Limited Run Games, Inc. is an American video gamedistributor based in Raleigh, North Carolina and a division of Mighty Rabbit Studios. The company specializes in the release of digital games in physical media, with the games being sold on their website. The company, founded by Douglas Bogart and Josh Fairhurst, was based on the preservation of video games, as well as catering to players who prefer physical discs and cartridges opposed to game downloads. Limited Run Games releases games exclusively on their website, and deliberately creates small print runs. With this, the team maintains a pledge to refuse creating reprints of past titles, even if there is high demand. The company name itself is a reference to this business model, as their games are available in a firm, limited printing for a short time.
Business model
Being attached to Mighty Rabbit Studios, the company's first two releases were both in house productions, in order to test the market and see if there was demand for physical releases. However, the company did hint before release of their first game, Breach & Clear that their first official collaboration was in place. Limited Run Games began expanding to projects with other developers following the success of these two in house test games. In order to attract developers, Limited Run finances all costs of a game's print run, and handles all other necessary steps. In return, the developer is charged with the same fee asked by digital distributors. Additionally, titles are released exclusively through their website as mail order titles. Fairhurst says this is done in order to "minimize incurred costs and maximizes the end revenue for our developers." In 2016, Limited Run Games primarily released games for the PlayStation family of systems. This was due to communication difficulties with Microsoft and Nintendo's minimum order quantities for games being "too high." However, according to an interview, Douglas Bogart expressed interest in publishing for the Nintendo Switch, saying "It's looking very positive and we hope to have our first title out this summer , fingers crossed!" In April 2018, Limited Run released Thimbleweed Park as their first physical release for the Switch. The PlayStation Vita is the system Limited Run considers their most desired for physical games, citing a strong attachment between the console and their fans. Co-founder Douglas Bogart has commented on this, saying "It seems like all of our Vita fans are probably the most diehard, so anything we can do to help them; they seem to be extremely supportive". As fans of the Vita themselves, Limited Run has called the system "the Dreamcast of this generation" and "the underdog console of the eight generation...it has a small library but there's not a lot of duds on it. What's coming out for it is really good." Every title Limited Run Games releases comes with a complimentary sticker and post card, with colours of the sticker and design of the card being dependent on the specific game. More recently, games have begun including instruction manuals, reversible cover art and other goodies. Beginning in June 2017, the company transitioned from post cards to complimentary trading cards, citing a drive to remain unique as other distributors had begun to offer post cards with orders as well, such as Signature Edition Games, though they would continue to include the bonus sticker. In October 2018, Best Buy announced that they would stock select Limited Run releases including Golf Story and Yooka-Laylee. Limited Run was also involved in producing physical editions for the Japanese visual novel for the PlayStation Vita, but production was cancelled after Vita game manufacturing was ended in North America and Europe in February 2019. Other visual novels announced in 2017 and earlier include World End Economica, Narcissu and Fault Milestone One, all on PlayStation 4 and in collaboration with Sekai Project. Their production status is unknown as of July 2019. During their showcase at E3 2019, Limited Run announced that they would distribute the "Collector's Edition" of the long-awaited Shenmue III in North America. At the same event, they also announced a partnership with LucasArts in order to release physical editions of some of their previous Star Wars and Monkey Island games, either on their original consoles or on current ones.
Legal case
On March 15, 2019, Limited Run Games announced that it would finally release a physical copy of Axiom Verge for the Wii U - a release which had been delayed by several years. Limited Run Games informed GamesIndustry.biz that it had been in a long legal battle with the Spanish publisher BadLand Games. According to Limited Run Games, BadLand Publishing owes the company $78,000, which was paid to BadLand to cover the cost of producing and delivering Axiom Verge to Limited Run Games. After failing to pay back the company or deliver the product, Limited Run Games decided to pursue legal action against BadLand Games and won their initial court case.
Games released
Standard editions of Nintendo Switch games do not get exact release sizes, because the volume of available stocks is decided based on preorders, and then rounded up to the nearest thousand. This process is sometimes applied to PlayStation 4 games and other systems as well. In that case, the final release size is usually not publicly available, and therefore not indicated in this table.
