So, I’ve been going through some Kickstarter game projects lately and stumbled upon Grimshade.

The game looked promising, but the funding/backers ratio got me confused. I wanted to support the game, but got suspicious, dug a little bit deeper and decided not to back this project because it seems like the company behind Grimshade used a misleading shady scheme to make an impression of a successful Kickstarter campaign.

I’ve been using this platform for some time to support indie titles, and this kind of behaviour frustrates me, so let me vent (actually, the more you read, the more you’ll find the situation ridiculous). Maybe you can explain this, and I’ll eventually look dumb, but if it’s true, then I think that Kickstarter has to do something about this whole thing.

Here’re my points:

Very weird funding/backers ratio throughout the campaign

The average pledge per backer (as I’m writing this) is $101434 / 806 = $125.8

It’s a ridiculously high amount for an indie RPG. Hell, even for an AAA title. For example, Divinity: Original Sin has $48,3 for an average pledge. Even Bloodstained (which gathered $5,5M) has $85,4. Pathfinder has $49,5.

How are you supposed to reach such numbers? You either attract few VERY wealthy backers, or you start scheming. Seems like the team behind Grimshade chose the second option.

Now, some Kicktraq statistics:

You can see that in the first three days Grimshade received $26353 from 275 backers (which is still a REALLY high funding/backers ratio of $95,8). It’s actually a lot less than the numbers from June 13th and June 16th. You don’t even need to calculate that — the backers numbers are much smaller, while the funding is skyrocketing. And it’s now even the ‘last-two-days-bump’ from 48-hour reminder. We see that the campaign hasn’t got much attention for almost three weeks, only to receive strangely high funding later.

Misleading positioning and funding sources

On the Kickstarter page, it says that Talerock, the studio behind the game, is located in London, UK. But still, I haven’t found any information about the company. There’s no official web site, only a Facebook page with 33 likes.

If you start googling Talerock, you can find a VK page (Russian social network). The first post is linking to a page of a Moscow-based company called ‘MS Atlantic’ (with Talerock logo) on Russian job site Headhunter.

Seems like most of development team is actually located in Moscow. Well, that’s okay, since on the Kickstarter page it says that Talerock is an international team. But still there’s no info on the whole ‘international’ part of the studio. And there’s something else.

I haven’t found a lot of coverage in gaming media or on YouTube. There’s this paid article on Destructoid aaaand some news on smaller sites? That’s all. Isn’t it strange for a game that attracted $100k? Also, two (1, 2)paid articles on Russian game site Kanobu, in which Talerock is announced as a Moscow-based studio:

2. There are A LOT of backers from Moscow, more than from any other city (for a game that clearly targets English-speaking community):

Backers receive vague answers about ‘investors’, avoiding answering the question about company location. Wait, what? Investors on Kickstarter?

See for yourselves:

Questions from backers

Talerock’s reply

‘The development of Grimshade is currently financed by several private investors. We are also looking for additional resources. The Kickstarter campaign brought us several more people, who are willing to support us with various amounts of money, provided the project is able to raise independently at least $ 50 000. And once this happened, the investors fulfilled their promise. We reached the half-way point, and the small backers were encouraged by this achievement. This is why a rapid increase can be observed. We would never attempt at pouring our own money into the Kickstarter campaign, thus putting at risk our own reputation, that of our investors, and the future of the whole project, in which so much effort and resources have been invested so far’.

Private investors backing the game on Kickstarter? Why don’t they just… Well, invest in the studio, avoiding Kickstarter fees? Why would you do that? I can’t see a reason other than the fact that such scheme can create a false appearance of active, legit Kickstarter campaign. You mix backers’ money with private investing only to say ‘Hey guys! We’ve gathered $100k!’ When in fact, the funding from real people that supported the game out of the pocket is MUCH smaller than it seems at the first glance.

Again, check the Kicktraq stats. ‘We reached the half-way point, and the small backers were encouraged by this achievement’. I don’t see any encouragement from the community here:

Speaking of the ‘investments’. The game literally has zero $200-tier backers:

And there are FORTY $1000-tier backers:

Daaaaamn that looks shady.

Last, but not least — I’ve checked Google today before posting this piece. Gamasutra has posted an unedited press release about Grimshade collecting $100k:

Who the hell are Asterion Games? There’s no word about this company on Kickstarter page. Did Grimshade sign a publishing contract? Is it the ‘PR agency’ Talerock told about in a Kickstarter reply? Let’s check:

Looks like a publishing/promoting company. Are there any projects Asterion Games published? Nope. Any info on the company aside from template-like USPs? Nah. Seems like someone has quickly created a placeholder site to impersonate a legit game publisher. If you click on Asterion Games official Instagram link, you see this:

I’m actually laughing out loud while writing this part.

TL;DR

I think that Grimshade is a scam project created to make an impression of a legit Kickstarter campaign, only to brag that it has gathered $100k via crowdfunding. There are weird backing stats, some misleads about studio’s location and the whole shady story about ‘private investors’. The whole point of Kickstarter is to support people who are open and transparent about their projects, and Grimshade campaign looks like a scam.

I hope that the game will be good, but if you want to attract funding from people, well, don’t lie to them? With 52 hours left to go, I don’t think that Kickstarter can do something about the situation, but at least you’ll know this stuff.

They could’ve state $20k-$40k as an initial target and then announce some kind of additional funding from investors or something. But they decided to pull this kind of shady scheme. Or am I wrong? Please tell me what you think.