Kickstarter-funded games have only been fully delivered to backers in 1/3 of cases
Flopstarter?
A couple of years ago, Kickstarter was heralded as a new dawn for video games.
The crowdfunding model meant developers could free themselves from the shackles of publishers and create games paid for by the people who wanted to play them.
Except it hasn't really worked.
Evil As A Hobby decided to take an in-depth look at the 366 video game projects that were successfully funded on Kickstarter between 2009 and October 2012, and discovered that only one in three of them has actually been fully delivered to backers as promised.
The numbers gameBy including Kickstarter projects that have been delivered in some form to their backers, the number rises closer to 50 percent.
Projects worth $16.9 million have either been partially or completed delivered to backers, leaving a staggering $21.6 million of crowdfunded cash in, well, the ether.
The delivery rate for games has remained roughly static during the period studied, but there's been a huge increase in successfully funded projects.
Cash flow problemsAnd it's not just the managers of the lower-funded Kickstarter projects that have failed to deliver (as you'd expect if it was a funding shortfall that has caused the delays).
Evil As A Hobby's report makes for some pretty damning reading, and I definitely recommend your going through the whole of the report.
Have YOU backed a Kickstarter project that hasn't panned out the way it was planned? Let us know what you think about the success, or otherwise, of the crowdfunding 'revolution' in the comments section below.