Ouya Free The Games Program Gets New Rules To Close Loopholes

If you follow the Ouya console, you'll remember that it started off as a Kickstarter product. It raised a huge amount of money and has graduated well beyond the fund-raising stage at this point. Ouya started a program called Free the Games in an attempt to get game developers to give exclusives to the console.

Under the original program, Ouya agreed to match up to $250,000 in funds for any Kickstarter campaign that raised over $50,000. In exchange for matching the funds, Ouya wanted the games as an exclusive for six months. However, the original program was apparently riddled with loopholes.

The loopholes allowed some users to qualify for fund matching by getting family or associates to fund the project, meaning only backers with a vested interest in the project. Those loopholes brought a lot of criticism to the program and resulted in some new rules being applied recently. The new rules say that the minimum amount that needs to be raised qualify for fund matching via Kickstarter is $10,000.

Ouya will still match up to $250,000 in funds, but for every $10,000 raised via Kickstarter the project needs at least 100 backers. That is to prevent one person from funding the entire project and forcing Ouya to match funds. The new rules also say that games have to be exclusive to Ouya for one month for every $10,000 in funds matched for a maximum of six months.

SOURCE: Android Community