What's happening to Mastertronic's developer partners?
The demise of long-running publisher Mastertronic has left many questioning what will happen to the developers who were depending on the firm to bring their games to market.
Develop contacted former Mastertronic MD Andy Payne to clarify what will happen now the company has entered administration, and he has assured devs that what remains of the team is doing all it can to help.
“We are helping all developers get their games back under full control, and quickly,” he told Develop.
“Already we have transitioned some of these games on some key digital distribution platforms so that our partners take control of the publishing and selling of their games. Steam accounts are being set up as fast as we can and Valve have been super helpful.
“We see no reason why all of our development partners will have full control from December 1st – subject to workload, of course.”
He added that games currently in development and not yet released have been handed back to their developers, who will get to keep 100 per cent of the funding Mastertronic has put in up to November 27th.
Steam accounts have been set up for some of these developers and the Mastertronic team will “continue to offer assistance with new publishing opportunities with the wider publishing and distribution companies out there”.
Mastertronic has even organised for Spilt Milk Studios, XMPT and Pubba to showcase their games in the Yogscast Christmas Charity Stream, helping them get more exposure going forwards.
Payne “We do owe some of our partners money for revenue share and/or royalties, and this is both unfortunate and damaging to them. It is not what we wanted to do of course, so we hope that by acting swiftly and legally, we are able to give all of our developer partners control and they can take 100 per cent of their revenues from the leading digital platforms from here on in.”
Earlier this week, we reported that flight simulation publishing label Just Flight has survived as an independent company.