It seems that I spoke too soon about the whole Videogame Crash of 2015—Bad Juju Games, current owner of Desura and Indie Royale, has filed for bankruptcy. Outside of some graphical changes to the website, we’ve seen little progress on the updates the new owners had in store—and some of you may have heard that Desura hasn’t been able to pay developers for the games they’ve sold. With the latest news, however, this videogame recession is looking more and more like the Videogame Apocalypse. Developers want their money, players want their games, and Desura just wishes it could be a successful business for once.
“Just lay down the Steam keys for the Desura games we own and nobody has to get hurt.”
But, really: What does this mean for Desura and for indie games? There’s currently very little official word on the subject, so everything at the moment is pure speculation. Would Bad Juju consider selling Desura off in an attempt to recover on their investment, or would they rather go down with the ship than give it up? Is Desura going to finally die out, leaving us (both as developers and as players) with the choice between Steam and Itch.io? Or, will the phoenix rise from the ashes, ushering in a new era of indie gaming? Personally, I had hopes that Desura would make a comeback after they traded hands. If things don’t work out and Desura goes by the wayside, it’ll be a sad day at GameCola HQ.
Only time will tell which way things will go, but it’s currently looking like the Videogame Dystopian Future is on the horizon, with monolithic corporations run by greed controlling the videogame mines while a revolution slowly builds up under the premise that games should be DRM free and developers should be paid a reasonable rate. We’ll be sure to update you on the latest, but until then…
