The story of Them's Fightin' Herds has been one of constant transformation and adaptation. The indie fighting game developer Mane6 originally created My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic, which featured characters from the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Hasbro, the owners of the My Little Pony license, weren't too keen on the idea of its characters brawling and sent a cease and desist letter to Mane6, putting a stop to the game. However, the game's exhibition at Evo 2012 showcased that it was too unique to ignore.
After a crowdfunding campaign and help designing new characters from show creator Lauren Faust, Mane6 was able to bring Them's Fightin' Herds to launch in April. Shortly after, the game was one of four fighting game titles selected to be a part of the first ever Evo Online. It caught the attention of the masses, but then suddenly, Evo got caught up in controversy and had to cancel its mainstay event for the first time since its rebrand in 2002. Once again, Mane6 found itself in a familiar position, having to take its potential directly to the fighting game community to make something special. The result is a new online tournament called The Great Stampede.
Getting the nod to be a part of Evo Online didn't come as much of a surprise to Mane6 or its president and production director, Aaron Stavely. "We have GGPO, rollback netcode, and only the games that have similar tech were really going to be viable competitively at the scale that Evo Online was going to be," he tells The Loadout. What did come as a surprise was that only four games were chosen.