Duck Game developer not fazed by potential publisher delisting: "I will never stop updating it as long as my hands and eyes work"
The developer of cult classic local co-op party shooter Duck Game has taken to their blog to note that they own the Duck Game intellectual property and fully intend to keep developing the game up to and until some kind of apocalyptically bad scenario goes down regarding it. Yes, that includes the very real threat that Warner Bros, owner of publisher Adult Swim Games, delists the game and removes it from storefronts.
The post by the developer comes in the wake of ever-more games from publisher Adult Swim Games getting delisted by Warner Bros—making a total wipeout of the publisher's catalog look increasingly likely. That might include Duck Game, that might not.
In a post on his blog, developer Landon Podbielski was clear that he fully believes there are avenues to continue development of Duck Game should that worst case scenario come to pass.
"Duck Game will be 10 years old on May 13th, and it’s going to show up to it’s own party. DG belongs to it’s [sic] players as much as it belongs to me, and it belongs to all the great people who used to work at the best game publisher I could ever ask for. There’s no way anything will ever make it disappear, I will never stop updating it as long as my hands and eyes work," he said.
He's also quite clear that the Adult Swim Games doing this now has no relation to the Adult Swim Games of the past: "None of the amazing people who worked at ASG are to blame, but the fact is that those people where [sic] ASG to me, so without them ASG has become a frightening corporate puppet and Duck Game has lost the delicate care of it’s [sic] previous keepers," he said.
Duck Game has been a longstanding good local multiplayer game, a goofy platform shooting game where you're all ducks with very silly weapons trying to take each other down. It's a kind of no-fail, no-frills fun. Here are PC Gamer we broadly consider it an example of how back in the 2010s, indie developers saved local multiplayer form extinction.