From Promises to Scams: The Worst Gaming Kickstarters Ever

Introduction

Hi, folks, it's Zaid Ikram. And today on Gamix, 5 the worst gaming kickstarters ever. We've got a few different models for how they make money with video games. One is you buy the game and you get the game. This is probably the best model. There's less good models like live service, let's not get into that. But live service isn't a scam. Let's talk about some games that are. 

Number 5: RAW 

One of the easiest ways to spot a scam Kickstarter game is to scroll down to risks and challenges. Do they mention actual real risks of supporting the Kickstarter? If they do, it's probably, I mean, it's got a better chance of being serious at least, but a scam is much more likely to have some kind of nonsense like they're almost too good at making games. Why would we have any trouble with this? That's a scam. And RAW has all the hallmarks. This game was sold as a massively multi-player online role-playing game. And not like fairies and dragons, it was gonna be more like Grand Theft Auto Online's RP, but more ambitious. The trailer was impressive, and it filled a niche a lot of people were looking for in an online game.

Also, the Kickstarter came up before everybody started to get really disillusioned by crowdfunded games in general, but people were promised AAA MMO that would be made in less than two years on a $200,000 budget. And anyone who has ever worked in game dev or at least knows anything about game development knows that sounds completely absurdly impossible. $200,000 to make a AAA game. Like forget the fact that it's a massively multiplayer online game, just to make a AAA game on like a tiny fraction of what in AAA gaming is considered a shoestring budget. Like it's absurd. Still, somehow these guys managed to hook in 3,983 people to donate to them, and like they were two people working on a game.

Why did those nearly 4,000 people believe this could happen? That, of course, didn't stop them from taking people's money and running, though. At least they tried to before Kickstarter suspended the project and refunded all the backers. At least people who funded the game got their money back. A lot of other failed Kickstarter projects didn't go that way.

Number 4: Shroud of the Avatar

And number four is Shroud of the Avatar. Ah, Lord British, AKA Richard Garriott, the creator of the Ultima series and gaming pioneer. This guy is a legend up there with guys like Sid Meier, Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto. At least he would be if he wasn't going out of his way to purposefully ruin his reputation by making garbage like Shroud of the Avatar.

It was originally meant to be a simple follow-up to Garriott's own Ultima series. It slowly ballooned into something completely unrecognizable though. Instead of a single player RPG like I advertised on Kickstarter, it morphed into an MMO full of overpriced micro-transactions. What makes this game different is it did actually come out, but it was just terrible with hideous graphics and unfinished content everywhere.

That didn't stop them from selling plots of land, including a $30,000 golden castle sold exclusively to backers. So much sketchy stuff went on behind the scenes, it would be impossible to get into. And honestly, a lot of this game is practically impenetrable from the outside looking in. Just trust me on this, the entire project was a mess.

There was a ton of sketchy money moving hands. And most importantly, the game was awful. I mean, if you've seen screenshots, it's hideous. The original Ultima Online looked better than this. Of course, they ended up partnering with some fly-by-night cryptocurrency things, and Garriott eventually just removed himself entirely from the project, moving onto some other terrible looking crypto game that's already dead.

A lot of former developers have spoken about the game, and they don't paint Garriott or any of the other main investors in a good light at all. It sounds like Garriott was mostly there to pick up a check and created a lot of the entire project to eat itself from the inside out. They probably could have gotten away with it, honestly.

The problem is they actually released the game. If they'd gone the Star Citizen route and just sold people JPEGs of epic castles they could own, they could've probably kept the gravy train rolling for a few more years.

Number 3: TitanReach

At number three is TitanReach. Apparently, if you want to separate gamers from all common sense, you gotta hit them where it hurts, nostalgia.

TitanReach was supposed to be the next big RuneScape-like. It was developed by a very small, inexperienced team. So immediately, all the red flags, fire alarms, klaxons, anything meant to warn you not to do something, it was all there. And those spider senses were going crazy, but people still gave these guys money.

People still wanted the dream of another RuneScape game, petting them in the nostalgia bone, I guess. I don't know why I came up with something so easily misinterpretable, whatever, point is the Kickstarter failed. But undeterred, they ran the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants style crowdfunding model to support development, and there were enough people chipping in they were able to work on the game, at least for a little while.

If the story ended there, it really wouldn't be a lot to say. Not finishing a game isn't really a scam. But here's where things get more interesting. In 2021, the lead developer, who goes by Unravel, announced they were ending development on the game. It was done. Fast forward a month, and suddenly development's back on.

They got an angel investor who had fully funded the project. So all is well, right? Not exactly, development basically goes nowhere. And in a year, they're once again ending things, but only after this long rambling message about crypto for some reason, always comes back to crypto with a lot of these games.

According to a YouTuber named KiraTV, who was closely following the entire TitanReach debacle, apparently the angel investor pulled out of the project after they found out Unravel had used the money given to him, invested it in crypto, and used the money from that to buy a Tesla. Wasn't just hearsay, they have screenshots of Discord conversations to back all this up.

Unravel made some pretty sketchy comments about how tempted they were to just take the money and run, which isn't really something you should be telling the people who are investing in your project. But what do I know? After that, Unravel and the other developers just disappeared into the night. Recently seems like a few of them have come crawling back in a desperate attempt to get a little more money out of people who just really wanted a new RuneScape, but, eh, we'll see.

Number 2: Climber and Abstractism

At number two is Climber and Abstractism. Before certain scammers tried to trick users into buying fake games, there was a somewhat more subtle scam meant to trick people into buying fake Dota 2 items. The actual games here are basically irrelevant to the scam. Climber and Abstractism are just forgettable shovelwares sold for pennies.

But the real money-making trick is in the items. So Steam has the Community Marketplace where players can buy and sell in-game items for real currency. There's a whole lot of sketchy business going on with real money items, up to and including actual money laundering schemes. So the trick here is there's an extremely rare and expensive item in Dota 2 called the Dragonclaw Hook that even now in 2024 is being sold for around $300.

It was only available for a limited time, so it's something that people wanted, still want, for that matter. So what these guys did is they made it so an item would drop that looked identical to the Dragonclaw Hook. The picture's the same, the game changed their logo to look like Dota 2, and the plan here was to get people to buy and sell these counterfeit hooks so the devs could rake in cash.

Players reported it and Steam removed the offending games from sale, but stuff like this just goes to show how easy it is for scammers to take advantage of the Steam Marketplace.

Number 1: Project Phoenix

And at number one is Project Phoenix. At a certain point, the difference between an intentional scam and criminal negligence is almost non-existent, a very blurry line.

Sometimes, a project can just be run so poorly it doesn't matter if the original plan was to waste everyone's time and money or if they were really trying to do something because wasting everybody's time and money is the outcome either way. Now, there's nothing that directly proves Project Phoenix, Kickstarter's first Japan-based video game project, was a scam.

All the biggest allegations against the project were proven to be false. But man, people donated over a million dollars to this thing. It was one of the most successful early Kickstarter/crowdfunding games out there. But years went by with absolutely zero progress. So much emphasis was placed on a single God programmer who was meant to do the entire project.

But when they got steady work elsewhere, it just seems like everything stopped. That's when the whole Tiny Metal controversy started. See, this other game that was meant to be a spiritual successor to Advance Wars popped up on Kickstarter, saying it was being made by a team out in Los Angeles. But years later, people found out it was actually another game made by the Project Phoenix guy, made by a second team he had formed.

Many backers assumed they were taking money meant for Project Phoenix and using it for Tiny Metal because, what the Hell, where is Phoenix in all this? You're just working on a new game in secret now. The Project Phoenix guy was able to prove they hadn't misappropriated backer money at the time. They still held more than $300,000 to pay for physical backer rewards.

And the team working on Tiny Metal was completely different. But the whole situation was really sketchy. Tiny Metal eventually came out, and they even made a sequel. But Project Phoenix is still nowhere to be seen. They never officially announced the project ending. They just stopped posting back in 2019. The physical rewards never shipped, as far as I or anyone else knows.

So where did that money go? Maybe it's just sitting in a bank account somewhere for the eventual day that Phoenix can be resurrected because that's what the people who backed this campaign wanted, right? They wanted a modern-day reimagining of Final Fantasy Tactics, rather than all that money to sit in some bank account somewhere.

There's a reason nobody backs big games on Kickstarter anymore, and it's because of crap like this. Does it matter if this was a scam? I don't know. Was it a scam? I don't know. Majorly sketchy though. And for all intents and purposes, people got ripped off.

Conclusion

The stories of these gaming Kickstarters remind us of the risks that come with backing crowdfunded projects. While some start as promising ventures fueled by passion, others end up as cautionary tales of mismanagement, unmet expectations, or even outright scams.

For gamers and backers, the lesson is clear: research thoroughly, stay vigilant, and don’t let hype cloud your judgment. Crowdfunding has the potential to revolutionize gaming, but it’s up to us to support projects wisely and hold creators accountable.

Have you ever backed a Kickstarter that let you down—or one that exceeded your expectations? Share your experiences in the comments below. Let's keep the conversation going and learn from one another’s stories.