Axiom Verge originally released for the Wii U on the Nintendo eShop all the way back in 2016, with the announcement of a physical edition made the following year, courtesy of Limited Run Games and BadLand Games. More than two years later, and that retail version still hasn't been released, due to a controversy involving Tom Happ, the developer, and the two aforementioned publishers. Initially, BadLand was supposed to be in charge of getting the game released on physical media, while Limited Run Games would help by funding the bulk of it, to be repaid at a later date.

Dan Adelman, producer of Axiom Verge, claimed that he and Tom Happ had chosen BadLand Games as their publisher because the company's CEO promised to donate a portion of their revenue to a fund for Happ's son, who has a medical condition. "In addition to matching what other publishers were offering in terms of rev share, they said they’d contribute 75% of their cut to a trust fund set up for Alastair Happ’s ongoing medical expenses," said Adelman regarding the matter on Twitter.

Once Limited Run Games provided BadLand with the needed $78,000 for manufacturing, the latter never responded back, nor did they provide the physical copies. This was hinted at back in October, where we saw Limited Run announce that despite hardships involved with publishing, they would be loyally bringing a physical title to the Wii U, even though they would be losing money in the process. After this, in December 2018, LRG entered a legal battle, where the courts demanded that BadLand repay the owed money. However, to this day, they have not been paid back in full.

If that wasn't bad enough, BadLand published the game in Europe as well, and ended up not paying Happ his sales money, either. In the continuing Twitter chain, Adelman stated, "It's frustrating to see BadLand Publishing tweet about new games they're releasing, no doubt funded with the money they owe LRG and Tom Happ. BadLand has literally stolen money from a disabled toddler."

Both Adelman and Happ have filed a lawsuit against BadLand, claiming that they owe the two around $200,000 for unpaid sales and other costs. It's not known how legal proceedings will occur, as BadLand still hasn't repaid their total towards Limited Run Games, as well as the fact that they are based in Spain. BadLand Games also went out of business in Oct. 2018, though their subsidiary, BadLand Publishing still operates, and has money to publish titles. Although they are under a different name, they are still responsible for paying back Limited Run Games.

Outside of the drama involved, Axiom Verge for the Nintendo Wii U will be released on March 29th and will be sold on the Limited Run Games site.

Limited Run Games Site
Source

 

[lafleche]

I guess it will be USA only? With a region locked wiiu there should be at least a batch made for euro region....

 

[pedro702]

Im ordering me a copy. I have the switch version. This wii U version is gonna be super rare. Might even be more rare then a wiiu kiosk. I might order 2 copies.

might be rare but no valuable imo, when a rare game gets a standard release on a new console their original versions price drop hard, i remember shadow of the colossus being very expensive, then ps3 hd remaster came out and dropped alot of the price, and now with ps4 remake the original ps2 version is basically worthless you can grab it for afew bucks.

with a retail standard release available for switch,vita and ps4 at cheapest 30$ price, the wiiu version will never be worth much imo.

 

[wiewiec]

I think if they release it for Wii U it could be rare and some fuckers wanna milk this for much higher price.

 

[pitterpatter]

Personally I hope for more Wii U titles, the Wii U is the real hybrid system not the switch. The switch is just a handheld system to me, while the Wii U although just a console, I look at it as both console and handheld. I liked how the gamepad actually needed to be used for games and wasn’t just a second screen. I just felt the Wii U gamepad was like a touchscreen like the ds and the top screen was the tv.

I hope more people will develop games for it, or at least that Homebrew community will become more active. I feel like the bulk of Homebrew stuff came out on the Wii, and not the Wii U. And say what you will, but the Vita has a very active homebrew scene, as well as the occasional game coming out. Axiom Verge is the first new Wii U game I've heard about in forever

 

[momin]

Looks like a bad administration of the resources by smalls companies that went into panic way too fast to me. The game is very good and solid and can generate money with no issues. Good relationship and clear terms would have make this goes well and every party get money back.

Still, they will learn a lot, and maybe make better next time. And for the money, I am sure they will manage to get back, good look to the devs (I want more games from you guys) and parties involve, it will go well, all people should play it!

 

[FAST6191]

I hope more people will develop games for it, or at least that Homebrew community will become more active. I feel like the bulk of Homebrew stuff came out on the Wii, and not the Wii U. And say what you will, but the Vita has a very active homebrew scene, as well as the occasional game coming out. Axiom Verge is the first new Wii U game I've heard about in forever

While homebrew has been around since it was called public domain (PD, hence PD at the end of certain things in ROM collections and sites like https://pdroms.de/ ) homebrew as it is known today mostly kicked off on the consoles with the original xbox as it was a cheap and easily programmed means of getting some decent computing on your TV. The Wii U is neither well distributed, terribly easy to hack, that nice to program for, that powerful to offset such problems or with terribly interesting input methods. On top of that TVs since gained VGA inputs and nowadays HDMI inputs, PC prices cratered and there are all sorts of far more free to program for devices (see android for one, raspberry pis for another).

For many the Wii was something of an anomaly here (maybe just the massive install base or something -- most people were already on HDMI by this point) so I would not expect much.

Handhelds follow much the same concept and people will want a reasonably easy to program means of doing portable computing (the GBA, DS and PSP representing this at the time, the Vita still representing something of some power and reasonable controls compared to a lot of tablets and phones).

I don't particularly expect to see another console scene like we saw for various devices mentioned so far with top notch devs making highly polished code and really pushing the boat out as far as emulators, as well as really exploring what could be done. I mostly expect just slapdash ports of existing software (see the Switch so far, even the PSP had a lot of "just port an old PC emulator" going on) and maybe one or two people trying something cool. Indeed such a thing is why I pushed quite hard for the likes of android to be ported to the Switch as it is the only way I expect to see a lot of things made available.

 

[superscriptkidd]

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