As expected, Double Fine won’t publish games anymore now that it joined Xbox

Double Fine Presents is winding down

At PAX Prime 2019, we talked to Tim Schafer about the future of Double Fine after the E3 announcement that the developer would be joining the Xbox family of studios. One particularly noteworthy thing Schafer mentioned is that he didn’t know how Double Fine’s publishing arm could continue, saying “How Double Fine Presents will evolve is kind of an unknown …  From a business sense, I don’t know if it structurally makes sense to have a publisher within [another publisher].”

We finally have confirmation that Double Fine Presents is slowly shutting down, but the news doesn’t actually come from Double Fine. Gang Beasts developer Boneloaf revealed that it’s going to start self-publishing Gang Beasts now that Double Fine is out of the publishing game. Boneloaf’s announcement reads “We love Double Fine and they have been really fantastic to us. What [Schafer] and his company built is pretty wonderful, but with Double Fine Presents winding down due to Double Fine’s acquisition by Xbox Game Studios last year, we think it is a good time for Boneloaf to stand on its own… legs and publish Gang Beasts ourselves.”

Although it’s hardly surprising, this is the first time anyone has publicly said Double Fine Presents will eventually cease to exist. However, as Schafer mentioned in our interview, Double Fine Presents can live on in spirit through events like the Double Fine-organized Day of the Devs, which spotlights upcoming indie games. Sure enough, as part of Summer Game Fest, Double Fine and iam8bit are co-producing two Day of the Devs over the next two months. The first one is on June 22 and the other is July 20.

Boneloaf take Double Fine to a fancy restaurant so they won’t make a big scene [Gang Beasts via Eurogamer]