engine meant that developing for the Switch was relatively easy even without a dev kit. All of this was inconsequential to the team at Moon Studios. They'd been rejected by Nintendo, and they'd channeled their energy elsewhere. They were hard at work on a new game, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, a sequel to their original work. What's more, they'd found the perfect way to vent their frustration at Nintendo for rejecting them. They'd hired Milton Guasti, the creator of AM2R, another Metroid 2 remake. Milton had begun work on AM2R long before Moon Studios had formed, and before Ori and the Blind Forest had begun development. A sound engineer by profession, Milton had decided that he wanted to learn game coding, and decided that the best way to do this was to remake the classic Game Boy game, Metroid 2, The Return of Samus. For two years, Milton worked on this game until, in 2010, he finally revealed his creation to the public. He chose the name Another Metroid 2 Remake, because he was far from the only person working on this kind of project. Where other Metroid 2 Remake projects eventually fizzled out, though, Milton kept going strong. It took until 2016 before AM2R was released for free in a relatively completed state, at around the same time that Ori and the Blind Forest first went on sale. Then it all came crashing down. Nintendo started issuing takedown notices to various servers that hosted Milton's work. He was optimistic about continuing for a while, until it became very clear that Nintendo was not going to give up. For some strange reason, the company had decided that they were going to wipe AM2R from the face of the internet by any means necessary. In a full-on blog post in September 2016, Milton simply stated, Nintendo of America Inc. has filed a takedown request under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, DMCA. I received the request on my personal email, so I am complying with their requests. There will be no more AM2R updates and no more releases under any platform. Thank you for the support during all these years. That was that. Nintendo had effectively ended a project that had taken eight years of Milton's life. It later transpired that Nintendo had in fact begun working on their own official remake of Metroid 2 for the 3DS. Many speculate that this was why the company saw a passionate fan project as such a threat to their bottom line. Regardless, Milton felt that he couldn't be bitter. Over the course of the time he'd been working on AM2R, he'd learnt everything that he'd wanted to know about game development and programming. In his own words, Now I'm making a living as a professional programmer thanks to what I learned developing a fan game. Technically speaking, I'm satisfied. Besides, Milton eventually received a very intriguing offer from a fellow developer. Thomas Mahler had played AM2R and had seen how Milton had been treated by Nintendo. Perhaps there was an opportunity for Milton to join Moon Studios on Ori and the Will of the Wisps. A year after receiving his first takedown notices from Nintendo, Milton made another post on the AM2R blog. Some time ago, the CEO of Moon Studios, creators of Ori and the Blind Forest, reached out with an offer. They needed a level designer for their upcoming sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and I was a potential candidate for the job. I gladly accepted the offer. Ori is one of the many games I was able to enjoy lately. One can see the love and attention to detail that went into its design. I feel like I'll be right at home working with this team. It's a pretty huge change in my life, since it's a full-time job. But dreams are there to be chased. My family supports this decision, and it could be the beginning of a new career. Ordinarily, this would be a good end to a story. A game studio that was rejected by Nintendo was able to help give another developer the chance to grow past Nintendo's aggression. There is, though, an epilogue to this tale. Several years after the release of Ori and the Blind Forest, and the disintegration of AM2R, Microsoft began partnering with Nintendo to bring some of their platform exclusives to the Switch. Speaking about the notion of console-exclusive titles, Microsoft's Phil Spencer said, I just get stuck in who this is helping. It doesn't help the developer. The developer just wants more people to play their game. It doesn't help the player. The players just want to play with their friends who also play games on console. First, Minecraft stayed on Nintendo and Sony platforms even after Microsoft bought developer Mojang. Then came online cross-play between the Switch and the Xbox. Finally, Microsoft became a publisher on the Switch, bringing titles like Cuphead, Hotline Miami, and finally, Ori and the Blind Forest, to the Hybrid console. While Nintendo once rejected Moon Studios outright, the company is now eagerly advertising the arrival of Ori and the Blind Forest to their platform. If there's a moral to this story, it's that you shouldn't take rejection too personally. It can be hard to take when someone shuts you down or is standing in the way of your success. You may feel frustrated at additional roadblocks that clutter your path for no particular reason. Keep pushing forward. Given time, who knows? Perhaps your one-time adversaries will join the ranks of your most faithful supporters. In the meantime, see who else might be struggling and think of what you can do to help. Just as Thomas Mahler reached out to Milton Guasty when his game was crushed by Nintendo, you too can help others who need your support. If the tale of Ori and the Blind Forest coming to the Switch can teach us anything, it's that life is better when we all work together.