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Opinion: Ouya has freed the games, but who will free Ouya from itself?

How the best of intentions turned against it

Opinion: Ouya has freed the games, but who will free Ouya from itself?
Growing up, we often hear that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It turns out the same axiom holds for the games industry, but it might be better understood if we replaced 'hell' with 'obsolescence'.

Whichever destination you prefer, neither is a desirable place to go - and yet, Ouya seems to be on a fast track to both.

Warning signs

Ouya's troubles began back in July, when it announced its much-touted Free the Games fund. This $1 million pledge to indie developers promised to match funds raised on Kickstarter, dollar-for-dollar, in return for six months of Ouya exclusivity.

That was it. No, seriously - outside of a $50,000 campaign minimum, that was the only real restriction on the fund.

However well-intentioned, Ouya's openness was ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous developers and scammers who easily could launch a Kickstarter campaign, fund it with zombie accounts, and then reap the benefits from the matched Free the Games fund.

The best outcome of this dishonest scenario would be a developer fraudulently raising funds to make their game solely with Ouya's payout. The worst case scenario would be a scammer who was actively looking to take Ouya's money and run with it.

Both seemed to surface in August, when two games with suspicious backing activity launched separate Kickstarters.

The more genuine-looking of the two, Elementary My Dear Holmes, was suspended by Kickstarter for its aberrant backer activity, but the other - Gridiron Thunder - recently wrapped up its funding campaign of $170,000 which was contributed by just 183 backers.

That translates to $934.48 per backer, a figure well out of step with your average Kickstarter campaign and one that raised many eybrows.What warning signs?

With the controversy already in the public eye, Ouya had the opportunity to get in front of the problem with a proactive response to the budding Gridiron Thunder fiasco.

Instead, its founder Julie Uhrman posted a meandering non-response that encouraged critics and detractors to be more supportive of its open policy toward the Free the Games fund, while completely failing to address the funding controversy which was very much in the minds of Ouya developers.


Elementary My Dear Holmes

Reactions ranged from disappointed to incensed, as Thomas Was Alone creator Mike Bithell opined that the Ouya was "A beautiful dream of a console, marred by a complete lack of understanding of the space it is designed to serve."

Others were less prosaic.

Developer Sophie Houlden pulled her game from the Ouya marketplace after reading Uhrman's blog post, while others like Mighty Rabbit Studios warned Uhrman that "If you go through with backing Gridiron Thunder, you are literally throwing money away".

Ouya had the chance to address both the public and its developers with this blog post, and it managed to disappoint both.

It's time to pull a Sony

The biggest problem facing Ouya - outside of its unwillingness to address the giant, Gridiron Thunder-shaped elephant in the room - is the fact that it's been far too public and far too open with its cash.

When Sony unveiled its $20 million Pub Fund program in 2011, it didn't offer to hand out money to just any indie studio that approached them.

Instead, meetings would be involved to make sure the partnership was to the best interest of Sony and its playerbase.

While that's far less sexy than Ouya's ambitious claim that it's here to free the games, Sony's approach has worked so far and has made sure its funds go to the right people.

Ironically, Ouya - a company far, far smaller than Sony - is now digging in its heels and behaving more intractably and inflexibly than its massive, international competitors are.

But it's not too late for Ouya to make good to its developers and respond more directly about the Gridiron Thunder controversy. If it does, and it's humble about it, faith might be restored to the developer community.

Otherwise, Uhrman's blog post will be viewed as a peace offering delivered with the best of intentions...and we all know where that can lead you.

US Correspondent

Representing the former colonies, Matt keeps the Pocket Gamer news feed updated when sleepy Europeans are sleeping. As a frustrated journalist, diehard gamer and recovering MMO addict, this is pretty much his dream job.