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Koch Media (Deep Silver) trademarks Bloodstained, is assuredly mystery publisher

Kifimbo

Member
Sorry if old, I haven't followed this thread closely.

Koch Media (Saints Row, Metro, Homefront) trademarked Bloodstained on May 20, about 10 days after the start of the Kickstarter campaign. It not only suggests they will fund the game and publish it, but that they also own the Bloodstained franchise.

7FSskdd.jpg
 

@MUWANdo

Banned

I remember he (Ravidrath) said he thought the identity of the publisher might cause some drama and that's why it was being kept secret; what's so controversial about Deep Silver?

The "Deep Silver/Koch owns the IP" thing... yeah, that's complete balls if true.
 
I remember he (Ravidrath) said he thought the identity of the publisher might cause some drama and that's why it was being kept secret; what's so controversial about Deep Silver?

The "Deep Silver/Koch owns the IP" thing... yeah, that's complete balls if true.

Kinda had a feeling this was going to be the case, why else would they keep everything hidden?
 

Smellycat

Member
I remember he (Ravidrath) said he thought the identity of the publisher might cause some drama and that's why it was being kept secret; what's so controversial about Deep Silver?

The "Deep Silver/Koch owns the IP" thing... yeah, that's complete balls if true.

Maybe because they are publishing Mighty No 9?
 

jacobeid

Banned
I didn't realize that Koch Media is a German based Video Game publisher. For a second I thought I had been supporting the Koch Brothers without realizing it.
 

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
This is totally free public focus testing for prospective games.

The charge for Kickstarter doing this service for publishers is pulled out of the donations. Amazing.

Publishers don't have to know what will be popular at all any more. That used to be their function.
 
Wait, could someone else had trademarked Bloodstained before the 20th and given Koch/Inti Creates a bunch of legal shit over the name of the game?
 

LewieP

Member
I hope it is not aggressively region locked on PC, like all other Deep Silver games are.

It would feel wrong if a game that the players have largely funded ends up being region locked.
 

Ridley327

Member
IGA is technically a freelancer on the game, correct? He doesn't have a company himself, which would have made IP ownership a difficult proposition in the first place. Someone had to step in by necessity.

I know Deep Silver doesn't have the strongest reputation out there, but I have to give them credit for throwing their weight into niche projects like this and MN9, which you don't see happening much in the third-party publishing space these days.
 

R1CHO

Member
Poor Koch media needs your money to make game, because those evil publishers wont fund it...

IGA is technically a freelancer on the game, correct? He doesn't have a company himself, which would have made IP ownership a difficult proposition in the first place. Someone had to step in by necessity.

So difficult only hundreds of indie devs are doing it.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
IGA is technically a freelancer on the game, correct? He doesn't have a company himself, which would have made IP ownership a difficult proposition in the first place. Someone had to step in by necessity.

I know Deep Silver doesn't have the strongest reputation out there, but I have to give them credit for throwing their weight into niche projects like this and MN9, which you don't see happening much in the third-party publishing space these days.

IGA is CEO of ArtPlay. I'm assuming Koch demanded IP rights before they signed any contracts
 

Bytes

Member
LOL at the Harry Reids in this thread getting ready to freak out over the Koch name.

It sucks that they get to own the IP, but that's how it works.
 

LewieP

Member
IGA is CEO of ArtPlay. I'm assuming Koch demanded IP rights before they signed any contracts

Seems highly unlikely to me. If he was willing to offer IP to a publisher during negotiations, I imagine he's have easily found a publisher that would fund the entire game, without needing to go to KS.

It's more likely that they are taking care of distribution, and maybe providing some funding in exchange for a revenue share.
 
Publishers don't have to know what will be popular at all any more. That used to be their function.

That's only one of the many functions of a publisher. A good publisher will also generally fund development, keep development on track, provide testing & localization services, and market it once done.

And yeah, whoever pays for a game's development almost always gets the IP. That's how it works and honestly, it's not particularly unfair either.
 

duckroll

Member
IGA is technically a freelancer on the game, correct? He doesn't have a company himself, which would have made IP ownership a difficult proposition in the first place. Someone had to step in by necessity.

He kinda has a company himself. He's an executive producer at ArtPlay and on the board of directors. But they're a small mobile-centric dev. I don't think it has anything to do with necessity, rather he only wanted to make a "big" game again if someone else was footing the bill. Why stop at Kickstarter money when you can get big publisher money too? Not like he cares about owning the IP.

Seems highly unlikely to me. If he was willing to offer IP to a publisher during negotiations, I imagine he's have easily found a publisher that would fund the entire game, without needing to go to KS.

It's more likely that they are taking care of distribution, and maybe providing some funding in exchange for a revenue share.

What if the condition for the publisher funding the entire game is that they launch a Kickstarter to see how much interest there is and recoup some of the money first? :)
 
He's still getting at least $5 million from Koch to work on the game, in addition to what the KS and Paypal donations earn them. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Not to mention being able to guaranty things like physical copies for the kickstarter campaign. Certainly seems to be a big draw for a lot of folk.
 

daveo42

Banned
Sounds pretty good to me. I just hope that the details of the agreement means that IGA retains complete creative control over the project from start the finish and that the team is given time to properly polish it before launch.

Seems highly unlikely to me. If he was willing to offer IP to a publisher during negotiations, I imagine he's have easily found a publisher that would fund the entire game, without needing to go to KS.

It's more likely that they are taking care of distribution, and maybe providing some funding in exchange for a revenue share.

It seems like a lot of publishers want some sort of guarantee that it'll actually be a successful and profitable game before they say they will fund a game. The same goes with Bloodstained, even with IGA involved. Knowing you have a dedicated audience from the start makes it easier for a publisher to give the go ahead.
 

Ridley327

Member
It seems like a lot of publishers want some sort of guarantee that it'll actually be a successful and profitable game before they say they will fund a game. The same goes with Bloodstained, even with IGA involved. Knowing you have a dedicated audience from the start makes it easier for a publisher to give the go ahead.

Right. As nice as it was for Deep Silver to pick up MN9 for Comcept, their risk in it isn't so big as they didn't fund the game in the first place. Since they are funding a rather significant portion of the budget for this game, they can't up and publish out of good faith right away.
 

Dambrosi

Banned
I didn't realize that Koch Media is a German based Video Game publisher. For a second I thought I had been supporting the Koch Brothers without realizing it.
Oh my god, thank you for posting that, I was considering backing the KS, but this news made me wary because I don't want to give the Koch Brothers any more money than I have to. However, if Koch Media really has nothing to do with Tweedledouche and Tweedledweeb*, then I'll still support them. It's the same with me and Fox/News International - if I still have any control over where my money goes, I'd rather it didn't further fatten Rupert Murdoch's pockets.

...Er, oh yeah. The game? I've applied for a pre-paid credit card specifically to pledge for the boxed PS4 version, that's how hyped I am for Iga.




* Yeah, I know, such maturity, much satire, etc.
 

DJIzana

Member
Not sure I like the fact that Deep Silver owns the IP itself. I think it should be retained through the creator.
 

Kozuka

Member
Really glad to have put no money in the KS, now i'll get a physical copy for almost nothing instead of 60 bucks.
 

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
That's only one of the many functions of a publisher. A good publisher will also generally fund development, keep development on track, provide testing & localization services, and market it once done.

One could argue the second and the fourth function you list are also being slowly offloaded onto developers themselves. The third function is also now more often outsourced and so also becomes more a matter of funding than publisher resources.

It doesn't bother you that Kickstarter is being used as a public opinion focus group by publishers to replace their judgment? For free?
 
Oh my god, thank you for posting that, I was considering backing the KS, but this news made me wary because I don't want to give the Koch Brothers any more money than I have to. However, if Koch Media really has nothing to do with Tweedledouche and Tweedledweeb*, then I'll still support them. It's the same with me and Fox/News International - if I still have any control over where my money goes, I'd rather it didn't further fatten Rupert Murdoch's pockets.

...Er, oh yeah. The game? I've applied for a pre-paid credit card specifically to pledge for the boxed PS4 version, that's how hyped I am for Iga.




* Yeah, I know, such maturity, much satire, etc.

Yeah, when they purchased us, it was a point of confusion the day of the sale. :p
 

Ridley327

Member
Really glad to have put no money in the KS, now i'll get a physical copy for almost nothing instead of 60 bucks.

Regardless of Koch Media owning the IP, the KS is pretty clear that the physical copy is being made available only for backers. The only general release that the game is getting is the digital version.
 

daveo42

Banned
One could argue the second and the fourth function you list are also being slowly offloaded onto developers themselves. The third function is also now more often outsourced and so also becomes more a matter of funding than publisher resources.

It doesn't bother you that Kickstarter is being used as a public opinion focus group by publishers to replace their judgment? For free?

It is a sad state of affairs that there needs to be some sort of community validation before a publisher will give a developer funding. You can see that in a lot of areas in the industry from the amount of sequels and similarly styled games over the past 1-2 gens, but a portion of that is the increased cost in development and appealing to a mass market to make these games profitable.

While we are being asked to validate whether we want a game with our own money well in advance of a game's release, I am happy that some of these games are actually being made that would otherwise not due to their production costs and seemingly lack of interest in the genre when compared to the market at large.

Edit: Yes, the physical copy is just for backers because their support is specifically what made the game a possibility in the first place. It's a thank you for everyone putting their faith in IGA and his vision well before the game launches.
 
Whats volition up to these days?

Its such a shame to have their talent limited by THQ lack of funds (pre bankruptcy of course), would have loved to see them with a budget even 1/2 or 1/3 of rockstar
 

Ridley327

Member
Whats volition up to these days?

Its such a shame to have their talent limited by THQ lack of funds, would have loved to see them with a budget even 1/2 or 1/3 of rockstar

I think there's been rumblings about them already being underway with Saints Row 5.
 

DJIzana

Member
I should probably elaborate as to why I don't like the publisher owning the rights to the IP. A lot of publishers, in general, just don't know how to manage their IP's. Especially Japanese companies.

Nintendo? Wave Race, F Zero, Mother... just three examples right there. At the same time, with Nintendo, they still make amazingly good quality games... even if they do neglect a lot of their IP's.

Sega? Shenmue, Phantasy Star Online 2 in North America, Yakuza 5 is also still MIA in the West too.

Square Enix? The last Chrono game we saw was in 1999. Tactics hasn't been touched upon in forever either. The good thing about Square, this time, is that they mentioned about rebooting their franchises (Saga and Mana are a good start to this). Square has been in my good books lately and if they keep it up, great!

Capcom? Too easy. Mega Man? Breath of Fire was neglected for a long time until that mobile game came out.

You get my point. Publishers really need to start taking more care of the games that made them so big to begin with.
 
I should probably elaborate as to why I don't like the publisher owning the rights to the IP. A lot of publishers, in general, just don't know how to manage their IP's. Especially Japanese companies.

Nintendo? Wave Race, F Zero, Mother... just three examples right there. At the same time, with Nintendo, they still make amazingly good quality games... even if they do neglect a lot of their IP's.

Sega? Shenmue, Phantasy Star Online 2 in North America, Yakuza 5 is also still MIA in the West too.

Square Enix? The last Chrono game we saw was in 1999. Tactics hasn't been touched upon in forever either. The good thing about Square, this time, is that they mentioned about rebooting their franchises (Saga and Mana are a good start to this). Square has been in my good books lately and if they keep it up, great!

Capcom? Too easy. Mega Man? Breath of Fire was neglected for a long time until that mobile game came out.

You get my point. Publishers really need to start taking more care of the games that made them so big to begin with.

But doesn't this KS show exactly that IP aren't that important? We're getting a new Castlevania, who cares about the name.
 

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
If the result is more interesting games (which has been happening as of late), does it matter?

I'm concerned it becomes an end-run that prevents developers from funding themselves and retaining their own IP by setting crowdfunding goals that are really just measures of public opinion, rather than realistic dollars of funding required.

People didn't want crowd-funding to turn into the ultimate pre-order system. Isn't that what is happening?
 
Regardless of Koch Media owning the IP, the KS is pretty clear that the physical copy is being made available only for backers. The only general release that the game is getting is the digital version.

No, I believe the KS is a special physical copy with some dlc on it. Pretty sure it will get a normal retail release.
 
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