CookieRun: Kingdom is one of the Cookie Run games managed by Devsisters and arguably their most popular title.
CookieRun: Kingdom was quite popular in the day, but due to a series of bad decisions on the part of the management of the game, the hype has died down a bit, and now it’s in a steady place. Well, that was before the announcement of a new update that shook the community and caused quite a bit of drama in the CookieRun: Kingdom world.
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What Happened?
On June 17, the official media channels for CookieRun: Kingdom announced that a new major update titled [Dark Resolution’s Glorious Return] would be released on June 19.
Major updates for gacha games are always a joy amongst the community because there are new characters to try, new meta to learn, and more.
However, the community for CookieRun: Kingdom was furious at this announcement. More specifically, at one part of the update.
This new update was set to feature a buff for one of the community's favorite cookies, [Dark Cacao Cookie]. A lot of players were anticipating that this cookie would get a buff and thus spent a lot of resources preparing for the update.
However, that all turned out to be in vain when Devsisters announced that they would not be buffing Dark Cacao but would rather release a completely new version of the cookie, known as Dragon Lord Dark Cacao, and place it under a completely new rarity known as Ancient+.
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Why is the Community Furious?
Ancient Cookies are one of the hardest cookies to get in CookieRun: Kingdom. They have a really low drop chance, and to ascend them, you need to hope that you can get them from the gacha or slave your life away at various other modes in the hope of getting shards of them.
As such, introducing a new rarity in the form of Ancient+ came off as really greedy. It was likely that the Ancient+ rarity would be coupled with the Ancient and Dragon rarities, which would in turn make it even harder to get [Dragon Lord Dark Cacao] without spending an unreal amount of money.
The community couldn’t see this decision for a new Ancient+ rarity as anything but greedy, and given that Devsisters have been going down the path of greed for some time now, players weren’t happy.
The new Ancient+ rarity caused quite a stir, with a ton of players going on Reddit, Twitter, and Discord to voice their concerns and start making various memes of the new rarity, which was seen as nothing more than a cash grab and a slap in the face for the player base.
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The Community’s Response
The greedy decision to create a new Ancient+ rarity rather than simply buffing [Dark Cacao] was one that the community couldn’t let slide, because if this was to be left unchecked, it would only be a matter of time before the other Ancient cookies started getting Ancient+ variants rather than other F2P friendly buffs.
As such, the community took action to try and get the developers to revert this update and take into consideration their opinions.
Two of the major actions taken were to review-bomb CookieRun: Kingdom and to hire trucks to stand in front of the Devsisters building in protest.
Hiring protest trucks is a common practice in Korea, which involves people hiring trucks with displays on them and situating them in front of a building to bring shame to the company’s name and image. Given that it is a standard practice, the movement is quite known throughout Korea, and no company wants to be the target of such a movement.
Such trucks were organized by the Korean player base, and a donation fund was even started to gather money to hire the trucks.
As for the community outside of Korea, the only action they could take was to review-bomb the game on both the iOS and Apple stores, with several players changing their reviews to 1-star.
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The Conclusion
Devsisters decided to postpone the [Dark Resolution’s Glorious Return] update to a later date, and just a few hours after this decision, they announced that they would be withdrawing the Ancient+ rarity from the game.
This was to be expected given the backlash that they suffered from their whole community, and it goes to show that if their whole community stands up, that bad decision can be reconsidered.
To make up for the Ancient+ rarity, they are adding a new [Awakening] system to Ancient cookies, which will be explained more in a future announcement.
Additionally, they are sending a compensation of 3000 Crystals, 100 Juicy Stamina Jellies, and 100 Radiant Beascuit Dough to make up for the drama.
All in all, it is still early to say whether this matter has been resolved, as there is still no information on the [Awakening] system that they have announced, but it can certainly be said that this is a step in the right direction, and we’re looking to see how Devsisters will handle this going forward.
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