2Awesome Studio, the team behind a Kickstarter campaign for the shooter Dimension Drive, just had their hearts put through the wringer.
With their time almost up, and with thousands remaining to hit their goal, a single backer appeared out of nowhere and pledged €7000 ($9714).
Who is Jonathan, Jonathan is our hero! We love you and we want to meet you in person! THANK YOU 7000k in a single pledge! #DimensionDrive
— 2Awesome Studio (@2AwesomeStudio) May 13, 2015
The devs were, unsurprisingly, thrilled.
Funded at the moment of speaking, can we reach 500 backers? That would be a nice number https://t.co/2V6UAaEAVs #gamedev #indiedev
— 2Awesome Studio (@2AwesomeStudio) May 13, 2015
But then, heartbreak.
We’ve just been informed by Kickstarter that the 7K euro pledge was fraudulent. Somebody played with our dreams. Sorry for the confussion 🙁
— 2Awesome Studio (@2AwesomeStudio) May 13, 2015
Somebody pledge 7k to our Kickstarter just to be taken a way in the last moment. Trolling our end of #Kickstarter. Funded and it’s gone
— 2Awesome Studio (@2AwesomeStudio) May 13, 2015
Don’t know what to do now, mentally devastated 🙁 Don’t know what to do now #gamedev #indiedev https://t.co/b9lROaQQvz
— 2Awesome Studio (@2AwesomeStudio) May 13, 2015
The clock has since run out, and the game was just under €7000 short of hitting its goal.
“We honestly do not know what to say”, 2Awesome’s Alejandro Santiago tells Kotaku. “We are quite devastated in the team right now. It has been a roller-coaster night for us to be honest.”
2Awesome say the pledge, which was made a few hours before the campaign’s closure, was withdrawn by Kickstarter for being “fraudulent” with only 31 minutes remaining.
“Honestly speaking it has been a exhausting month for us. We have been working really hard to make our campaign a success, and right now we are speechless, demoralised, you name it”.
It’s one thing to have a game come up short on Kickstarter. Shit happens, the market pays for what the market wants, etc. But nobody should have to go through this.
Comments
21 responses to “Troll Ruins Kickstarter Campaign After Withdrawing $9714 Pledge”
Heartbreaking. Clearly the game wouldn’t have made its target, but to experience the elation of succeeding only for the rug to be ripped out from under them as a cruel joke would be far more soul-destroying. Shame on whoever is responsible.
They had ‘made’ the required amount to be backed – so it isnt clear at all!! some projects get backed to their requested amount for a number of reasons, some of which include a public release of the product/prototype irrespective of the pledges – A trend that shows campaign updates stating their getting across the line and then backing will cease meaning they arent over-funded and the product being kick started will still be developed. there are a few community-mentalities listed in academic papers that are worth reading (“Crowdfunding Creative Ideas: The Dynamics of Project Backers in Kickstarter” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2234765)
I think there should be a policy that if you want to pledge over $5k you are financially obligated to pay it once the campaign is over, it’ll kill troll pledges and only backers who are serious about the project can pledge.
That won’t stop stolen credit cards from being used, which is what sounds like might have happened here.
Just the opposite; like Zombie Jesus said people can use stolen credit card details. So rather than just trolling the KS by pledging you force somebody else to pay for it leading to quite a lot of drama and headaches down the road.
Plus, I’m pretty sure your proposal is illegal anyway. If someone pledges and doesn’t have the money the legal thing to do is not give them the product they were pledging for, not force them to pay with money they don’t have.
IZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII, *POWERS UP THE AZURE GRIMOIRE TO POWER UP THE THROWING OF VENDING MACHINES*
The cynic in me thinks this might be a move to get ‘sympathy pledges’
If they were behind it I would have thought they’d give themselves more than 30 minutes to try generate more pledges.
The cynic in you needs to re-read the part where the fraud was only discovered 30 minutes before the end of the kickstarter, thus not leaving enough time for sympathy pledges. The kickstarter is over, there can be no more pledges, and this sort of trolling happens semi-frequently (Onyx Path’s last kickstarter saw one $10k pledge turn out to be fake just a few weeks ago – and before your inner cynic starts they were funded and well into stretch goals at that time).
My inner cynic says if it was fraud by the devs then they would have been hoping it would have gone through and not hoping for it to be found out for sympathy pledges.
In fact, a lot of people may have decided to not pledge because it was reached and weren’t online for the half hour (okay, maybe two people at $30 each).
That makes no sense; by nature the fraud would have been detected and the project would have failed, and the point of a KS is the creator doesn’t have the funds.
…I don’t think anyone would want to do such a thing just for “Sympathy pledges”. It’s embarassing and heartbreaking. No (sane) person would do this to themselves on purpose.
Yeah maybe… Potentially they could see they weren’t going to reach target with 30 mins to go. This is good publicity for a re-kickstart. Sad either way.
Some people are shitheads. Some people are shitstains. Some people are just total shits.
Poetry
My sentiment exactly. This didn’t knock my socks off, I’m not into shmups… but damn.
When people put themselves out there, earnest, it’s bad enough to fail… but to be taunted? I really hope this wasn’t something malicious and was just a case of bad circumstances.
I hope they re-kickstart. It looks like a sweet game.
I have never heard of a project re-kickstarting. I’m not going to say it’s never happened, but it hasn’t happened yet.
I think once it fails on kickstarter they have to move to another crowd-funding site.
This reminds me of the Simpsons where PBS were doing a charity fundraiser. Homer pledges $10,000, but doesn’t leave his name.
This is certainly not an uncommon occurrence only that usually they pull out before the campaign ends.. because… the internet.
I’d be more inclined to back this game if the main character didn’t look like a manifestation of tumblr itself. Red streaks? Come the fuck on. She looks like a prepubescent 16 year old, not an intergalactic navigator and warrior,
Geebus… I was fairly damn sure that KS had actual systems in place to stop a troll pledges of backing out last minute..