I feel bad for laughing at this story but the experience might educate other startups who enter the physical publishing business overnight.
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You'd be forgiven for not having heard of Poop Slinger, but this little known indie title has a unique and distinct honor. Released for the PlayStation 4 and Steam in August 2018 by little known developer 'Diggidy.net'. Months before its release, developer Diggidy.net was contacted by a company going by the name 'Limited Rare Games' to publish a limited print run physical release of their game Poop Slinger for the PS4. This was the first time they ever had dealings with a physical release of any of their titles, but they accepted the offer. Similarly, this was to be Limited Rare's first – and only – physical release.
When Poop Slinger went on sale on April 1st, 2019 for $33.99, things immediately started looking bad for Limited Rare Games. Limited run collectors, who snap up the bulk of these sorts of purchases, were instantly suspicious. The website to purchase copies from was laughably barebones, with little more than a picture of Poop Slinger's game case, a buy now button, and a copyright signature – half of which was written in Russian. All of this was displayed on a plain white site, alongside a note that only 820 copies were available worldwide.
In addition to all of the peculiarities is the company's name itself. If Limited Rare Games sounds familiar to you, that's because it's stunningly close to the successful Limited Run Games. When Limited Rare started selling the game, the logo in their Twitter profile photo used the same font as Limited Run's, replacing the 'Run' with 'Rare'. Limited Run Games says that it was made aware of this, and asked for the logo to be changed. Later in the day, the logo then changed to be similar to that of another competitor, Super Rare Games
At the end of the day, Limited Rare Games declared that it had only managed to shift 84 units, and that it'd have to shut the business. The company promised to ship out the sold copies, but remarked that creditors were to take the remaining unsold copies to repay the loan, and that sales of the game couldn't continue. The business had, after just one day, gone bankrupt. All signs pointed to this being either a joke or a scam. But it wasn't.
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