Another Big Board Game Crowdfunding Campaign Cancelled Despite Reaching Funding Goal

10/01/2022 10:48 am EDT

The crowdfunding campaign for a planned tabletop adaptation of Kingdom Come: Deliverance has been cancelled despite reaching its initial funding goal. Boardcubator Studio announced they were cancelling its crowdfunding campaign for Kingdom Come: Deliverance, despite the game raising over €318,000 (or about $313,000), which was more than three times its initial €100,000 goal. All 2,300 backers of the campaign won't be charged for their pledges and Boardcubator announced they were planning to shut down their studio. 

Boardcubator had planned to develop an app-driven Kingdom Come: Deliverance game featuring full voice-over narrative, adaptive sound design, and AI-driven NPCs, which would likely require a significant development cost. In a post announcing the cancellation, Boardcubator explained that Kingdom Come: Deliverance required a lot more money than the initial €100,000 to cover production costs of the game. Bluntly speaking, we did not have the confidence to showcase the real goal of ~1.5 million euros (which would be around 10k backers) in a crowdfunding world where "Funded in XY minutes!" is a regular highlight," Boardcubator wrote. "In the overall mix of other unfortunate events, this leads to not only the cancellation of the project but also of Boardcubator as a whole." 

The post does shed some light on the increased risk for crowdfunding campaigns and how board game publishers market them. Typical marketing strategy for board game crowdfunding campaigns (especially high profile games) involves setting a low goal that can easily be reached in order to drive up confidence that the campaign can actually come to fruition. 

This is one of several recent crowdfunding campaigns to experience significant challenges. The crowdfunding campaign for a planned adaptation of Darkest Dungeon requested additional funds from all its backers to cover an increase in shipping costs since the end of its successful crowdfunding campaign. 

While Boardcubator is shutting down, the studio hopes to figure out a way to complete the Kingdom Come: Deliverance project in some fashion. "We'll do our best to make this project come alive because we believe it would be a shame to throw away three years of hard work and dedication," said Boardcubator. "It is not just Kingdom Come: Deliverance, it's a whole platform that can expand into multiple worlds. We believe that apps have a place in the board gaming world if they are done right–just imagine a future where you'd be able to experience the board games you love on a frequent basis with new curated content of the utmost quality in just one click."

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