The design lead of Half-Life's biggest competitor says that its publisher was so 'pissed off' by the time the game launched that it didn't bother testing it properly: 'We got trashed in the press because of bugs'

Back in the halcyon days of 1998, Ritual Entertainment's Sin was shaping up to be the hottest shooter released that year. An over-the-top, hyper-violent gunfest with the backing of John Romero and a dash of what, at the time, qualified as sex appeal, Sin seemed destined to be the shooter on everyone's hard-drive by the end of the year.

But it didn't quite happen that way. A month after Sin's launch, Valve released Half-Life, which sucked up all the FPS oxygen with its revolutionary approach to storytelling and environment design. But it turns out it wasn't just Half-Life that caused problems for developer Ritual Entertainment. The studio had also accidentally put itself in the bad books of its own publisher.

The story was told by Sin's design and marketing lead Robert M. Atkins, on Nightdive Studios' Deep Dive podcast. Speaking to Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick, Atkins explained how Ritual inadvertently became the black sheep of its publishing family.

Atkin...