Earlier today, open-world action game Samson arrived on Steam to mixed reviews and a lot of complaints about bugs and broken animations. In response, the game’s creative director, Christofer Sundberg, published a letter apologizing to players and promising that improvements and fixes were coming.
Launched on April 8, Samson is an ambitious but messy open-world action game focused on gritty melee encounters and heavy-feeling car combat. As I explained in my review, Samson has some neat ideas in it, but it’s a slog to play due to some bad design choices, optimization issues, and lots of bugs and glitches. And Sundberg, who is also a co-founder of the studio behind the low-rated game, agrees with this assessment, explaining in a new open letter on Steam that Samson launched in a state that is “unacceptable.”
Vaya hostias meten en el Samson no? pic.twitter.com/JLY9U4dtIC
— Skynex (@skynexito) April 8, 2026
“Early impressions are mixed, and many of you are experiencing game-breaking bugs and performance issues,” said Sundberg, who previously helped create the Just Cause franchise. “That’s unacceptable and we are listening to everyone’s feedback and are hard at work to deliver the game we spent years of our lives developing. Launching a game is a ton of work and I’m proud of the effort our team has put into seeing Samson from its initial concept, through release.”
“We are committed to the future of both Samson and Tyndalston, and this game will grow over time on all fronts: quality, gameplay, and content. Thank you all for supporting us and sticking with us this super exciting launch day. We will continue to keep our ears to the ground and improve the game with your support.”
Interestingly, Sundberg mentions that the team released the game with all its “flaws” for a “number of reasons,” but doesn’t elaborate on what those reasons might be.
Samson is not very good. pic.twitter.com/H6LtDYrWQP
— Shirrako (@ShirrakoGaming) April 8, 2026
The first step to fixing up Samson is a planned patch that is set to land on Friday which will hopefully improve some performance problems, fix some crashes, make sure some missions don’t break, and add fall damage to NPCs, so if they fall into an area you can’t reach but you need to kill them, they’ll die and not get stuck out of reach.
“But the work doesn’t stop there,” promised Sundberg. “Samson is here to stay, and we are not going anywhere. Here’s what we are continuing to do as we move forward: Continue to squash performance-related issues, improve gameplay-related issues, fix animation-related issues, and continue to polish.”
I’m not sure if even these fixes and tweaks will be enough to make Samson a good game, as it has bigger problems beyond bugs and clunky combat. But with enough updates, Samson could end up becoming a bit less janky to play. And that would be nice for GTA IV fans intrigued by Samson fans and its gritty crime-filled street-level action.
