Back in July, the Powers That Be at Rock Paper Shotgun’s parent company Ziff Davis laid off all 36 members of Humble Games, in response to “challenging economic times for indie game publishing”. Now, Humble Games’s former general manager Alan Patmore and global publishing VP Mark Nash have founded Good Games Group, a new indie publisher who will work with many of the same development partners from their Humble days. They’re also partnering with Ziff Davis again, providing support for Humble’s previously released games.
“Partnering with Ziff Davis allows us to continue working with the amazing indie developers we collaborated with at Humble Games, while also allowing us to chart a new course for the future,” Patmore writes on the new publisher’s website.
Back in July, it was reported by Aftermath that third-party consultancy the Powell Group would assume responsibility for Humble’s remaining publishing projects. It’s not clear whether that was ever, or is still, the case, but as our fellow Ziff Davisites at Eurogamer note, several projects released by Humble Games appear on the GGG website, including Carto, Temtem and Midnight Fight Express.
The Humble Games “restructuring” appears to have been on the cards for a while, going by a leaked recording of a conversation with Ziff Davis’ technology and shopping division president Steve Horowitz. In the recording, again passed along by Aftermath, he allegedly revealed that ZD had attempted to sell Humble Bundle publishing twice over, but “neither attempt created significant demand, and unfortunately neither attempt created a viable offer or an outcome.”
The “restructuring” of Humble Games – which followed a wave of layoffs last November – sent ripples of dismay through the indie development community. “We are devastated to hear today about the apparent closure of our publishing partner, Humble Games,” wrote the developers of Signalis. “We were lucky to work with really wonderful people who were laid off in November and today and hope they can all land on their feet and find amazing new jobs elsewhere quickly.” It’s nice to learn that at least a few of them have.