Continuing Versus Evil's legacy with Digital Bandidos
In December 2023, indie publisher Versus Evil was shut down – ten years after it first opened its doors, and two years after it was acquired by TinyBuild in a $31.3 million deal.
The news came just a couple of weeks after founder and general manager Steve Escalante announced he was leaving the company. It later emerged that Escalante, along with Versus Evil's head of production Lance James and former owner Stall Proof LLC, had been in a legal dispute with TinyBuild over whether the latter had fulfilled its obligations from the acquisition deal. This was settled in December, with TinyBuild paying $3.5 million and legal costs to settle the claims.
Escalante and James re-emerged in August at the head of a new indie-centric venture, Digital Bandidos, where they plan to draw on their experience from running Versus Evil and continue to work the ten-year-old publisher was doing.
When it comes to the way his previous business met its end, Escalante tells GamesIndustry.biz there are limits to what he can say. However, he emphasises how proud he was of that company and all who work there.
"We had the greatest Versus Evil team assembled at the time," he says. "We had a great 2023, we were kind of getting ready for 2024 and all the stuff that we had going – I was really excited about the future."
He continues: "People have asked me, what was wrong with Versus Evil? And my answer is: nothing. We had a great reputation with developers. We did some good things, we released some great games. Obviously, we had our failures, but we had quite a few successes, [and a] really good success rate. Any investment that we put into a game, for over 70% of them we got all that money back and we were paying royalties through varying degrees of success. So, a pretty good track record."
"People have asked me, what was wrong with Versus Evil? And my answer is: nothing"
All this, he says, sets up Digital Bandidos to come out of the gate swinging. The company is drawing on its founders' decades of
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