To clarify two things: first, the description of R&M is just about right on. Eric, besides writing 100% of the code, worked very closely with me and wrote many of the rules. He is outstanding, detail-oriented, fast, accurate, and he knows how to make pinball fun. Eric is a huge reason why Rick & Morty is a great pinball machine.

Second, I no longer work with Spooky Pinball. The first time I saw the layout, the art, and the rules for Halloween and Ultraman was the first time you saw it, publicly. After it was revealed, I gave Spooky some advice on what they could or should do with these games, based on video. I have not played either game at all, and I have not seen my suggestions implemented.

What they do with my advice is entirely their decision. I am not involved in any way. That is not what I would have preferred, but that is what they chose.

I will always root for Spooky to succeed, and I am grateful for the opportunity that Charlie and the rest of the Spooky team gave me to work with them on Alice Cooper and Rick & Morty.

No, perhaps you are thinking of Steve Bowden. I never worked at Deeproot in any capacity.

This is not true. Code updates that involve licensor assets are subject to their approval, but a code update that simply fixes things or adjusts things is regularly done without licensor involvement.

For example, the end-game crashes seen earlier on this page, or the issues around extra ball settings, can and should be corrected without licensor involvement.

This does make me curious how you know the new code update includes AV assets and animations! Has there been a public posting about this?

As for bug fixes (other post), if there are readily available bug fixes, it is not a waste of time to make them available as soon as possible. This is a huge benefit of downloadable code, compared to EPROM code! I hope all these things get fixed well.

I'm not being cheeky at all. I don't work for Spooky so I have absolutely no information about anything. The statement was that a licensor must approve all code updates, and that isn't true.

I'm not Hinting At Anything.

And yes, in my opinion, if there are known bugs in a game and there are fixes available, they can and should be patched as soon as possible.

As stated before, I was laid off by Spooky. They made the choice to end my role as rules designer.

I joined Multimorphic several months later. There was no sort of non-compete delay or any other action besides being laid off by Spooky that led me to seek work with other manufacturers.

I have emails from Spooky telling me that my salaried position was being removed. I'm not sharing them, and if this leads some to believe I'm lying about this, that's fine.

This is not accurate. At Spooky I was a W-2 employee, paid weekly, like any normal job.