The crowdfunding mechanism for video games received significant attention in February 2012 due to the success of Double Fine Adventure (later renamed as Broken Age), a point-and-click adventure game which raised more than $3 million through the Kickstarter service, greatly exceeding the initial $400,000 request.
As the developers had trouble finding backing from traditional publishers, they instead chose to ask for funding directly from interested individuals.
Shortly before the announcement of Double Fine Adventure, another game, Code Hero, was able to secure more than $100,000 in funding through a last-minute push by word-of-mouth.
With the additional funds, Double Fine committed to developing the game for a wider range of platforms, localizations, and creating fully voiced dialog for the English version.
The Kickstarter began on July 10, 2012, looking to raise $950,000 for turning their existing prototype into a manufactured line; within 8 hours they had cleared this number, and within a week had surpassed $4 million in funding.
[17] Brian Fargo of inXile Entertainment, Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian Entertainment, and Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions, all whom have had significantly large crowdfunded projects as listed above, helped to found Fig in August 2015, a video game-centric crowdfunding platform that, in addition to the typical backer funding, also enables development investment so that they can earn part of the game's profit on release.
[25] A survey conducted by a research team at the University of Cologne examined the motivations of Kickstarter backers who pledged for video game projects in 2014.
The researchers concluded that "backers are first and foremost consumers, and the main effect of reward-based crowdfunding is that it closes the information gap between the developer and the customer."
In one example, the development of the game Alpha Colony fell short of its $50,000 goal by $28, rendering the project unfunded as per Kickstarter's regulations.
A notable case is that of Code Hero, which had secured $170,000 during its Kickstarter in early 2012, had initially expected to be shown at the August 2012 PAX convention but failed to materialize.
Further lack of updates through December led some of the Kickstarter backers to investigate the state of the project, finding that Primer Labs had apparently used up the funding and had yet to finish the game.
[28] However, due to lack of communication and failure to provide any of the claimed rewards, backers are looking towards legal options to recover their funding, though are limited by some of the terms of agreements set in place by Kickstarter.
[29] An update in early February 2013 included a message from Peake, breaking down the use of the Kickstarter funds and promise to provide refunds and back pay to his developers once the game was released, and took responsibility for the failure to meet the stated goals.
However, in early 2015, many supporters began to doubt if 22cans was going to finish the title and complete the additional Kickstarter stretch goals such as a Linux version, as Molyneux had begun talking about the next game his studio would produce.