Just when you thought you heard the last of serial Kickstarter AJ Tilley he rears his head again, albeit briefly, to give some of the most insane news that I’ve heard in the past four years. In a recent backer-only update he announced that AJTilley.com will be closing shop. Apparently permanently. And with it has come some crazy housekeeping that has made my head spin since I first heard the news.
I had previously covered the split between the “publisher arm” and developer Dharker Studio which at the time made at least a little sense. After all, it’s not the first time a developer has done this as I mentioned briefly in said piece. However, as of today AJTilley.com has officially closed shop and with the backer-only update has come the news that all existing crowdfunding accounts, projects, and BackerKit pages for each game will be removed as well.
The decision to do this is, according to the updates across various campaigns (I got notifications for both Beach Bounce and Divine Slice of Life), is due to losing access to said Kickstarter and BackerKit accounts. Honestly, couldn’t they just transfer information over to Dharker Studio or something? I don’t know much about the creator-end of the site, but it’s better than saying “So long, suckers!”
For that reason we have been moving everything off of those accounts and closing them down, especially now all rewards have been met.
I can’t honestly comment if all rewards have been met as I did receive everything that I pledged for…namely the games themselves. However, basically wiping the slate clean makes me wonder if AJ Tilley is doing this just to distance himself from the controversies and failures of the past.
Facepalm time folks!