Electronic Arts is doing its part of make life easier for crowd-funded game developers.
Game development is an expensive business, even for small indie titles; just ask the guys behind Star Command if you don’t believe it. Every dollar counts. So to help relieve some of that pressure, EA is now offering 90 days of free distribution on Origin for any complete, crowd-funded game.
“The public support for crowd-funding creative game ideas coming from small developers today is nothing short of phenomenal,” said Origin SVP David DeMartini. “It’s also incredibly healthy for the gaming industry. Gamers around the world deserve a chance to play every great new game, and by waiving distribution fees on Origin we can help make that a reality for successfully crowd-funded developers.”
Yes, EA is the Evil Empire and I’m aware of all the many complaints about Origin, but this is still a pretty fantastic move. 90 days isn’t a huge stretch of time but it’s a window during which most games will make the vast majority of their money and by passing up on it, EA is giving up on potentially significant sources of revenue. It gains some solid PR for Origin in return, but good PR for doing a good thing seems okay to me.
Wasteland 2 and whatever Jane Jensen comes up with at Pinkerton Road will both take advantage of the Origin offer, but any “fully-funded, complete and ready-to-publish games designed for digital download to PC platforms” are eligible. If you’ve got one and want to find out more about how it all works, hit up origin.com/publishing for details.
