PuffPals: Island Skies, a cosy game that earned $2.5 million on Kickstarter, has been slammed with refund requests after its website and online store disappeared (www.pcgamer.com)
from Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world on 25 Sep 20:05
https://lemmy.world/post/36463972

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/36463970

#games

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pennomi@lemmy.world on 25 Sep 20:30 next collapse

People greatly overestimate the chances of success of a video game, even with $2.5 million. It’s even easy to fail entirely for reasons unrelated to developing a game, such as corporate governance.

It’s not totally comparable, because we did a physical game, the Kickstarter I created ended up succeeding and shipping (over a year late!), we lost virtually all profits to early company investors and surprise tariffs. It was basically a wash financially.

Broadfern@lemmy.world on 25 Sep 22:59 collapse

Isn’t part of the Kickstarter ToS that you understand there’s a chance the project won’t come to fruition?

EarMaster@lemmy.world on 26 Sep 09:06 collapse

It is, but hear me out: There is a difference between failing with a reason and failing silently - and seemingly with no reason. I don’t know this project and I don’t know what happened and how the creators handled this, but I have been on Kickstarter since it came to life and I have seen projects with poor communication fail and everyone was furious and I have seen projects fail who managed to communicate their struggles to their investors very well and they didn’t get overrun with refund requests. I know it is hard to admit problems and finally failure, but it has to be part of the progress.