Psychonauts Developer Double Fine Gets Rights To Games Back, But Union Future Uncertain - Aftermath
Double Fine director of marketing and communications James Spafford confirmed Double Fine’s independence to Aftermath. As for the Double Fine workers’ union, the original petition was filed with the National Labor Relations Board in early May. Aftermath asked Double Fine for additional details but did not receive a reply as of this publishing.
Psychonauts, Keeper, and Kiln developer Double Fine, like South Of Midnight studio Compulsion, is now officially free and clear of Microsoft. If you buy its games, you’re supporting an indie that frankly, well, needs it, as opposed to a genocide-abetting mega corporation. But it’s not all good news: Double Fine’s union push, which we first reported on back in May, is for the moment no more.
Double Fine director of marketing and communications James Spafford confirmed Double Fine’s independence to Aftermath.
“I can confirm that we are officially independent, the deal is closed, and buying our games now directly supports us just the same as Compulsion,” he said.
In addition, Double Fine founder Tim Schafer went on Kinda Funny to divulge more about plans for the future, announcing that the studio is bringing back its internal game jam, Amnesia Fortnight, with a Kickstarter.
“We're going to do a Game Jam, live on the internet, in which our backers will get to choose which of our myriad of ideas get made into four new prototypes—and which of those final four will become a real (small) game,” reads the Kickstarter page. “You may even snag some sweet merchables and rarities along the way.”
The Kickstarter, which will also include a documentary of the entire process by 2 Player Productions, goes live on August 31.
During the Kinda Funny appearance, Schafer compared Double Fine's current state to the period of time after it finished Brutal Legend, only for EA to cancel the sequel—ultimately leading the studio to focus on smaller Amnesia Fortnight projects like Stacking and Iron Brigade.
"We got a little bit of runway on the departure [from Microsoft] to sign some games," he said. "We want to sign some game deals, get going, it’s kind of a scary time to be out there. It’s a runway, not a freeway, it doesn’t go forever. It’s just a little patch where we can take off on our own power, and we want to extend it a little bit. ... So we’re doing a game jam, which we used to do a lot."
Not long after announcing that it would be regaining its independence from Microsoft in July, Double Fine laid off 23 members of its staff.
As for the Double Fine workers’ union, the original petition was filed with the National Labor Relations Board in early May. At the time, it covered all regular full-time and part-time employees—a total of 42. Today, however, CWA, the union that has helped thousands of Microsoft game workers organize, informed Aftermath that workers withdrew their petition just a couple weeks after filing it (and well before layoffs or Double Fine regaining its independence). The union did not elaborate as to why.
“Beyond that, we don't have any updates,” said a CWA spokesperson.
Aftermath asked Double Fine for additional details but did not receive a reply as of this publishing.