Kickstarter rival Backerkit exits beta on the heels of a successful Gloomhaven campaign

polygon.com:

Backerkit’s crowdfunding platform is exiting beta and opening up to creators of all stripes. The announcement, made Tuesday, arrives near the end of the Gloomhaven Grand Festival campaign — perhaps its most high-profile, successful project yet — which runs through Wednesday.

“We believe in the transformative power of crowdfunding, and its capacity to turn the creative process into a collective effort,” said Backerkit CEO Maxwell Salzberg in a news release. “We are excited that backers can play a crucial role in providing feedback, building communities, and ultimately helping people create strong, resilient businesses of all sizes.”

Backerkit has long served as the trusted back end for crowdfunding projects, handling late pledges, shipping, and organizational logistics for campaigns run on other platforms. In June 2022 it announced it would launch its own crowdfunding platform, becoming a true competitor to the industry-leading Kickstarter. That process rolled out in beta throughout last year and into 2023 with a handful of carefully curated partner projects. Highlights include a reprint of Return to Dark Tower ($2 million), Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate (nearly $1.2 million), and Adventures in the Cypher System(more than $711,000). Now that the platform has exited beta, anyone from the 32 countries where Backerkit does business can spin up a campaign of their own.

The biggest success so far on Backerkit is the Gloomhaven Grand Festival, a campaign that includes a novel new tabletop role-playing game, more than 600 miniatures, and a revised version of the original hit board game. At the time of publication, it has raised more than $4 million on Backerkit. However, for as much money as the Gloomhaven Grand Festival has