Another in a long line of KS failures

Here’s a fun game dev fact for you: making an MMO is a long, hard, and expensive task that will generally end in failure and misery for everyone involved. If huge companies like BioWare can screw it up, it’s probably not a good idea for smaller, unknown developers to have a whack at it.

Apparently no one passed that memo on to the developers of Greed Monger, who have announced the game is to be shelved. This comes after having a wildly successfully Kickstarter and PayPal crowdfunding drive way back at the end of 2012, which managed to raise over three times their initial goal of $30,000.

This decision appears to have been made due to lack of further investment, backlash for trying to develop another game instead of Greed Monger, and some problems between members of the development team. A developer on the forums broke the news to backers with all the gritty details:

“A few weeks back when I left GM [Greed Monger] and then Jason [the original creator of the KickStarter] signed everything over to Joel and My self [developers on the game] took over based on the promise of Guaranteed funding through to launch from an out side investor. Once we stepped into ownership of GM that out side investor bailed on us and we were left with no funding. We made the choice to try and develop a smaller scale game that we could get released in a much shorter time and use the funds generated to fund GM. Since those plans were leaked we have dealt with nothing but flack for it from a bunch of people. So we are faced with some choices to make. We are unable to get GM built with out funding and we are unable to get funding from developing another smaller scale game with out taking heat for doing so. Joel and My self decided to give everything back to Jason and allow him to get GM developed using his Investors he told us he had. He is refusing to take GM back from us. Therefore with no means of funding and Jason refusing to take GM back from us we are forced to admit defeat and Close GM down. The last 3 years were a great learning experience for me. I've learned a number of things about working in the Game Development Industry that I wouldn't have learned else where. This community has been great and it's been an honor working with you guys. MMOI will be back at some point and you guys will NOT be forgotten by us that is a Promise we made when I left the GM and it's a Promise I intend on fulfilling. I'm sorry things have had to end this way and will do everything in our power to make things right in the future.”

The developers have ‘promised’ to make it up to all the backers of the project. Whether that means through refunds or eventually finishing the game in years to come we don’t know, but as it stands right now Greed Monger isn’t happening.