Yesterday, gaming peripheral maker Razer Inc announced that it would be buying the software assets to the Ouya microconsole, but despite that deal it looks like Ouya Inc will be unable to fulfill some of its financial obligations.

In particular, Ouya is apparently not paying the debt owed to independent game developers as part of the company’s “Free the Games” fund, which promised to match contributions on games for Ouya that were successfully funded through Kickstarter.

“[Ouya] paid the first installment when we submitted our beta,” one developer told Motherboard. “I’ve been working on bringing the game to release expecting to attain the remaining two installments but that won’t happen now. A lot of hard work went into controller support and UI elements just for OUYA. It’s hard to ask for additional artwork to finish a game when the tail end of your budget just disappears, much less advertise upon release.”

Some developers are looking at Razer to honor the micro console maker’s previous agreements because it is the new owner of the Ouya name, but Razer has stated that the Free the Games fund was not part of the assets it acquired.

“The Free the Games initiative was put forth by the original OUYA and that program was NOT part of the acquisition by Razer (the main asset acquired by Razer was the Android store while many of the other original OUYA assets such as the hardware and other programs were not part of the acquisition),” Razer said in a statement.

This obviously does not sit very well with some of the indie developers who were counting on that money, and while Razer may not be legally responsible for the money owed, some developers are still holding them accountable.

“Claiming Ouya no longer exists as a company to get out of funding commitments, while continuing to use the name in the announcements today as if they still are a company that exists, or that they’ve somehow transformed the company into a product or service, just stinks,” a developer told Motherboard. “I think Razer will have trouble ahead if this is the level of respect they continue to show indie devs.”

Photo by pcutler