Not every shitty Kickstarter story has to have a sad ending. Dimension Driver, the game that was so cruelly cheated of its funding by a troll a few weeks back, has hit its goal second time around.
Asking for the same amount as their first campaign — €30,000 — the team has at time of writing made €32,000, and with two weeks left to run should make a few more grand.
For those who missed it first time around, on May 14 — with only hours left to run on Dimension Drive’s original Kickstarter — the game had made only €23,000 of the €30,000 required. A mysterious benefactor then stepped in and pledged the remaining €7000, only for the team to find out (too late) that it was a fraudulent offer.
Comments
14 responses to “Trolled Kickstarter Gets Paid Second Time Around”
That is great news for those guys, I ended up kicking in for it this time around just because I felt so bad for them.
Now I just want the one by the Xwing vs TIE Fighter guys to get across the line.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impellerstudios/starfighter-inc
BTW, the game in the article is called Dimension Drive, not Dimension Driver, and their kickstarter page is here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2awesomestudio/dimension-drive-jack-is-back
This doesn’t entirely sit right with me.
This project was going to fail the first time. It had failed. But thanks to a troll, they got to re-run the campaign, and they attracted several high value/profile backings from people that had no intention of going anywhere near this specific project the first time around.
I guess it feels like it’s set a precedent now that others with small failed projects may attempt to emulate.
Maybe the people who backed it the second time didn’t know about the first go.
Well the first comment on this page was somebody who chipped in this time purely because they felt bad for the devs
Kickstarter is loaded with examples of projects that had a second bite and made it. Kickstarter actually encourages creators to revise and give it another go. I got a whole bunch of emails from Kickstarter when my first campaign failed. It’s all within the ‘rules.’
These guys didn’t get any special treatment. Just free publicity from their troll pledge.
With all the press this troll pledge received, it would have been madness for these guys not to relaunch their campaign. The sheer number of eyeballs and pseudo-sympathy was destined to get them well over the line the second time around.
The only question to be answered is: where did that fake pledge come from?
The trolling was special treatment though. Without it, they would have needed to drum up support the old fashioned way by contacting sites and trying to get their game advertised. The fact that they got trolled meant they were suddenly newsworthy and pushed their priority up on every site’s list of stories.
I meant special treatment from Kickstarter. My point was that they had every right to try again, and would have been crazy not to, given the free publicity.
On the one hand, it’s great that they succeeded, on the other hand though, I’m curious about how much of that success is due to genuine interest in the game and how much is pity money because of the trolling. Either way, the trolling was great for PR.
The thing is lots of people just don’t look at kickstarter. Unless an article hits the headlines somewhere that they do read lots of people just don’t know about things they’d love to contribute to. So I don’t see there being any problem with them retrying and getting funded.
Like others, I do wonder who the troll was, and more importantly does it set a precedent where a company that looks like it’s not going to fund trolls themselves for the publicity and the “retry” opportunity.
I backed a project called the Ninja Sphere. They blew past their minimum and offered wireless bluetooth audio as a stretch goal. They were $100,000 short of that amount. Lo and behold, mere minutes before the end, pledges picked up and pushed it to over $700,000 (so, almost $100,000 raised in 1-2 hours). People got suspicious, looked into it, over $100,000 in fraudulent pledges. The project still went ahead and I got my rewards, despite the company going bust about a year and a half after the Kickstarter.
Good for them.
It would be rough thinking you had been funded, then having it pulled out from under you.
It’s not their fault that they got trolled on their first kickstarter attempt, and you can’t blame them either for (potentially) cashing in on the free publicity.
Though saying that, I didn’t even know that they had started a second campaign, so it’s not like they solely relied on that publicity.
What’s stopping people from pulling their backing at the 11th hour this time around?
Nothing really. We’ll know in 13 days when the campaign ends. They have five backers at 1000 GBP and one backer at 2000 GBP, so they’re certainly at risk of the same thing happening again, but I think it’s unlikely this time around.
Shoot ’em up/bullet hell type games were never my taste so I have no idea if what they’re selling will actually be any good, but a 30,000 GBP target seems low for a team of 9.