Second Life studio buys Desura digital distribution service

Indie-friendly digital distribution service Desura has been purchased by Linden Labs, the creators of virtual world Second Life. Linden Labs announced the acquisition in a press release today, saying it strengthens the company's aim to reach creative developers worldwide.

The distribution service first opened in 2009 as an easy-to-use shop for free and paid indie games and mods (not coincidentally, its founders also created IndieDB.com and ModDB.com). Linden Labs says the service will continue uninterrupted as Linden Labs integrates Desura's team and technology.

“This acquisition gives us a global platform for serving creative developers of all kinds, and we’re looking forward to growing both Desura’s global community of gamers and its fantastic portfolio of thousands of games, mods, and other content," Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble said in a release. "Our aim is to invest and support the Desura team in making it the most open and developer-friendly platform in the world.”

Though Linden Lab is best-known as the studio behind Second Life, in recent years it has expanded its focus to other creative games and applications including Minecraft-inspired Patterns and iOS interactive fiction platform Versu.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.