Kickstarter Game Banks on Crypto, Loses, and Won’t Refund Backers

gamerant.com:

Cryptocurrency and Kickstarter are perhaps two things that should not go together, given the known volatility of the crypto market and the fact that Kickstarter funds come from optimistic backers who are counting on promises being kept. An example of what can go wrong when the two are mixed is Untamed Isles, an online monster-hunting RPG developed by Phat Loot Studios that got its start on the crowdfunding site.

Untamed Isles is one of the video game success stories of Kickstarter. An indie development and publishing studio founded in 2020 raises over $580,000 USD through crowdfunding in 2021, and expectations are high that the company’s play-to-earn vision will come to fruition. The studio grew to over 70 people and the game was set to release on October 6. Then Phat Loot published a statement on August 12 titled “Untamed Isles Goes Into Hiatus.” However, there’s no indication of how long this hiatus might last.

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What this means for the game’s Kickstarter backers is that, essentially, all of the money is gone and they will not be getting refunds. According to Phat Loot CEO Joshua Grant, who answered questions during a livestream after the hiatus statement released, the company doesn’t even have enough to keep the lights on, let alone return money to backers. The problem, ultimately, can be attributed to the ongoing crypto market crash that began this year.

While $580,000 sounds like a lot of money, and might have been had the studio remained small, hiring over 70 people meant that wages totaled approximately $100,000 a week. So the Kickstarter funding was gone very quickly and the rest came from crypto investors. According to Phat Loot’s online statement, the