What the fuck is it for? So.. Precursor Games has their crowdfunding thing on their website. They got: $156, 044 right now. Its at 10% of the $1,500,000. 23 days to go.

"Due to overwhelming popular demand, we are happy to announce that an official Kickstarter campaign has launched for Shadow of the Eternals," Precursor says. "This gives potential pledgers even more options to contribute to the game."

Joystiq: Shadow of the Eternals gets a secondary Kickstarter campaign

I can't tell what this is.. And its not like their crowdfunding is brimming with money yet..

Is this not fishy as fuck?.. I just don't know what this is, is all.. Why don't they just put some more stretch goals?.

KickStarter: Shadow of the Eternals

@blu3v3nom07: It wouldn't be the first project to raise some money on their site and have a separate Kickstarter page. Some people just prefer donating to a Kickstarter campaign over directly to a website.

Of the possibly fishy things attached to this campaign, having a separate Kickstarter along with the site fundraiser isn't really that fishy.

@truthtellah: Yea.. Well. Its like not even 50% yet. So, its just strange..

ಠ_ಠ

Many Kickstarter projects start their own PayPal thing on the side on their website to support international donations (since Amazon Payments only works for North America I believe). The difference here is that they did the website thing first and then Kickstarter second since it seems that is the way that a significant portion of the people interested in this project are used to donating, as told by them anyways.

You'll note that the Kickstarter amount doesn't include the $150,000 they already got. They might have been trying to get around the Kickstarter fee initially only to realize their momentum on their own website was dropping off and they needed more standardization. Based off how Paypal treated Lab Zero Games and 22 Cans they might also be in for a nasty surprise from that as well.

$150,000 for the first week isn't really that much compared to other recent high-profile projects. Considering you get the majority of your funding from the first 24 hours and the last 24 hours they were not on track to meet their goal.

@blu3v3nom07:

Well, they're two different campaigns; so I imagine they'll increase at different rates.

It's possible this style of fundraising could be misused, but this style of raising money in two places isn't uncommon. I mean, just look at that Star Citizen game from the Wing Commander folks. It raised $2,000,000 on Kickstarter and $7,000,000 on its site.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/30/star-citizen-raises-9-million-through-crowdfunding/

The fact that people actively want to give money to Dennis Dyack is insane.

The thing to remember is that the Star Citizen folks absolutely crushed their initial goal before going to Kickstarter.

Shadow of the Eternals doesn't seem to be in the same position.

i don't have a lot of context for this situation so i may be totally ignorant but this particular instance/the whole culture evolving around kickstarter seems kind of absurd.

It's Silicon Knights, what could go wrong?!

Yeah this seems more like a "This will never reach the goal on our site. We should have done a Kickstarter in the first place. Oh god, oh god. Dear, sweet, merciful god help us, Kickstarter."

Here's a tip: don't give money to Denis Dyack.

Yes, give it to me instead. I wont make a game either but at least I'm honest about it and you can be sure that I'll spend it on some cool stuff

The whole thing smells wrong to me.

People have already given 150 thousand to Silicon Knights... Money that will go to them even if they don't hit the target necessary to complete the game.

Crowd funding already has a bad perception, and when Dyack steals all this money, it's going to be even worse. And that sucks because this is how I want to buy Obsidian games from now on.

Just a head's up for the Kickstarter guys:

Make sure your legal team is assembled if this project fails.

That's very true! Project Eternity is the KS game I have the highest hopes for. If Obsidian handles this the right way that could sway my perception of the whole crowdfunding craze. Those guys would truly deserve succesful non-standard funding for their unusual titles. I'm genuinely interested in seeing which of the plethora of projects pull through and manage to deliver a satisfying game but this particular one doesn't look very promising even if it achieves the monetary goals.

Then again, the only KS project I ever put money towards so far is FTL (even though I just bought it after the fact) so my actual personal experience with KS games has been fantastic. I'd love to believe that my low opinion of many KS campaigns is rooted in a fair bit of paranoia but we'll just have to wait and see.

I'm surprised they didn't set up a "flexible funding" Indiegogo campaign instead. Their mistake here is that they don't get any of that sweet Kickstarter money unless they actually reach their goal.

This is stupid, why would they split the money? I mean, is there really a group of people going "You know what Dyack, I WOULD give you the money, but I don't trust giving my money directly to your website."

The real issue is why most people don't think it's 'fishy' to give money on kickstarter at all. I maintain my stance that this is going to turn bad really quickly as soon as someone fucks up one of these games.

I mean, people call for refunds when they buy games that review badly, imagine what will happen when they've 'donated' to a game that never even ships or doesn't even come close to matching expectations.

@professoress: Pretty sure they make it clear that if a project fails you're just screwed and get nothing back. If that weren't the case I think KS would've been sued into oblivion for various failed projects already.

@rorie said:

But this isn't just any project, this is a Dyack joint (I'm half joking and probably judging too harshly based on recent events that I admittedly have limited knowledge of).

There did actually seem to be a group out there expressing this sentiment. Whether it was just jibber-jabber or not waits to be seen.

Probably a lot of people telling them they would trust enough to pledge if they were on kickstarter - even though KS offers no more security.

Dyack was on the Weekend Confirmed Podcast this weekend.

he seems a lot less mental that he used to be. and aware that he did come across as a mental a few years back during the too human development.

didn't speak about how they are funding this though

@bell_end: They said they were going to use the lessons they had learned to relaunch a better Kickstarter campaign.