Tim Schafer confirms studio owns publishing rights to “all” of its games
In case you missed the news, Tim Schafer’s studio Double Fine recently regained its independence after Xbox announced a major reset.
The Psychonauts developer isn’t wasting any time moving forward, with the studio this week announcing it’s jumping back into “small” game development, with another ‘Amnesia Fortnight‘ event powered (and funded) by a new Kickstarter campaign.
If you haven’t already seen Double Fine’s documentary series, Amnesia Fortnight is an event where the team drops everything they’re currently working on for a short time, breaks off into small teams, and makes fun bite-sized projects.
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According to the Kickstarter campaign, the “2026 Indie Reboot” of this event will include not only a live Game Jam on the internet, but also another documentary by 2 Player Productions.
The game jam gets underway on 31st August 2026 and will run through until September 2026. Backers will select ideas, which then get made into four prototypes, and one of the final four becomes a “real” game. You can sign up to the Kickstarter to get future notifications.
“We’re going to do a Game Jam, live on the internet, in which our backers will get to choose which of our myriad of ideas get made into four new prototypes– and which of those final four will become a real (small) game. You may even snag some sweet merchables and rarities along the way.
“All alongside the process, 2 Player Productions will be filming all the fun to produce one of their award-winning documentary spectaculars.”
In a notice on its social pages last month, Double Fine mentioned how it was thankful to everyone at Xbox for seven great years, and for working with the studio to “reach an outcome” which could preserve its history and culture, and return ownership of its games.
Schafer elaborated on this more recently (via IGN), reiterating how the studio has been able to secure its IP and the publishing rights for “all” of its games, although some of this may take some time to process:
“I saw a question, there, ‘Do you guys make the money on games?’ The transfer of the IP came back to us, and we get the publishing rights back to all our games…it just takes a while for it to all process…when people buy our games, it supports the studio.”
Double Fine previously released Broken Age, Grim Fandango Remastered and RAD on the Switch. Under Xbox Game Studios, it delivered Psychonauts 2, Keeper and most recently Kiln.
