Double Fine regains the rights to Costume Quest and Stacking

Tim Schafer and crew take back the reigns to two of Double Fine’s legacy titles and announce PC versions of three of their best in partnership with Nordic Games.

“I am pleased that we have regained full control over Costume Quest and Stacking, following a daring and top-secret midnight raid on the Nordic Games headquarters in Vienna,” said Double Fine president and CEO Tim Schafer.

“We can’t wait to partner with Double Fine for this upcoming retail launch of three of its most excellent games,” said Lars Wingefors, owner and CEO of Nordic Games. “However, I feel compelled to point out that we were happy to transfer distribution rights for Costume Quest and Stacking back to Double Fine in an entirely non-secretive and heist-free manner.”

While I think I like the former description of how things went better, it’s nonetheless nice to hear that things went so smoothly. The transfer of rights went so even-handedly in fact that Nordic Games will be partnering with the lovable developers over at Double Fine for the PC launches of Costume Quest, Stacking and perennial favorite Psychonauts.

If you’re wondering just how it was that Nordic Games got the rights in the first place, they picked them up from the now defunct THQ when the company went under along with a few other big name IP’s. And thought the rights to the intellectual properties themselves refer back to Double Fine with the new deal, Nordic still will be handling the distribution of the games- an instance that will see both Stacking and Costume Quest get physical releases for the first time ever on any platform. This’ll also be the first time that Psychonauts, a huge fan favorite, sees a retail release since it’s debut on the Xbox way back in 2005.

As to why the switch and subsequent agreement between Nordic Games and Double Fine, DF’s own Justin Bailey says it’s simply a case of the company wanting to be able to direct their own properties.

“Double Fine is dedicated to controlling its own IP, and we will continue working to bring all associated rights back in-house whenever possible,” said Double Fine business development VP Justin Bailey, “no matter how many split-second security system hacks or painstaking tunneling operations we have to execute.”

“I just want to clarify, again, that we support the right of independent developers to control their own distribution, and we were pleased to have the opportunity to work with Double Fine,” said Klemens Kreuzer, Managing Director at Nordic Games. “No heists.”

Still disappointed that there was no heist… or was there?

Anyway, it’s still unclear exactly when we’ll be seeing the trio of games make their retail shelf arrival for the PC, but you can definitely expect them some time in early 2014 in both Europe and North America. We’ll let you know when further developments arise.