OUYA Store Closing Down for Good in June 2019

One of the most surprising Kickstarter successes was a little gray box touting to liberate independent games development and bring life back to TVs and living rooms everywhere. The OUYA pushed its appealing price point at just $99 per unit, which net the crowdfunding campaign over $8.5 million, an unheard-of amount for the time, and still remains one of the highest-earning Kickstarter campaigns ever. Upon release though, the OUYA had a lot of issues that left many players disappointed. They were acquired by popular PC hardware company Razer in 2015 to keep the store alive but that is now coming to an end.

Not only will the OUYA store be shut down, Razer announced that the Razer Forge TV and the MadCatz MOJO stores will also be disconnected on June 25th, 2019. Leftover funds are encouraged to be spent before the stores end their service. It’s also important to note that this also disconnects the ability to download already purchased titles. OUYA players should download everything they own to ensure future use. Most games will still likely play, even those that need purchase confirmation though not all are guaranteed to work. Note that Forge TV and MOJO players will still have access to the Google Play Store.

While most games that were on the OUYA later appeared on other platforms, there are still likely games that were only available on the OUYA as exclusives. Of course, whether those games are ported over are in the hands of the rights holders, publishers, and developers. All of this information was found on an FAQ on the Razer website.

While it’s sad to see any console lose support, through the efforts of hackers and archivists the memory and software of the OUYA will live on. Especially considering the open nature of the console, there’s no reason to believe that tech-savvy players won’t be able to find OUYA gems somewhere on the internet.

This event also brings up a need for more support for archival efforts. It’s important that people advocate for sites and organizations doing that work. While many point to this idea being connected to piracy, it’s actually more about preservation.

That said, if a game is available on another platform, consider supporting it.

We’ve had a few fun nights with an OUYA in the past, mostly messing with the various emulators. This was less than ideal as the games played with a lot of lag at the time and the OUYA controller was not great. Again though, there are a lot of hacking solutions for the OUYA that are pretty straightforward.

While it wasn’t the best option out there, I think the OUYA will live on in the hearts of a small group of players for many years after the digital store shuts down. There is no doubt that it is an important point in the history of video games.