Unsurprisingly, EB Games doesn’t dabble in the indie scene a great deal. It’s not their business, and it’s not part of their business model. But in a move that breaks a little bit of ground, the retailer has given away codes for an Aussie-made indie game for Christmas.
In an email sent around to level 4 EB World members, the retailer announced that as part of the Christmas festivities, they would be giving away a game for free on PC. Interestingly, the game chosen was an Australian one – Assault Android Cactus, the top-down twin stick shooter from Witch Beam that won the Technical Excellence award and a handful of nominations at the Australian Game Developer Awards this year.
“To show our appreciation for your passion as a Level 4 member of EB World, we’re giving you a special Christmas gift. Instead of sending you a card in the mail, we’ve partnered up with Aussie indie start-up Witch Beam to bring you a free one-use Steam code for the award winning game – Assault Android Cactus,” the email read.
Given that EB doesn’t exactly have a great lineup of Australian games on sale – ever – it’s an intriguing move. I reached out to EB for a comment on whether they would be doing more deals with local indie games going forward, but hadn’t received a reply by the time of writing.
Update: EB, in an email, has confirmed that this won’t be the last time they work with Australian developers. The full statement is below.
Over the past few months we have met with a number of local Australian developers. The full version of Assault Android Cactus gifted to all Level 4 EB World members was made possible by working with the awesome team over at Witch Beam.
The idea of bringing unique Australian developed games to the mainstream is very exciting to us. We look forward to working closely with the Australian development community in 2017 and beyond.
Comments
11 responses to “EB Games Gives Away An Aussie Indie Game For Christmas”
That’s quite endearing but no, it’s also baffling EB would stipulate I need to be Level 4 of EB World.
I never thought games published on the XBLAs of yore or similarly heavily promoted games that still wore the “I’m independent’ badge back in the day could still necessarily claim the title of “indie game”, but obviously the industry changed to adapt to them rather the other way around.
Witch Beam gets top marks for boldly trying new and innovative ways to get noticed, but this strikes me as heading down the same path.
Buy Android Assault Cactus for the asking price. You will contribute to the local indie scene, you will save the developer from having to jump through hurdles like this or the absolutely pathetic way it was treated by PS Plus earlier in the year(or was it last year?) and maybe, just maybe, you’ll play a really cool game to boot.
Ooh, I’ll have to check my email when I get home. Hopefully I haven’t bought it already, my library’s pushing 1000 so I wouldn’t have a clue.
Got my email, great for people who game on pc but crappy for us that dont, id prefer the card and puzzle
That’s unfortunate – I too got the Steam key by email, but I assumed they’d have sent another option to non-PC gamers.
I guess it’s better than a kick in the teeth. I don’t get much benefit from being Level 4 except skipping the queue on game release days, so it’s nice to have something.
oh well i shouldnt complain about free stuff right haha yes i wish they would bring out a level 5 with actual benefits kind of like amazon prime or best buy (i bet they will next year when amazon gets here)
There is a level 5 coming, it will only be available to the top 1000 EB customers in the country though, and you apparently will be able to lose lvl 5 if you drop out of that top 1k. Dunno about anything else for it though
yeah righto
God I can’t get beyond level 2 – whose soul do you have trade in to get to level 4!!!?
you don’t need to trade a soul. just 1,000 Xbox 360 games! bargain!
Your own 😛
Yeah it was nice to actually get something for being a lvl 4, seeing as how it’s fairly useless otherwise.
Not sure my PC (laptop) can actually run it though, and I hardly buy PC games from them as well.