Desura might often find itself playing second fiddle to Steam and second fiddle to GoG and second fiddle to Origin and second fiddle to GameStop's Impulse… which I suppose makes it fifth fiddle, but that doesn't mean it's not important or valuable. Why else would the developer of Second Life, Linden Lab, buy it out?

That's what's happened, but don't worry, Linden isn't planning to shore the whole thing up and make it a home for Second Life shoe buying only, instead it wants to open it up and make it more “developer-friendly”:

“Desura’s talented team, thriving business, and impressive technology are a great fit for Linden Lab,” said studio head, Rob Humble in a statement (via TechCrunch). “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. Our aim is to invest and support the Desura team in making it the most open and developer-friendly platform in the world.”

This isn't the only business Linden has been buying up however. In 2012 it bought LittleTextPeople, and Blocksworld earlier in this one, so it's becoming a relative power house in terms of IP properties and now with a distribution  platform under its belt, it could become even more so. It also makes it more of a competitor to the likes of Valve and EA, even if it is a smaller player.

KitGuru Says: I must admit Desura is one platform I've never really used. Any of you guys use it for mod downloads or game buying? 

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