That is the question being asked around the media and on the Kickstarters themselves. You may recall back in July that Ouya announced its “Free The Games Fund”, a matching program for successful Kickstarters in exchange for six months of Ouya exclusivity. Since then, a number of Kickstarters have sprung up to join the program. Two of those projects, Gridiron Thunder and Elementary, My Dear Holmes, have reached their goals of $75,000 and $50,000, respectively, pretty quickly. This has raised some concerns among potential backers and Ouya critics that shady dealing have been going down.
While most of the criticisms have little corroborating evidence, there are some very peculiar events happening. The first major issue is with Gridiron Thunder mostly. It has only 129 backers at this time and total donations of over $78,000. A lot of people wonder where that money came from. When looking at the site Kicktraq for Gridiron Thunder, we see some very large donations in a short period of time. There are two separate days that saw over $10,000 raised, one day with over $5,000 and two more days with over $25,000. Those five days are well above the normal daily donation topping at $700 on a good day and under $300 most days. Those five donations put it at its funding goal and sealing Ouya matching funds.
During the controversies over the potential for the two successful Ouya Kickstarters being scams, Ouya has remained mostly silent. Their communications have mostly been a simple congratulatory note toward both Gridiron Thunder and Elementary, My Dear Holmes. People have been pressuring Ouya for more and they have now relented.
