Ouya pulls funding from questionable Free The Games Fund candidate

Potential Ouya game Dungeons the Eye of Draconus has been unceremoniously booted from Ouya’s Free The Games Fund program following suspicious activity on Kickstarter.

The move can be interpreted as Ouya finally responding to the increasing criticism it has endured for its lackadaisical stance toward what appear to be some very funny goings on.

Eye of Draconus had, before its Kickstarter campaign was suspended, received funding of $54,000 from just 180 people – that works out as an average pledge of $300 each.

The game’s developer William McDonald, however, has reacted angrily to the decision, even going as far as to attack rival game Gridiron Thunder which is seemingly still on the way to the Android console.

Well apparently Ouya has decided to change the rules on us,” he wrote in a Kickstarter update. The timing aligns with winning back of some devs that threatened to pull their games through conversations on Twitter.

It appears we were thrown under the FTG bus. Ouya gets their fall guy and Grid Iron keeps their money. So while a bunch of ex-EA employees with rich friends can apparently receive $171,000 in match funds for a game they, allegedly, already finished a person whose father was willing to make a large sacrifice so his son’s team could qualify for the fund and actually develop their game properly is disallowed.

There have been many articles written about us and forums debating us the past week. Misinformation ran wild, climaxing not in an investigation on the part of Ouya, but in our de-listing from their fund without explanation or even the decency of a notification.

Without Ouya match funds and only $4,055 in donations from our crowd source backers, the cost of swag, taxes and fees would cause us to have a net loss of approximately $11,000.

Further, being essentially told Ouya doesn’t want us, makes us not want Ouya. Sadly, we were early adopters. We got our Ouya on launch day and had been one of its strongest supporters. We have no plans to develop for Ouya further.”