Video Game Fees on Kickstarter Exceeded $20 million in 2020

This year, users supported video game developers on Kickstarter for a total of $22.9 million. The continuation of the Russian RPG Pathfinder got into the top three in terms of fees. However, this is still several times less than the crowdfunding fees of board games.This became known from the material that was published on the Polygon portal.

• 1. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes — $4.6 million (46 thousand backers)2. The Wonderful 101: Remastered — $2.3 million (33 thousand backers)
• 3. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous — $2 million (35 thousand backers)
• 4. Sea of Stars — $1.26 million (25.5 thousand backers)
• 5. Kindred Fates — $685 thousand (10.8 thousand backers)
• 6. My Time At Sandrock — $524 thousand (9.9 thousand backers)
• 7. Venus Blood Hollow — $363 thousand (1.5 thousand backers)
• 8. Anstoss 2022 — $300 thousand (3.8 thousand backers)
• 9. Curse of the Sea Rats — $295 thousand (5,9 thousand backers)
• 10. The Last Faith — $280 thousand (4 thousand backers)
• The first two lines were occupied by games from Japanese developers.

This is a remaster of the action adventure The Wonderful 101, originally released on Wii U in 2013, and the JRPG Eiyuden Chronicle, led by the creators of the Suikoden series of role-playing games.

It is noteworthy that Eiyuden Chronicle showed the third result in fees among all games in the history of Kickstarter. Only Shenmue III ($7.1 million) and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ($5.5 million) had more.

Closes the top three of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which is a sequel to the RPG Pathfinder: Kingmaker. The Moscow studio exceeded the original goal by almost seven times.

Despite the growing numbers of video games on Kickstarter, they may seem modest against the background of the results of desktop crowdfunding. The total campaign fees in this segment amounted to $233 million, which is 32% higher than last year’s figures.

The most successful board game on Kickstarter in 2020 was Frosthaven, which was supported by 83 thousand people for a total of $ 12.69 million.

Kickstarter Desktop and Video game Collections (2015-2020)Nevertheless, Kickstarter positively assesses the growth of video game crowdfunding and associates it primarily with the success of Japanese projects.

“The culture of raising money for creative projects in Japan is very different from Western countries. We continue to work with the local community of developers to build cooperation and are still trying to understand what conditions they need for a comfortable launch of campaigns,” said Luke Crane, vice president of the company for community Relations.

Kickstarter considers Europe to be another promising region. The company has recently entered the Polish market, and, according to Crane, the financial success of Cyberpunk 2077 may encourage local developers to raise funds for their ambitious projects.