Recoil Games appear to have filed for bankruptcy a while ago and sadly a casualty of that is their game Rochard, which has now been removed for sale.
Rochard was an award-winning side-scroller puzzle-platformer, originally released in 2011. It was also part of the early indie game push for Linux, thanks to it being part of the Humble Indie Bundle 6 back in 2012 it was ported to Linux especially for the bundle. Not only that, it was also one of the first commercial Unity games (possibly the actual first) to be built for Linux too, so it holds something of a special place in our history.
Sadly, you can no longer buy it officially.
In a short announcement post on Steam, the developer said this:
Recoil Games has applied for bankruptcy quite a while ago. We've been trying hard to find a new home for the game. Unfortunately there were no offers that would have enabled the bankruptcy estate to close the deal. The bankruptcy estate will soon be closed and the publishing agreement with Steam will be terminated.
This means Rochard can no longer be purchased on Steam. However, the game will remain available in your Steam libraries as is.
Direct Link
I guess I got it from the bundle, and for sure didn't buy the bundle for getting the game.
But I tried it and the movement felt so right that the rest (story :D ) didn't matter to me.
It was and is a little gem.
I gave the article a like but didn't like the news. One of my first humble games.
I take the "like" for articles more as "if such a thing happens, I appreciate to have an article about it".
https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_player&query=57925
I wonder if the developers built other games and what happened between Rochard's release and this sad announcement.
I already looked into this - see my comment (two above yours). They were seeded in 2008 by a VC company, produced Rochard in 2011, did a Ridge Racer port in 2012, produced Rochard DLC in 2013, then went dark. Really sad.
slaapliedje 21 Feb 2021
Last edited by slaapliedje on 21 Feb 2021 at 6:36 pm UTC
Unfortunately there were no offers that would have enabled the bankruptcy estate to close the deal.
It sounds as though they did get offers to buy, otherwise wouldn't they just say "There were no offers." Instead they seem to be saying "there were no offers we could accept".
So given the choice for the estate is between zero money and some money to go to the creditors, why wouldn't they sell?! In those circumstances aren't they obligated to accept any offer?
I quite liked Rochard, although I originally bought it purely because it was one of those early games that offered native linux support, in what I'll call in hindsight the 'glory days' of Linux gaming. It wasn't super-challenging, but the gameplay premise, story etc were pretty well done.
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