If you've read Techcrunch, Gamasutra, GamesIndustry, Gamespot, GamingOnLinux, Joystiq, Destructoid (and more) recently, you may have seen the news that Desura has been acquired by Linden Lab, the makers of shared creative spaces including Second Life, Patterns, Creatorverse, Versu, and dio.
- Officially announced here: Lindenlab.com
- Our coverage is here: Indiedb.com
- Post RootGamer interview: Rootgamer.com
As an important part of Desura, I wanted to take the opportunity now, to explain what this means for you. To date Desura has been built and run by a dedicated small team- and it's grown to the point where we list over 1,000 games and have served over 1,000,000 customers. We are very passionate about the developers and community we represent, and I want to assure you now this policy isn't changing.
With Linden Lab's support, we plan on expanding our team and providing you with more co-ordinated coverage, sales, marketing efforts, reporting, and assistance from us. We want to solve challenges like discoverability and giving your customers' choice, and we look forward to doing so. We are going to continue to polish and innovate so Desura stands out and does its most important job better: getting your game into customers' hands.
As always, we aim to be totally transparent and upfront, so please don't hesitate to respond with any questions you may have. Oh, and look out for more information from us over the coming months as our big plans fall into place.
The Desura Team,
Scott, Dave, Tim, and now Linden Lab.
This is awesome!
Hey you been awesome all the way through.
I really hope this is for the best, I admire Desura for the work they've done so far and wouldn't like to change for bad.
Best of the luck for Desura and Linden Lab
Good stuff! Glad to hear that policy is not changing and everything is continuing to work as normal. Hoping that this leads to bigger and better things for Desura. :)
Absolutely, an expanded team will allow us to put our plans into action which we haven't had the resouces to do
I have a question. With the bigger team and guessing more funds, will we see a drop in the minimum payment of 500 to something lower? I've been having a real difficult time selling my game and the money I have made I've been unable to touch for a while because it's nowhere near being close to that minimum payment. :(
We shall be reviewing all areas and prioritizing as best we can, developer relations is on the agenda
Exciting news guys! You've done an awesome job helping us Indies out :) Will it still be as easy to get a game released on Desura? I really enjoy the more straightforward approach you all have instead of, say, Greenlight or something along those lines. Hope Desura continues to grow as the most awesome distribution platform in human history! ;)
will INtense and Henley still be the public face of desura?
sweet! good luck guys!
We only launched a couple of days ago, but it's been a real pleasure working with Desura so far. I hope it's the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship! ;)
what will happen to moddb and indiedb ?
And now time will tell if yet another acquisition ruins yet another company.
If you can't tell; I'm not hopeful things will remain as well as they've been.
nice
I don’t like it …
Because I knew who was behind Desura before, and that I could trust them.
Not any more - no idea who that is.
Yes, indeed.
And as we know from politics, saying it will be the same is not always the truth.
The are more about profit imo, while we knew from DesuraNET that they are supporting the modding and indie industry because it was their aim and of course their market.
Now with LindenLab it could change quickly and dramatically, as this company has nothing to do with modding and indies and imo they try to create "a new Steam", to distribute their own AAA titles, aswell as bigger developers. Now with the new Labs the profit of Indie Developers could change alot, resulting in lower money per game for the indie developer, who need money because of the low-sale rate.
I am really sceptical now how it will develop, as I see the EA-stragedy of making an plattform (Origin) to bind players. With Desura you had the chance to play it without the plattform, now we will see.
I am really really sceptical.
And I am really interested in how Desura and Moddb/IndieDB/SlideDB stay connected, as we could login with our profile of these DBs in Desura, now our profile is stored at another company? With all of our data/information? So NSA has some new stuff to discover?
Well, I would like to have some answers, aswell as Mods and Indies have a direct link to Desura on their project profiles.
I also am a bit concerned by the news as Linden Labs does not exactly have a stellar record of making wise business decisions. In the past they've fired critical staff from their own pet project (Second Life) at the behest of their corporate beancounters, and every time they've made such decisions it's cost them large portions of their userbase.
The other thing Linden Labs has been famous for in the past which has driven customers to their competition has been mistreatment/abuse of their paying customers, which is one of the main reasons I personally have no trust for them as a company. Their excessive greed has driven dollars and dimes away from them in waves and droves and they've thus far been unable to see that it's their own actions which have caused it.
It is my deep and sincere hope that they do not make these same or similar mistakes with Desura as thus far Desura has been the best and brightest hope for an Indie/OpenSource friendly competitor to Valve's Steam. Now I'm not so sure that the future is as bright as I had previously thought it might be.
Note to Linden Labs: Please try to remember, your customerbase/community is your STRENGTH, not your enemy! Treat us right and we'll help you grow and your wildest dreams of greed will be fulfilled, but abuse us and you'll die a slow death of a million papercuts as your customers one by one abandon ship to your competition, even if the competition is an inferior product.
I'd hate to think that INtense or Henley will not longer be the front-people of the order here - instead to have a Linden Lab mask placed over them like a vicious corporate cancer.
It would be a crying shame to see this happen, but I'm genuinely happy if this makes Desura better in the long run.
As I said, give us time I believe you will see the results and be pleasantly surprised those who are wondering. The team isn't changing and ModDB / IndieDB / SlideDB are remaining independent.
From the looks of it, all things are looking to go great! Can't wait to hear more from this.
Looks like an interesting change.
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I am currently developing an indie game and was hoping to list it here. I will likely not be doing so. Not after reading this. After experiencing 7+ years of controversial policy changes, poor feature implementation, declining engagement with SL residents, and years of unaddressed bugs in Second Life, I do not believe Linden Lab is capable of doing any better here.
I just hope you will not abandon DRM-Free downloads...since its main reason i use Desura.