Irrelevant. If you promise something and offer a contract, you're expected to honor that contract.
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Ouya backing out of financial agreements with Free The Games devs, Motherboard claims
- Thread starter HadesGigas
- Start date
Irrelevant. If you promise something and offer a contract, you're expected to honor that contract.
Jeevesmeister
Banned
Dash Kappei
Not actually that important
rip
Jeevesmeister
Banned
This is a real legal clause in a real legal contract real lawyers drafted that real people signed off on. From the marketplace contract for OUYA:
You gotta be fucking kidding me. Everytime I think OUYA is a thing of the past, I find something new to shock me.
You gotta be fucking kidding me. Everytime I think OUYA is a thing of the past, I find something new to shock me.
SomedayTheFire
Member
Did Amazing Frog ever get released elsewhere other than Ouya?
Chauncy Talon
Member
I almost bought one. Keyword, almost. I hate when things like this happens.
Yep. I'm sure some of the people saying that would be singing a different tune if they were owed up to $30,000 for their efforts.
It's pretty standard practice in these kinds of deals: the assets of a company are sold, the liabilities are left to the original company. The remaining shell typically goes bankrupt shortly afterwards. This certainly seems to be true for this OUYA deal, so the people still there had better start working on their CVs.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
oh my god
If Razer bought the OUYA trademarks, then OYUA will likely rename itself soon. The Company Formerly Known As OUYA can then declare bankruptcy in obscurity without further damaging the OUYA brand.
Surely in the meantime though, the companies owed payments have every legal right to attempt to reclaim the money? I don't understand why, if the above is indeed the intention, Ouya didn't simply rename, file etc, and *then* inform the companies involved. Doing it the other way around screams of incompetency.
Mind you, it's Ouya, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised...
If that's the case, and assuming the current OUYA owners receive proceeds from the sale, liabilities of OUYA would still need to be satisfied before the OUYA owners receive anything. In a court trial, the game devs should thus have a strong case.
I'm pretty damn happy with my Shield, thank you.
xDUMPWEEDx
Banned
This is just the cherry on top of the complete failure that was Ouya.
Unsurprisingly, the most successful aspect of the entire existence of the Ouya was the Kickstarter.
Unsurprisingly, the most successful aspect of the entire existence of the Ouya was the Kickstarter.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
So you get a chubby from devs getting royally fucked over?
Wiktor
Member
In any civilized law system (ie..not USA's one) Razer would still be liable for all the money OUYA owned up to the total worth of assets they acquired based on Actio Pauliana.Without something like this avoiding paying debts is child's play
Doctor Ironic
Member
This is a real legal clause in a real legal contract real lawyers drafted that real people signed off on. From the marketplace contract for OUYA:
You gotta be fucking kidding me. Everytime I think OUYA is a thing of the past, I find something new to shock me.
Ouya is such a massive, colossal clusterfuck that I'm surprised it didn't catch MORE heat than it did. Every turn you take, there's something new and horrible around the corner. It's the never ending schadenfreude.
Ban Puncher
Member
xDUMPWEEDx
Banned
If the Ouya was a triple-layered shit cake, with fudge made from real shit, with a shit flavored cherry on top.
This is like one last, final, fuck you, courtesy of Ouya. History will not be kind to the Ouya.
Doing the name change first would raise many red flags, since the brand was one of OUYA's few valuable assets. In any case, if there follows a bankruptcy of TCFKAO then the proceeds from this sale will go to the creditors and other claimants. The change in contract terms just cuts the developers from that list of claimants, and I'd expect them to have no legal claims on TCFKAO at that point. (Disclaimer: not a lawyer, just a fascinated onlooker.)
It adds insult to injury that Ouya lobbied so hard to get these same game devs to sign up for the Free the Games program.
I'm no lawyer, but I don't know if that contract verbiage will cover them in a court of law. Them being acquired does not make them insolvent. They would need to officially declare bankruptcy and produce all financial records showing insolvency for this to stick. The devs should hold firm.
I'm no lawyer, but I don't know if that contract verbiage will cover them in a court of law. Them being acquired does not make them insolvent. They would need to officially declare bankruptcy and produce all financial records showing insolvency for this to stick. The devs should hold firm.
Jeevesmeister
Banned
Well that sure is a convincing argument for a $300 box running on a bad smartphone OS and riddled with bugs and crashes, packaged in with a controller larger than the original Xbox iceberg.
The Android console hustle has always been a sham and OUYA's several years of comedic terror & prominence as all others have been quickly forgotten or tossed aside is only solid evidence of this fact.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
That's assuming
1) The clause is actually legal. (The assumption that a lawyer penned this may be a bit presumptuous.)
2) They sufficiently met the obligations of the clause.
Even if 1 sticks, there's not much evidence that 2 holds water. They didn't declare bankruptcy. They didn't go insolvent...
They really should. Maybe act together for a single court case to split the legal fees or something.
"Oh, I owe some money, let me sell myself to some bidder and let me no longer owe that money because it's business baby!"
lifeexpectancy
Member
Can't get blood from a stone, or in this case a weirdly shaped, useless plastic box.
Triggerhappytel
Member
Would the devs have been required to sign updated versions of contracts which superseded existing contracts? Is this legal?!
...yet.
Clearly the clause only activates if they declare bankruptcy, not before. I'm just assuming that with the assets sold to Razer what's left of OUYA has no revenue stream left, and that therefore bankruptcy must soon follow.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
If the Ouya was a triple-layered shit cake, with fudge made from real shit, with a shit flavored cherry on top.
This is like one last, final, fuck you, courtesy of Ouya. History will not be kind to the Ouya.
.... you don't have any comprehension of what is going on here besides "things I dislike is fucking up", do you?
Razer also 'bought' out the people, so they're only leaving the console and the controller. The CEO is getting fired though.
Every debtor can reclaim the money, the investors are just way higher up the list and owed a lot more money.
Perfect quote. Though I'd say this new boss was actually worse than the previous ones
And now I have the song stuck in my head!
sixteen-bit
Member
shady
Just because you fling shit onto the wall doesnt make it stick. Riddled with bugs and crashes? That doesn't describe the shield at all. But by all means, continue trying every complaint you can muster. Next time accuse it of shooting your dog while you are at it.
He's not arguing otherwise, just explaining why he has little sympathy.
Fox Mulder
Member
The company was ran by idiots apparently, but the ouya itself did fine if you gave it a chance. I got my $99 out of it.
I didn't use it much for indie games, but it was a solid emulator and media box at the time. Did great with streaming plex or playing off a hdd with xbmc.
Glendemonium
Member
This might be my ignorance showing, but I never saw the appeal to the Ouya... what was it supposed to be? Android game console?
Had fellow game devs praise the thing with high regard like it was going to be the second coming of gaming but I knew it was going to fall hard. Something was off about the whole thing.
Had fellow game devs praise the thing with high regard like it was going to be the second coming of gaming but I knew it was going to fall hard. Something was off about the whole thing.
Fox Mulder
Member
That's crowd funding. The ouya people had a product to pitch and the gaming press blew it up as some narrative of traditional consoles dying.
It was never going to get major support, but seems to get tiny devs tinkering around on it. I sold mine for nearly $90 used like a year later on ebay, which people are still paying.
crazygambit
Member
Yeah, but an acquisition or a fusion is totally different from insolvency or bankruptcy. It would be weird for the contract not to state what happens in the case of a fusion, but usually the new company has to honor all the commitments of the old one.
The developers probably have grounds to sue, but the amounts seem pretty small for it to be worth it, unless they all band together I guess.
But this isn't a merger of two companies: Razer cherry-picked the pieces of OUYA that it bought, and as for the rest, the OP states that "... Ouya will cease to exist as a company following the Razer acquisition."
Now if the remaining shell of OUYA could pay off all remaining obligations, then these developers would get paid what they're due, and any money left over would go to the owners. But this from the OP "... they will not get the rest of the money they were owed because Ouya will cease to exist ..." implies that the money to pay all obligations isn't there. Which (as far as I can tell) means a Chapter 7 bankruptcy for what remains of OUYA.
This is a point where the details of the contracts matter a lot, but they're likely to be behind almost all other creditors in the pecking order. Worse, the ones who signed the updated contracts (because they were further along their release cycle) will be behind those who didn't. The devs who were more committed to the platform will be the deepest in the hole. And litigation, even if they were to win, is unlikely to help then: it is slow, and the money may just not be there. The devs will need to find alternative sources of funding, and may face bankruptcy themselves if they do not.
Sylverstone14
Member
That is not cool. At least get Razer to honor commitments, or something?
dancrane212
Member
I wonder how this will effect the games whose kickstarter took that money into account for deciding their campaign goal. Taking a quick look around earlier the only developer I saw who mentioned this so far was the following...
https://twitter.com/lobodestroyo/status/626051577808355328
https://twitter.com/lobodestroyo/status/626051577808355328
crazygambit
Member
Yeah, but again it seems weird that there would be a provision in the contract preventing the sale of material assets, just for a situation like this. No creditor would ever approve any loan if you could just sell your main assets and leave the shell to die with the debt. There's of course a chance these developers had terrible representation and didn't think of requesting a clause like that. However such a clause would be pretty much standard in these types of contracts I would think.
That is super shitty, but does explain it.
Fired seems unlikely. If she's negotiated this deal you can bet she's leaving with a heap of cash as a severance payment before the remaining shell of a company files for bankruptcy.