Drag queen fighting game 'Drag Her!' cancelled, to be released unfinished for free

Fabulous fighting game Drag Her! has been cancelled, ending hopes of seeing famous drag queens like Asia O'Hara and BenDeLaCreme scratch each others' eyes out. Times are tough in the games industry, and now even queens are being toppled.

Indie developer Fighting Chance Games publicly announced Drag Her!'s cancellation on Wednesday, revealing the project would be shutting down after three years in development.

"This is an especially painful decision brought about by a simple lack of funding," Fighting Chance Games wrote on X (formerly Twitter).  "Over the life of this project, we have pitched to a long list of publishers, platforms, and more looking to get Drag Her! picked up. Despite a groundswell of audience support, a fully funded Kickstarter, successful grant applications, and wonderful turnout at major game events — no amount of legitimacy we built has culminated in a deal."

Drag Her!'s small development team is also disbanding, meaning that we're unlikely to see another title from Fighting Chance Games any time soon. Studio director Ian Ramsay told Mashable that some team members have moved on to other jobs, while others are still looking for work.

"We still have a great deal of love and respect for one another and the game, and are sad that it’s come to a premature end," Ramsay said.

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Fighting Chance Games initially launched Drag Her!'s crowdfunding campaign in 2022, which raised over $75,000 for the 2D side-scrolling fighting game's development. While acknowledging that it would be a challenge to convince investors that a market exists at the intersection of drag and video games, the developers were resolute in taking on the task.

The team officially licensed the likenesses of famous drag queens such as Kim Chi, Laganja Estranja, and Alaska Thunderfuck 5000, and even got so far as running a beta playtest last August. Mashable had the opportunity to play Drag Her! at SXSW Sydney last year, and found it a delightfully camp experience. 

Yet investors remained skeptical, and Fighting Chance Games is now being forced to sashay away.

"Without money, and with a future made bleak by the ongoing layoffs in the game industry, we could no longer hang on," Fighting Chance Games wrote on Kickstarter. "If we were in a better position, we would've just self published and utilised different premium options (like DLC characters and outfits), but we were basically swinging from small pots of money that would keep us going and then forcing us to stop."

Sadly, Ramsay told Mashable that Drag Her! is unlikely to return to the stage despite the team's best efforts.

"We don’t really see [any future for Drag Her!]" said Ramsay. "We did everything in our power to bring our game to life. In order for us to come back to her, there would need to be a substantial shift in the demographics of the people who fund games.

"Investors remained reticent to see value in a game that didn’t reflect them personally. This was in spite of how many people it DID represent, the hungry dedicated fanbase, and the success the team accrued along the way."

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It's a sad end to Drag Her!'s story, and one that we're unfortunately likely to see repeated. The games industry is currently being ravaged by job cuts and studio closures, with over 8,000 layoffs announced within the first two months of 2024 alone. Both Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive have announced plans to cut five percent of their respective workforces, while PlayStation revealed it would lay off 900 employees.

In an environment where even Star Wars games are being cancelled while proven studios are killed, it feels as though nothing is safe in the games industry right now.

"For us, Drag Her! was a killer piece of gay media — a chance to showcase the sheer joy of queer culture — and an opportunity to move the community forward," Fighting Chance Games wrote. "A game that could normalise, equalise, and validate, rather than force us to the margins."

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Fortunately, all of Fighting Chance Games' hard work won't completely vanish into thin air. The developers are turning their lemons into "gay ass lemonade" by releasing a "skinny" version of the game on PC for free — more a drag princess than a fully fledged queen. 

Drag Her! Failure to Launch Edition will only have three combatants as opposed to the seven that were initially planned, and won't have the career mode that the developers had envisaged. But if you're a fan of Kim Chi, Laganja Estranja, or Alaska Thunderfuck 5000, it could still be fun to jump in for some local or online multiplayer. The incomplete game will be released on Steam May 16 at 9 a.m. PT /  12 a.m. ET.

"Fight your friends, neighbors, enemies, and she-roes (sometimes all at once with 4-player mode)," reads Drag Her!'s Steam page. "The only thing you can't fight is the inevitable foreclosure of your game studio."