Desura の運営会社が破産申請。Desura を使うのは要注意

「Desura」はゲームの Bundle を購入する人はその名前を知っていることでしょう。Game Bundle には Desura に登録するためのゲームコードを貰えるものもあります。Indie Royale は Desura が運営しているのでもちろん Desura のコードの販売がメインでした。

現在 Desura は Bad Juju Games によって運営されています。Desura は2013年7月に Second Life の開発で知られる Linden Lab に買収されましたが、2014年11月に Bad Juju Games に売却されました。

そんな Desura ですが、最近は Desura でゲームを販売しているデベロッパーに対して売り上げ金を渡していなかったということがデベロッパーにより公表され、てんやわんやでした。Bad Juju Games が運営してからうまく行っていなかったようです。

Anger mounting over non-payment from games marketplace | Polygon

Evgeniy Kolpakov, writer and developer at Sometimes You, was among the first to bring issues with Desura to our attention. His complaints centered around a lack of email response, but also a lack of prompt payment for games sold through the service.

"The only person who answered my emails was the CEO of Bad Juju Games," Kolpakov said, referring to Novak. "He sent only a third of our payout by PayPal and promised to send other money after the weekend. That was on April 18, and after that he stopped answering emails."

Jay Margulus, developer of Delve Deeper, shared an email thread with Polygon through which he has been trying to receive payment from Desura since the first of May.

これに対する Desura のコメントはこちらで読めます。

May 27th Update news | Desura

• Tony was released from the hospital late Sunday, and while still having to confront ongoing serious health issues, he and I are working closely to move things forward. It is making things slower than we would like, but progress is being made.
• Manual developer payments are resuming, and those manual payouts will continue throughout the process of getting automation in place
• There will be a new forum and news page coming as soon as possible
• Desura is not going out of business, we are not in financial crisis. We are moving forward and actively working toward partnerships and opportunities for growth.

[注: Tony は CEO の Tony Novak のことです。]

そして今日、Desura を運営する Bad Juju Games は破産申請をしたようです。このニュースは Gamasutra が詳しいです。

Gamasutra - Desura's parent company has filed for bankruptcy

Bad Juju, the parent company of game bundle seller Indie Royale and digital distribution storefront Desura, has filed for bankruptcy.

...

Lisa Morrison, head of developer relations at Bad Juju, told Gamasutra she just found out about the bankruptcy on Friday morning, via Twitter. She said she had few details on the situation.

“I asked Tony [Novak, CEO of Bad Juju] for confirmation and all he could tell me was, ‘The lawyers have said I can't say anything or answer any questions yet, but yes it's true.’”

Project Zomboid のデベロッパー "The Indie Stone" は、「出来るだけ早く Steam でゲームコードを登録して欲しい」と話しています。

Important: Current Desura Situation news - Project Zomboid | Desura

Given today's news and the unpredictable future of the Desura platform we'd like to recommend all remaining Desura players who haven't yet found and activated their free Steam key to do so as soon as possible.

Desura で Project Zomboid を持っている人は Steam キーを貰えているようです。それを Steam に登録しましょう。

Desura は今後どうなるのでしょうか。あまり目立たない存在だったような気もしますが…。