The Future Of Duck Game

The rumor is that Warner may make all Adult Swim Games games unavailable in May. It’s still not totally clear whether or not that’s happening, but some devs have already been notified that their games will be removed which is depressing, and scary. It’s a particularly confusing kind of scary for those of us who haven’t gotten any notice yet.

I wanna talk about Adult Swim Games before anything else. We met at PAX West in like 2013 through my friend Andrew, whose had a few games published by them and seems likely to be in the same boat. They seemed really awesome, so once the time came to start porting Duck Game to Steam I decided to ask for their help. All the ASG people in the Duck Game credits played a huge role in making DG the game it is today, and there are very few names in that list which don’t bring a face and a whole wonderful and passionate person to mind. The only few that don’t are the names I don’t recognize. Everyone at ASG was like a friend and we talked and played DG together constantly. They where as dedicated to the game as I was and their producers/marketing people where constantly working to hustle the game and get it in front of as many people as they could. The testers played the game into the ground every time a new build was pushed and they where always showing up in multiplayer lobbies whenever a new update/port came out. They always brought the game to shows, always invited me and treated me like family at every second. They even invited me out to their offices a few times and flew me both to London and to Austin so I could work on the game directly with the porting teams. They would always send somebody along and the times we spent hanging out making games in different countries are some of the best times I’ve had.

This is all stuff I took for granted, but from what I’ve seen it’s an extremely lucky thing to have a publisher with people who care so much about what they’re working on and I didn’t know how good I had it. I don’t want to mention anyone specifically because my memory sucks and I’m bound to forget someone and make some mistakes but I dearly miss working with the old ASG folks and I hope we can meet again someday.

It’s funny how things change. Funny in that fucked up kind of way like when you’re laughing out of madness because life is the funniest joke. I’d always been weary of working with bigger companies and with ASG I thought I had finally found one worth trusting, but the mistake was assuming that forever trustworthy people make a forever trustworthy company. They don’t, and they can’t, because no matter how good a company is today there’s always a chance that the people will change, that the company will go bankrupt or get swallowed up, and that any agreements you made with them will slurp down into the shit pit. None of the amazing people who worked at ASG are to blame, but the fact is that those people where ASG to me, so without them ASG has become a frightening corporate puppet and Duck Game has lost the delicate care of it’s previous keepers.

In the midst of the drowning splash of this big stinky unfeeling mega steamer, what happens now? For some games the future is unclear and I really hope that everyone comes out of this with their own best case scenarios, or that at the very least they get their games back. Luckily for Duck Game, since when I first signed ASG had such honest people with such reasonable contracts, there seem to be a lot of options and possible futures for it.

One simple future is that DG doesn’t end up getting delisted at all. That one’s easy, everything stays the same and I can start feeling the full shame and regret of worrying any of you with the possibility that DG might be affected (Sorry…) The other, better, simple future would be that another publisher buys the contract and takes the reigns. As much as I’d like to get the game free of the possibility of something like this ever happening again, ASG’s considerate support was absolutely priceless over DG’s development and the support of another publisher who I respect and trust would help move things along more smoothly in the future (anyone who reads this blog knows how slow and unreliable I can be on my own).

Another future would be that DG is delisted, and Warner extends the same option to DG that was offered to the other games which have been notified so far, the gist of which sounds like: “We’re delisting your game and not giving you back your store page, but you’re free to remove ASG branding and republish to a new steam page if you’d like.” This is obviously a shitty future, but it’s not the worst one. This future assumes that delisting means people who previously owned the game would still have it, you just wouldn’t be able to buy it anymore (this is what I believe delisting will mean). In this case I would republish DG under Corptron. The ideal result would be that I could still update the old version of the game to be identical to the new one, and make the old and new versions connect to each other and share online lobbies so people with different releases of the game don’t even notice. If I can’t update the old version, which is a more likely going to be a problem with Switch and PS4, or if I can’t otherwise give the new version to existing players for free, then Duck Game will have to be republished as a free game to avoid anyone having to rebuy something they already bought. Some people have said they’d be happy to rebuy DG and I seriously appreciate the kindness everyone has shown- but you won’t have to rebuy it, it’s absolutely not going to be like that.

The most bleak future (and I seriously don’t think this will happen, but let’s discuss it) would be that the game is delisted, removed from everyone’s libraries, and an email comes saying I can’t republish or otherwise do anything with the game (this is the ‘Send Us Your First Born Child At Your Earliest Convenience’ future). In this case, I talk to a lawyer right away to make sure my assumptions about my contract are correct. If everything checks out, the next update would be published as a new version of the game without ASG branding and with a different name. I would never sell one of my IP’s (and this is why you shouldn’t) so I’m free to make “Duck Game 2” or “Hyper Duck Game Chronicles Prequel: Beginnings of the Shattered Ends” and doing a Game Of The Year edition a month later which includes a one DLC “season pass” if I want to. In the meantime I should also be able to make the old game into “Duck Game Classic” and release it for free.

In the extra special “Why Do We Live” and deluxe “Let Me Die” editions of the future where Duck Game Classic is not allowed, everyone will probably switch over to playing Duck King 2- which will suspiciously appear shortly after Duck Game is obliterated from the universe.

I’m hopeful for the future. It’s been a crazy ride, and many of the best moments of my life have been adjacent to DG somehow. I’ve been so lucky up to this point, everyone has been so kind and understanding that I could cry. Thank you. Duck Game will be 10 years old on May 13th, and it’s going to show up to it’s own party. DG belongs to it’s players as much as it belongs to me, and it belongs to all the great people who used to work at the best game publisher I could ever ask for. There’s no way anything will ever make it disappear, I will never stop updating it as long as my hands and eyes work and I’m sorry for scaring anybody in the heat of the news with my own fears otherwise.

I dreamed of this so long, this used to feel so strong…

Now I wait, wish these thoughts would go away.

I hope I dream of you, cause it’s taking my life away.

No, I don’t hate, but these thoughts won’t go away.

I hope I dream of you, cause it’s taking my life away.

-Taking My Life Away, Default