Wasteland 2 signs physical distribution deal with Deep Silver
One big drive in the recent crowdfunding bonanza has been a sentiment of "publishers can go rot", but publishers do also provide valuable services beyond developers' area of expertise. Wasteland 2 developer inXile today announced it's signed a distribution deal with publisher Deep Silver for the post-apocalyptic RPG's physical release and backer rewards.
We always intended to use a third party to handle these matters, as we are simply too small a studio to be capable of handling all the award fulfillment details from a practical standpoint. By finding the right partner, we gain not just time: it also frees up financial resources for us as they are more efficient at handling physical fulfillment than we would be. All of that time and funding saved will go right back into the game.There you go, then: no big deal. inXile can still make whatever it wants and sell it digitally however it jolly well pleases without interference, but has someone to handle the bits it can't do. Physical rewards are notoriously a problem with many crowdfunding campaigns, as developers inexperienced in such things often end up paying a lot more for trinkets than they'd expected. This sort of deal is far from unprecedented of course--even the mighty Valve used EA Partners to distribute physical releases of Portal 2, Left 4 Dead and others--but it's worth noting such developments as video games continues to feel out how crowdfunding works. The post also includes two new screenshots revealing how the customisable UI's coming along:
And click through to see the layout messed about with
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Wasteland 2 signs physical distribution deal with Deep Silver.
One big drive in the recent crowdfunding bonanza has been a sentiment of "publishers can go rot", but publishers do also provide valuable services beyond developers' area of expertise. Wasteland 2 developer inXile today announced it's signed a distribution deal with publisher Deep Silver for the post-apocalyptic RPG's physical release and backer rewards.-
I was worried for a second when I first got this update in the mail... but I think this is a smart thing to do. A lot of kickstarters try to handle all the shipping etc all by themselves and end up getting themselves in trouble. A smart entrepreneur should start a company which specializes in fulfilling kickstarter rewards! There seems to be a lot of that going on lately.
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That, or big-name publishers could start being open to the idea of JUST serving as a publishing firm, with no input on content and so on. Deep Silver seems to have grasped that concept and should benefit from it.
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