A fake pledge has left indie developer 2Awesome Studio with nothing to show for its Kickstarter campaign but a broken heart.

2Awesome Studio turned to Kickstarter to raise €30,000 for Dimension Drive, a comic book-styled space adventure with a really interesting-sounding teleport mechanic, which has players battling in two worlds at once.

With just a few hours left on the clock, the project was about €7,000 short of its goal when a generous single backer pledged the full remaining amount, bringing it across the line. 2Awesome was naturally overjoyed.

Who is Jonathan, Jonathan is our hero! We love you and we want to meet you in person! THANK YOU 7000k in a single pledge! #DimensionDrive — 2Awesome Studio (@2AwesomeStudio) May 13, 2015

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before Kickstarter informed the team that they weren’t home and dry after all.

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We've just been informed by Kickstarter that the 7K euro pledge was fraudulent. Somebody played with our dreams. Sorry for the confussion 🙁 — 2Awesome Studio (@2AwesomeStudio) May 13, 2015

In addition to just being flat out mean to play with emotions like this, the fake pledge may have discouraged fence-sitters from pledging, or existing backers from upping their pledges, because they believed the project was funded. The fraudulent pledge was cancelled just half an hour before the campaign ended, leaving little time for others to fill close the gap.

Somebody pledge 7k to our Kickstarter just to be taken a way in the last moment. Trolling our end of #Kickstarter. Funded and it's gone — 2Awesome Studio (@2AwesomeStudio) May 13, 2015

As a result, the campaign was unsuccessful, meaning 2Awesome won’t see a cent of the money backers offered to the project. In the wake of this event, the team’s devastation is obvious.

Don't know what to do now, mentally devastated 🙁 Don't know what to do now #gamedev #indiedev https://t.co/b9lROaQQvz — 2Awesome Studio (@2AwesomeStudio) May 13, 2015

This is just not cool. Hopefully 2Awesome will shake off its blues and turn to alternate funding options, as I’m sure there’ll be plenty of potential new backers alerted to this genuinely interesting-looking game in the wake of this last minute upset.

Thanks, Kotaku.