ANNOUNCEMENT: Sportsfriends goes free on May 29

[doougle]

Hello Sportsfriends,

I'm Doug, Producer of Sportsfriends and Designer of JS Joust.

Next month marks the 10 year anniversary of the initial Sportsfriends release on PS3 and PS4. All of our lives have changed quite a bit over the last decade. Because we're not in a position to support or update Sportsfriends moving forward, we've decided to make a few organizational changes:

1. Starting May 29, Sportsfriends will become a free download, both here on Steam and on all other platforms on which the game available. We plan to keep it free for the foreseeable future. We want to make sure that Sportsfriends remains available to play in the future for as many people as possible.

2. To ensure long-term stewardship of the project, we're transferring ownership of Sportsfriends from Die Gute Fabrik LLC to Bennett Foddy.

3. Supporting JS Joust is especially tricky given operating system limitations. Together with Sportsfriends programmer Jonathan Whiting, we will be open sourcing a version of JS Joust, for Linux. We've been meaning to do this for years, and so this is a good excuse to finally get it done. Stay tuned for link and details - soon.

Big thank you to everyone who supported the project along the way - our Kickstarter backers, Die Gute Fabrik, Sony, popagenda for all their recent logistical support, friends and family, and all of you who purchased or played the game over these last 10 years. Here's hoping the game will remain playable for many more years.

Long live local multiplayer,

- Doug, Die Gute Fabrik, and The Sportsfriends -

[SirScratchNSniff]

How freaking exciting!!! Just randomly jumped on the discussion page to see if their were any updates for Steam Deck compatibility. Really wanting to get this setup on my Youth Group's Steam Deck!

[Arno]

Excellent! I've subscribed to this post to get the info on the future of JS Joust.

[ChunKyPiglets]

Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! JS Joust has been the life blood to all my game nights for the past (almost) decade too! Have bought 2 PS3's for ONLY Sportsfriends, to share the experience around to as many people as possible, so Steam support (Deck??!?) sounds awesome!!

[Hallak65]

Thank you for putting a soon to be free game into a bundle that costs money

[Joe]

Would it be possible to get steam remote play support? Its apparently very easy to setup per Steam's developer documentation

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/remoteplay#:~:text=Go%20to%20the%20partner%20site,like%20to%20invite%20for%20testing.

[Thomas]

can you get someone to update the icon on steam it annoys me.

[General Riff Raff]

Great to hear that you have plans to keep J.S. Joust accessible into the future.
I'll be celebrating by purchasing 2 more move controllers... BTW: is 7 controllers the max number for J.S. Joust on Linux too?
Should I be checking somewhere specific for updates regarding the upcoming Linux open source build or is the 'Subscribe to this discussion' check box tick sufficient?

[♥♥♥♥♥♥]

Love to hear this. Thank you for making such and incredible and orginal game.

[Povertito]

If Sportsfriends ever gets updated, will Johann Sebastian Joust support be increased to 8 (or more) players?

It would be cool if we could play team-based modes such as Two Armies in 4-on-4, or have four teams with two people each (2 Blue, 2 Pink, 2 Green, 2 Orange)

I know Bluetooth has a limit of seven connections at once, which would mean you would need to have two adapters

Also, thanks for making the game free by the way - Sportsfriends is a game that I recommend to people frequently