Two very good skating games are back up for sale on Steam after disappearing for four months. Bright ‘n’ cheery skateboarding game OlliOlli World and dystopian rollerskate shooter Rollerdrome both vanished in a cloud of toxic corporate smoke in February this year, some time after the closure of the games’ developers Roll7. But it looks like the poisonous fumes have finally cleared, and the games are once again available.
It’s not clear why the games have been absent. But it is very likely the result of legal and business hullabaloo caused by parent company Take-Two Interactive last year. Come with me now on a dollar-burning trip through the wastes of global financial malignancy, as I tell a tale as old and stupid as time.
The original developers of the games, Roll7, were owned by publishers Private Division, who were in turn owned by merciless corpocolossus Take-Two Interactive. In May last year Private Division were sold off by their business daddy to a private equity firm, and the studio who actually made good games, Roll7, were unceremoniously shut down as a result. The CEO of Take-Two tried to deny this, but the effect on workers at both Roll7 and other Private Division studios (like the Kerbal Space Program 2 developers) was clear. They were all laid off.
It’s a disappointing, if familiar, tale. But the delisting of the games months after the sale and their reappearance this week is a weird afterword. On the Steam page for both games, 2K (Take-Two’s publishing moniker) are now listed as publisher. At the time of the sale, Take-Two said they were including all of Private Divisions “live and unreleased” games. But they now claim otherwise. 2K has “confirmed that neither Rollerdrome nor OlliOlli World were included in the Private Division sale, and that it is now the publisher of both games,” according to PC Gamer. Weird.
Whatever the dumbass legal reason that caused the games to disappear, it appears to be solved. Now you enter the realm of minor ethical dilemma: buy the games because they are excellent, or ignore them completely because the company who stands to profit fired everyone who worked on said bangers? Of course, other skulduggery is possible, as noted by at least two people who worked on the game. Do whatever you like, I can’t tell you what’s right. What do I know? I’m just the 21st best player of OlliOlli 2 (on PlayStation 4).
