While it is fraud, it’s murky waters when you realize this is what every Kickstarter does. Gamers don’t easily fathom the full sum of what it costs to pay qualified artists for a full development cycle. Kickstarters have only existed to prove to investors that there’s monetary interest in a concept.
Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
I mean when a small team with no budget can make a good demo that sells the idea but then can’t complete the project with years and houdreds of thousands what is going on? I backed like 8 kickstarters and only 3 made it out and 1 is saying they are about to be done after 7 years. Also one of the successful one’s shut down because of not enough post launch monetization. I’m still going to help with stuff i believe in after many failures but just not as enthusiastically.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Well, turns out people need to feed their families, keep a roof over their heads, and games are hard. 300k isn’t a lot of money to actually keep the lights on at a studio. Also keep in mind, depending on the tools you use, you could end up giving a portion of your game sales to the engine dev, then on top of that you have steam who wants a 30% cut for selling your game on their store. That’s maybe 50-55% left after all that depending on other bills and sales to fund anything after profits are left over.