Yooka-Laylee is Partnering Up with Publishers

The whole point—we’re told—of developers going to Kickstarter and Indiegogo is to get money directly from fans so they don’t have to worry about a greedy publisher interfering with their development or straight-up telling them they need to do another Call of Duty clone. But with the Shenmue Kickstarter having set a precedent by having been “partnered” with Sony from the beginning, and with the Yooka-Laylee creators Playtonic Games having just announced they’ve partnered with a publisher… it’s beginning to feel like a more menacing version of pre-ordering. Or, more precisely, most logical ‘endgame’ to the pre-order culture, where you buy a game before even the first line of code is written (sometimes).

Here’s the story: just recently Playtonic Games (which will never stop being a cool name, I’m sorry) announced that they’ve partnered up with independent publisher Team 17 to assist with the QA and digital publishing. The idea, Playtonic writes:
 

“For backers and fans, it means you'll no doubt benefit via a much better game, not just thanks to Team 17’s vast experience in areas such as QA testing and publishing, but also due to the extra time our team will now spend creating, instead of filling in giant spreadsheets.”

And to further reassure fans, Creative Lead Gavin Price added:

“To clarify, this isn’t a traditional publisher deal: Team 17 understands what we want to achieve as a studio and has created a unique partnership with us. Team 17 will improve Yooka-Laylee in a myriad of ways, not least in expanded localisation (more languages!), QA testing, certification and store management - Basically, all the stuff that game creators don’t want to worry about.

Playtonic remains completely independent and owns everything we do - thanks to you - and we’re really, really proud to be able to say that our game is 100% funded via Kickstarter.”

Which, yes, in that light, makes it sound like a pretty sweet deal for all parties involved. And it might be—Team 17 has been around for a long time, and their only real claim to fame is the repetitive but harmless “Worms” franchise, and last year's surprisingly pretty good "The Escapists." But that’s not really the point: what most fans have a problem with is that with a publisher attached, things could still go wrong. Hands outside the developer and the fans have interfered, and there’s a legitimate concern that this whole “started on kickstarter, finished by a publisher” deal will become more and more common.

That said, it is what it is. I very much doubt Playtonic will back down now, and who knows? It might be the amazing thing they say it’ll be. But we’ll be keeping a wary eye on this game from here on out… while hopefully keeping our cautious optimism.