Desura Future in Question After Bankruptcy Filing
The owner and operator of the digital distribution service Desura appears to have gone into bankruptcy. Following a thread on NeoGAF where a user had spotted a tweet from an employee of the game bundle website Indie Royale that indicated that Bad Juju, who only bought Desura several months ago, had gone bankrupt. This could mean that the platform could soon go offline.
Desura began life as a digital distribution service that offered games from all sorts of developers without any form of DRM. It was mainly used by independent developers who were unable to get their game onto other platforms such as GOG or Steam, especially in the time before Steam Greenlight. While the store has always been very small compared to other larger services it still has a library of more than 2 million games as well as a large collection of older games that are not available to buy anywhere else.
In 2014, Desura was purchased by Bad Juju from Linden Lab but faced growing complaints from developers that they were going unpaid even after reaching payment thresholds. Gamer Nexus looked into the issue and found that some independent developers had gone for months without receiving any sort of payment.
Desura later responded to the criticism, explaining that the problem was due to the company being very small and not having an automated system for payments. Complicating matters was the fact that CEO Tony Novak had to personally sign-off on payments and that he had been hospitalized for a short time. Lastly, the company stated that a recent change in offices also led to a significant delay.
Despite this, some developers have continued to report problems with receiving their share of sales in the last few weeks. The news that the parent company has filed for bankruptcy may explain any payment delays but could leave those owed money sadly out of pocket.