Nintendo eShop maestro Dan Adelman has left Nintendo

Nintendo have come a long way in a very short time with their relationships to indie developers. The man leading the charge of change has been Nintendo America’s Dan Adelman who was for a while the face of the eShop and the man you wanted to speak to get your games on the Wii U and 3DS.

Unfortunately Adelman has now confirmed that he has left Nintendo and set to go into business for himself helping independent developers with marketing and other business fun.

For months the Twitter account of Adelman has been on silent, previously he was very active on Twitter and open to communication with the public and developers on a number of subjects. These subjects included but were not limited to: region locking, the religious nature of Binding of Isaac and its non-approval for the eShop and others caused Adelman to be banned from using social media. Speaking to Kotaku today, Dan had the following to say;

[quote]I don’t think region locking itself was that sensitive an issue. It was more the straw that broke the camel’s back. My first strike was when I hinted that we were finally changing our ridiculously outdated policy of requiring developers to work at an office outside of their homes. The second one was a Binding of Isaac question that they didn’t like my answer to. The funny thing was that I was trying really hard to be as diplomatic about it as possible, since everyone knew I thought it was a really bad decision, but I guess it wasn’t enough. I think there may have been a few other things. I had been strongly encouraged to stay off of Twitter – or at least say only things that were clearly safe – so after the region locking comment they just said I needed to stop completely. When people started complaining that I wasn’t active on Twitter anymore, it was suggested that a PR person could just post in my name. I thought that was about the worst idea I’d ever heard, so I left it as is and let the silence speak for itself.

How do I feel about it? I have to admit it was really frustrating. So many developers felt comfortable reaching out to me on Twitter, and now that was being taken away. We were back to presenting ourselves as a behemoth, faceless company, which I saw as a major step backward.[/quote]

Adelman was responsible during his time at Nintendo for a number of big changes, the biggest is that the requirement for a indie development to actually have an office in order to be on the Wii U and 3DS was removed. Nintendo was quite over zealous in their policing of this;

[quote] So yeah, I absolutely did try to fight internally to change whatever I could. There were a ton of policies that have been updated and improved. I already mentioned about that office requirement. It was crazy. There were people whose job it was to look up addresses in Google maps to see if the business address was a home or an office building. And if it looked a little residential, they’d ask for photos. There would be e-mail threads with literally a few dozen back and forth exchanges about whether the couch in someone’s office was really used for business purposes or did someone really live there? That policy, thankfully, is gone.[/quote]

During the DSi and WiiWare days developers had to sell a minimum number of titles in order to actually get paid. This minimum number was often not meant and some developers have even given away copies of their game in order to reach the threshold and get their money. Adelman was responsible for squashing this policy on the eShop:

[quote]During the WiiWare days, developers had to sell a minimum number of units in order to qualify for rev share. The intent was actually noble. We wanted to discourage shovelware. Unfortunately, some developers who were taking risks with their game development but couldn’t find an audience were getting penalized. So we got rid of that for DSiWare and both eShops.[/quote]

So is that? Is the eShop now doomed to revert back to the terrible policies and bleak outlook of the WiiWare and DSiWare stores? It doesn’t appear that way with Adelman confirming that the platform and the policies are in good hands;

[quote]I know there are going to be a bunch of forum comments and editorials saying, “OMG Nintendo is doomed!” but the truth is that Nintendo’s indie program is in good hands. It was never really just me. There is a large group of people working on helping developers through the process and they’re going to continue doing that. My understanding is that they are planning on back-filling my role. Before leaving, I put together a list of people I thought would be good candidates for the job and would be happy to provide any input they want. Having the right person in that role will be critical for the long-term health of the business, and I’m sure they’re going to get someone great.[/quote]

There’s no doubt that Nintendo have lost a valuable employee with Adelman, our classification issues aside the eShop is brimming full of great content and it looks that way for the future as well.

Has Nintendo though shot themselves in the foot on this subject, should they have let Adelman continue as he was previously or were they right to silence him? Regardless they’ve now lost a great resource.

The full interview on Kotaku with Dan is well worth a read, it’s not often you get a look inside the inner workings of Nintendo.

Best of luck Dan.