A series of articles have come out across the net following a blog post on Destructoid that lamented the lack of payments being sent out to Xbox Live Indie Games developers. After the controversy caught the attention of Reddit and Total Biscuit, Microsoft was inclined to respond.
Back on December 3rd, 2014, a Destructoid blog post by community contributor Kodu, explained that...
“You see (and I sincerely hope other journalists will have the guts to report on this too) Microsoft has once again screwed up payment to indie developers on the XNA system who have their games published on the Xbox Live indie Games Marketplace.”
The post cites a few examples of developers from the XBLIG stating that they have not received payments from Microsoft for the sales of their games, including Ian Campbell, the developer of the game Bleed, which is currently available on Steam and Xbox 360, and Freelance Games, another developer who makes titles for mobile devices and XBLIG.
The blog post goes on to lambast Microsoft for withholding payments to indie developers and claims that it's not just XBLIG developers having the problem, but Windows Phone app developers are also problems with payment withholdings from the mega software publisher.
The issue caught the attention of the vigilant group over on Kotaku in Action after Kodu, from Destructoid, made a post and it managed to spread far and wide. The group enacted methods to reach out to as many people as possible with the post and it managed to catch the attention of Total Biscuit, who also used his pull to get some answers.
Well, the post was hard to ignore as it made its way around the gaming scene, and even managed to get the attention of sites like Kotaku. Later that very same day, Microsoft opted to provide a statement on the matter via their Twitter, apologizing for the late payments to indie developers...
“Due to a technical issue in our payment system, we recently learned that some payments to select developers in the Xbox Live Indie Games program on Xbox 360 were delayed. Our partners are important to us and we work hard to help make sure they have a great development experience. This was an unfortunate error and we are working hard to fix it. We apologize for this incident and anticipate developers will receive payments within the next two weeks.”
James B. Fudge, the managing editor from Game Politics, made a comment about how the payments may arrive just in time for Christmas. Microsoft, in a way, was almost their own Scrooge until the righteous hammer dropped on their parade at the hands of the all-seeing-judiciary entity known as the hardcore gaming community.
Never forgive, never forget.
The blog post by The Kodu has been updated to reflect Microsoft's official apology and statement on the matter, and hopefully the indie devs who have not received their third-quarter payments will be rewarded for their efforts. I mean, it's not like designing games for the XBLIG is free, there's an annual $100 XNA fee... so being denied payments while paying to be in the club is not cool.
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