The now-defunct Ouya which started an interesting Free Games Initiative back in July 2013, had a program to help funding the game developers, where it will match any KickStarter if a minimum target of US$50,000 was reached and game developers will provide the game as Ouya exclusive for six months.

ouya2

After the brand was taken over by Razer on 27 June 2015, they found themselves having to pony up US$620,000 owed to indie developers under the said scheme. Only a quarter of the developers that meet the requirements set by the scheme got their money in full, while another quarter of the 27 developers got some money and the rest left stranded with no cash.

The CEO of Razer, Min-Liang Tan was taken aback by the complexity and depth of the problem. He was at the ChinaJoy gameshow when this little detail sprung out and had to sit down for three hours talking to the legal teams at Razer and Ouya to sort out the issue:

We only acquired the team, the platform and the assets of Ouya. We didn’t look at the debts because that’s not how the deal was structured for us.

After some deliberations, Razer decided to make good on the promise and pay the money out. The CEO even has a new plan after this that did not insist on exclusivity:

We’re doing an entirely different approach. We want to make it completely open.” he continues, “What we want to do is make sure we support indie developers. Razer will be backing the new Ouya publishing arm. So we are going to try and make good on this fund and give these developers an option.

Via Polygon

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