New Study Shows Majority of Kickstarter Games Miss Promised Release Dates

A new study has revealed that a large portion of games that are financed by the crowdfunding website Kickstarter do not meet their release date goals, showing that the service has not quite fulfilled the promise of allowing video game fans to directly fund projects they find worthy.

UnSub has tracked to success rate of video game developers who bring projects to Kickstarter, with the latest report taking into account data gained from January 2014. As it turns out, the amount of projects that get fully realized on their intended release dates has fallen dramatically. In 2009 the success rate of video game campaigns fully delivering on their promises was at 40 percent. By 2012, increases in the amount of video game Kickstarter projects launched (five successful video game campaigns were funded in 2009 compared to 207 in 2012) has dropped this rate to 16 percent. Taking into account data gained from the four full years of data gathered by UnSub, only one in three fully deliver the promised game to backers.

These numbers improve slightly if partially delivered games are taken into account, as around half of Kickstarter video games are successful. These partially completed games include games that end up being split into different parts such as Double Fine's Broken Age or games that are promised on multiple platforms but are released only on one of these platforms.

Even more startling is that it seems as though games with an abundance of funding are more likely to fail than games with tighter budgets. With all games that receive $100,000 to $1 million in funding, 17 percent have failed to deliver a game compared to eight percent that delivered their promised video game project. The average amount of funding in 2012 for a successful Kickstarter video game is $138,000 compared to the $150,000 failed video games received.

There are many possible explanations for why Kickstarter video games have a large percentage of failures occur. One may be that amateur game designers who have good ideas but a lack of experience find themselves successfully funded only to find out that the game they pitched is harder to create than they thought. After all, many blockbuster titles such as Ubisoft's Watch Dogs are delayed, so it stands to reason that less experienced individuals or companies face the same problems. Perhaps the future will be brighter for Kickstarter projects as industry veterans begin using the website to fund their own projects.