World of Goo publisher files for bankruptcy

by Xav de Matos on Jan 30th 2009 6:00PM

GameDaily BIZ has learned that family-friendly publisher, Brighter Minds, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 28. Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows the publisher to remain in control of its business as it makes organizational changes, unlike chapter 7, which would mean a complete liquidation of its assets. In July 2008, Brighter Minds launched its own online games portal, BeanstalkGames.com.

Recently the Ohio-based company published the critically acclaimed and award-winning World of Goo from developer 2D Boy. Winner of the IGF award for Design Innovation and Technical Excellence, World of Goo recently made NPD Top 10 sales list for the week ending January 17. The NPD listing was a surprise, considering World of Goo designer Ron Carmel revealed the game to have staggering 90% piracy rate in November. Those damn dirty pirates!

Source

Tags: 2d-boy, brighter-minds, Nintendo, Wii, world-of-goo

Reader Comments (81)

What a shame. World of Goo was a gem.

Seriously, what a shame...

IS a gem! it's still good.

You realise that the developer is still okay, right?
They will almost certainly find a publisher for their next game, given the response and reviews that World of Goo got.

It was great but REALLY short ... i beat every level in just a sat morning , last 3 levels were a doozy though

It is a fantastic game, but I suck at it. I'm only on world 3 and I've had it forever. :(

I hear you about sucking at it. :( I was passing through the levels pretty well, when BAM I got stuck in world 3 also. Now I just can't get past this one level, and its driving me NUTS. I've had it since early December, and I just can't go any further. :( No matter how many times I try to beat the blasted thing, I just can't get past this one level to continue on. On the flip side, I do go back into the tower building thing quite often and just while away some time blowing up my tower and trying to rebuild it bigger and higher and better than before. :)

I seem to remember there being an option to skip a level if it's too hard. You build up the number of passes you have as you play, so by world 3 you should have a bunch of them.

this is your fault america. For not buying quality games

Yeah, because you can only pirate stuff in america.

Actually, this has nothing to do with World of Goo... it just happens the publisher of said game, and a lot of others games, is in bankruptcy.

Not even World of Goo could save them. The sales were pretty good, actually... the PC version was in the NPD from last month, and 2D Boy actually said that the Wii version was selling the most. It's constantly on the WiiWare charts (check GoNintendo) and it has sold more than 100k on the Wii.

So, people is indeed buying World of Goo.

Evidently you didn't see the whole "World of Goo recently made the NPD Top 10 sales list for the week ending January 17" part of that article there.

Imagine those sales, except add 90% to them.

Not that every pirated copy is a lost sale, but you get the idea. It should have sold a TON more copies than it did, and it absolutely deserved to. Not that it would have saved the publisher for sure, but it couldn't have hurt.

bananaboat, you mean 900%

@BananaBoat - provided, of course, that the publisher was right about the figure they quoted. And there are so very many reasons you shouldn't believe it.

Do you mean the butt kind?

I bought this game on every platform. Yep, even the Wii, days before I sold it. Sadly it's the only Wii game I miss besides Boom Blox.

@ The Dark Wayne -- I seriously doubt only Americans pirated this game.

you're right, it was those damn ruskies

boom blox is the only reason to turn it on anymore...

For a minute there, I thought you meant the developers had gone bankrupt. Had me worried for a minute there.

About the 90% piracy rate, they've said themselves, it's not entirely accurate. It just compares the number of different IPs the game's been run from, to the number of sales.
I've got the game on my laptop and played it online from Uni once without thinking, so that's probably counting my Uni IP as a pirated copy, even though it's definitely not.

I think they said, taking into account things like dynamic IPs and people moving about, the piracy rate is probably closer to 80% (personally, I can't see it being even that high myself, but I'm not trying to say nobody pirated it.

Still, anyone who pirated this should be ashamed.

Damn you pirates! $15 is not a lot of money for a game! Even in this economy!

I concur. Lets start a fundraiser! Save GooPub.org. Somebody get on that.

lets not

1. All World of Goo was was a physics puzzler game with fancy art design. For fuck's sake, there will be more.

2. The publisher is filing bankruptcy, not the developers (which was only like what 2 people? not an entire company). 2D Boy can easily find another publisher for a sequel

3. The economy is bad shitheads, this'll start happening more and more now

That doesn't mean we can't feel bad that the company that decided to publish the game is going under because folks weren't considerate enough to buy the dang game (and even after 2D Boy decided to leave the game drm-free, thinking that gamers would be grateful enough not to steal the game).

#1 makes me think you haven't played the game.

#2 makes me wonder why you think it's so easy for small devs like 2D Boy to find publishers.

#3 makes me think that you're inconsiderate. We get that the economy is bad. Doesn't mean we can't feel for those who lose their jobs.

#2: I highly doubt that Steam wouldn't publish for them again.

from now on, anyone who EVER cries and says DRM BAD, just link them to this post. One developer finally listens to you and this is how you treat them, great fucking job pirates. everytime they said "we only pirate cuz we hate drm" well.. what happened this time around? i wanna take a gun and shoot everyone who pirates stuff.

and before someone calls me out, no, i have never listed to music illegally or watched a movie illegally... im not a pirate, im a ninja. ;p

and its not that im a goodie two shoe or anything, i just believe that no one should be derived of what they deserve, and these developers/publishers deserve more than enough sales to get them out of Chapter 11

I agree with #1. And I played (and indeed bought) the game.

January 12 was the day the game was on sale for $10 at Amazon. That's what made it enter the Top 10 list. I bought it that day, too.

Pretty fun game. :)

What a crying shame, "World of Goo" was awesome. :(

And nothing is happening to World of Goo or 2D Boy. They still got all their revenue from Steam, Wiiware, and other channels.

You realize that this is only their retail publisher, right? When was the last time you saw World of Goo on a store shelf?

More like, "When was the last time you saw a store shelf?"

I don't even bother buying software on physical media anymore...and in the rare instance where I have to, I order it online. B&M FTL.

Forgive my language I was being a little too assholeish.

Well you are right on your second statement but seriously this isn't GameSpot or Kotaku,you don't have to call people idiots to get attention.

Knowing that you acted as a prick is the first step in to the right direction and knowing that is half of the battle.

G.I JOE.

this isnt Kotaku?!?! commenter's are worse here sry

I still haven't picked this up. But it's like £16.99 here in the UK, whilst new PS3 and PC games can be had for £20ish - so I feel like it's overcharged a little.

If you buy it from the developers' page (http://2dboy.com/games.php), it's a bit cheaper at about £14.

NO NO no f*ck no.What the fuck?!

This is why Nintendo patches homebrew,it gives every ahole the opportunity to get pirate games.

Seriously to all of you people that got the pirate version,nice going douchebags.

I bet it was pirated more often on PC than Wii

Probably yes but I don't discard the Wii.
Sorry is just that Ensemble closing kind of affeted me.

A lot of bad news these days.

So glad it isn't 2DBoy themselves.

I still want a sequel. Galaxy of Goo.

Unfortunate for the company and staff though.

Sequel Announced: "World of Poo" due in March

^ lol

Sucks that they have to go down, but piracy cant be entirely blamed. I pirated the game, and guess what, I enjoyed it so much I actually purchased it. If I never had pirated it, I would have never actually played or payed for it.

^ Same here.

Wasn't the demo enough? It had pretty much the entire first world, which was more than enough to grasp and enjoy the concept, gameplay and presentation.

I don't think World of Goo had anything to do with this, much less piracy. World of Goo isn't the ONLY game this company has ever published. Notice how their name within the body text isn't linking to meta-tags? Yeah, that means Joystiq has never had reason to mention their name before.

World of Goo wasn't special for being pirated. It happens to most games. It's a simple matter of volume. When SO many people can download your game for free, they become the majority of the people playing; in this case, 90%. It doesn't mean that the game didn't sell well. It probably sold more units than Banjo Kazooie across platforms.

Damn pirates, look what you done...

Come with me. Lets go to Somalia and hit 'em where it hurts!

Piracy has nothing to do with this filing for bankruptcy. 2D Boy was self-published in many areas, including Steam:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/

No fucking wonder why their publisher wasn't getting enough revenue. Go Joystiq for another poorly researched sensationalist piece of shit.

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World of Goo publisher files for bankruptcy

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