Razer is making a few changes to the contract, but the biggest change is abandoning exclusivity for the Ouya and making these games free on their Cortex TV platform. Besides being a companion to the Android games for television streaming the new technologies like Cortex, will also enable Razer to stream PC games to your TV.
Advertisement
Following its storming Kickstarter campaign, which raised $8.6 million, Ouya was beset by troubles ranging from early bugs in the software and hardware through to a lack of titles on the Android-based microconsole it had created.
It seems like only yesterday Razer Inc was adamantly claiming that its acquisition of Ouya Inc’s software assets did not include the responsibility to pay indie devs who took part in Ouya’s “Free the Games” program, which promised to match contributions to games developed for Ouya that were successfully funded through Kickstarter.
Last year, Ouya also offered its in-house games to Xiaomi, embedded in its Michigan TV.
Razer’s chief executive and founder, Min-Liang Tan, has broken the company’s silence on the matter and told Polygon that he is looking to do right by developers – but has stopped short of promising them the money they are owed. We don’t want exclusives for any platform. As part of the deal, Ouya’s technical team and developer relations personnel will be joining Razer. The rest of the original Ouya agreement will remain the same, which is basically developers receiving some of their funding money when certain milestones are hit.
The entire sordid tale begins roughly two years ago, when Ouya first announced its Free the Games initiative in an effort to entice more indie developer to publish their games on the Ouya console. Razer must sign new agreements with FtG developers, since there are no existing legal or non-legal developer relationships. Tan also said that developers can email Razer directly as well. “This is purely being done out of goodwill”, he said.
Advertisement
It’s a pretty lengthy article that goes into some detail as to what Razer actually acquired as well as what they propose to do in the future, specifically with developers. I think they’re going to be able to get the games done and gamers will get access to games for free. We’re falling back to our basic principles, that Razer is for gamers, by gamers. “So we are going to try and make good on this fund and give these developers an option”, Said Min-Liang.
