OUYA No Longer Stopping PC Releases With FTG Funding

OUYA have announced that their much criticised Free The Games Fund is to receive some dramatic changes, and most significantly to us, no longer prevent developers from releasing their games on PC.

The fund, that was designed to match Kickstarter-raised funds in return for six months of OUYA exclusivity, had led to accusations of and admissions from developers of fixing their Kickstarters with their own money, in order to receive the cash, all in return for releasing a game on a system without the userbase in place to sustain such exclusivity. It was, in short, a very bad idea. It's getting better.

Crucially, OUYA are reducing the Kickstarter goal to $10,000. That's a big step in the right direction, as the $50k target was so far out of the league of many developers, and seemingly impossible to reach based on the donations of the very small number of OUYA owners alone. It's still, of course, far too high, the only thing really making sense being to match any Kickstarter goal. If a developer needs just $2,000 to make their game, and needs only to raise $1,000 on KS to get there, then suddenly the fund begins to make some sense. But at least it's a lot closer to making some sense now.

And very importantly, developers are now allowed to release on PC during those first six months. That's brilliant for developers, although still cuts them off from vital mobile and tablet markets. But then, I suppose OUYA wants their funding to count for something.

This certainly isn't the end of the controversy surrounding this one, as really, sticking $10,000 into your own Kickstarter project to get a free $10,000 is a damned site easier than $50,000. Anyhow, at least the PC is no longer being adversely affected by the campaign. Here's OUYA's top boss Julie Uhrman explaining the changes: