Lesbian Medieval Game Not On Anyone’s Modern Agenda

By Jennifer Asencio
| Published 1 hour ago

1348: Ex Voto will be a lesson in humility for years to come. For those not yet aware of this game, consider yourself fortunate. In the lead-up to the game’s launch, the social media page for 1348 Ex Voto was active on X, claiming that there were now 250,000 wish lists on Steam. It was released digitally on March 12, 2026, on Steam and PS5, with a scheduled physical release for later this year. Those numbers ultimately did not pan out, with the game peaking at around 420 players on launch day.

Immediate Gameplay Issues

The most recent update from Sedleo Games, producers of the game, was on March 18, 2026, with a public announcement that they have heard feedback from those who played the game and were working towards numerous fixes to solve some of the game’s many problems. For a company that was so vocal about its game, the silence that has followed in the wake of the game’s lack of success or acclaim is a fitting and karmic ending.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. Two weeks before the game’s launch, the demo was released, and it did not go well. At that time, the wish list total was roughly 100,000, with only a few hundred playing it. Criticisms include clunky combat, poor animation and shading, stuck NPCs during combat, and multiple button presses for the character to perform an action. Commentators began to question if the game was ready for release at this point, floating the idea that the digital release should be delayed until the release of the physical edition.

Many felt that they had backed themselves into a corner after their social media picked a fight with another upcoming title, A Knight’s Path. This game, from another independent studio, said they would have pretty characters, players could only play males, and would not include any “modern agenda.” To a company like Sedleo Games, this had crossed an intolerable line, and the infamous social media dispute between the two companies unfolded in front of the entire audience for both games.

Needless to say, it was divisive in splitting fans into two very distinct groups. The 1348: Ex Voto social media account asked its audience to put the game’s launch date “on their modern agenda”. It seems that their target audience misplaced their agendas as they did not show up at all for the game’s launch, evidenced by such poor launch numbers and ratings. Its social media activity has dropped to zero, other than the post that they were working to fix the game.

A Massive Disconnect

The game’s poor showing has led to a wider conversation about the use of Steam charts and other public-facing metrics to critique game performance. There were several high-profile cases of journalists and developers calling gamers “chuds” and other less flattering terms for disapproving of the slop put in front of players, who are just expected to mindlessly consume it and then gratuitously praise it.

This argument has also been made for the recently released Marathon, from Bungie Studios, the creator of Halo. Gaming journalists are getting mad that Steam charts have been used to critique the game to support commentary that the game is not as good as they claim it is. They do not tolerate differences of opinion; only toxic positivity, with no room to critique each other, as the norm.

It’s not just in gaming but the wider entertainment industry as well. With how badly Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is performing, journalists and reviewers keep telling us it’s awesome and everybody loves it. And in both gaming and TV, we’re being told that negative critique is “being mean on social media” and would get those games, movies, or shows canceled.

Toxic Positivity (noun) — the compulsive insistence on optimism at the expense of reality, in which negative emotions are dismissed, suppressed, or reframed into forced positivity, often invalidating genuine human experience.

If that is what it takes for these companies to take the gripes of their fans seriously, then more companies need to lose more money than they already have before this lesson is apparently learned. The makers of 1348: Ex Voto just found out the hard way.