Double Fine Goes Fully Independent, Regains Publishing Rights for Psychonauts 2 and Keeper, and Confirms Amnesia Fortnight 2026 Kickstarter for August 31

Double Fine Productions is officially independent again, and CEO Tim Schafer is wasting no time telling fans what that means. Speaking on Kinda Funny's podcast earlier today, Schafer confirmed the studio has fully transitioned out of Microsoft ownership, regained publishing rights for the games it developed under Xbox, and now keeps all the revenue when players pick up those titles on Steam and other storefronts.

"Everything we got back, the transfer of the IP came back to us, and we got the publishing rights back for all our games," Schafer said on Kinda Funny. "When people buy our games it helps support the studio."

Double Fine's catalogue includes Psychonauts 2 and the recently released pottery-brawler multiplayer game Keeper, alongside older titles like Brütal Legend and Costume Quest. Steam still lists Xbox Game Studios as the publisher on some of those product pages, but Schafer said on the podcast that this is just because "it takes a while for all of that to process" as the storefronts catch up with the change in ownership.

The confirmation also gives Double Fine room to plan its next move with full control over its IP. Schafer revealed the studio will launch a new Kickstarter campaign on August 31 for Amnesia Fortnight 2026, the revival of the famous internal game jam that originally produced Costume Quest and Stacking. The team will run the jam live online, and backers will help decide which of the developers' ideas get made into prototypes — four projects in total. From those four, backers will pick one to be turned into a real (small) Double Fine game, with the entire process also filmed as a documentary.

The team is also turning to its recently released Kiln for some momentum. Schafer teased a major update landing next week that will add new maps and modes to the pottery-brawler multiplayer game alongside a price drop, giving players another reason to revisit the studio's newest release on Steam and other platforms.

The announcement closes a turbulent stretch for Double Fine. In July, the studio laid off 23 members of staff — about a third of its headcount — to become "a size that we can sustain," as Schafer put it at the time, and the move came shortly after Microsoft approved Double Fine's separation as part of a wider Xbox restructuring that included roughly 3,200 layoffs across the company's gaming division.

The studio's confirmation of full independence and the return of publishing rights sets Double Fine apart from the other Xbox studio that has broken free so far: Compulsion Games, the South of Midnight and We Happy Few developer, announced its own management buyout in August after Microsoft began divesting from five internal studios earlier this year.