Live Streamed Benjamin’s Fate Launches, Cancels, Postpones Kickstarter

Probably the most common admission we hear from indie developers is that they wish they’d held off on launching their crowdfunding campaign. Oddly this is just as true for devs who received funding as those who didn’t. The message is clear, crowdfunding campaigns are a big deal and require serious preparation. So what happens if you jump the gun and launch too early?

Benjamin Tolman recently found out when he launched a Kickstarter campagin for his adventure RPG, Benjamin’s Fate. Tolman had been developing the game live on his Twitch channel. After 30 days of development he decided to go to Kickstarter seeking $18,000 to fund the project. He also quickly put together a Greenlight campaign for Steam.

https://youtu.be/OmUoZIf6oEY

In one of his development streams he admitted that he didn’t feel ready for Greenlight, but wanted to put something together before Steam removed the program. More to garner attention for his project. However, it seems that shortly after publishing the page he had a change of heart. “Took Steam Greenlight page down. The game is absolutely not ready for that,” he posted in a Kickstarter update.

This admission was quickly followed by Tolman canceling the Kickstarter campaign as well. He admitted to his backers that the project wasn’t far enough along just yet. “I really think I need a more solid game before I can feel like it deserves your pledges,” he explained.

Tolman posted that he’ll try again, possibly near the end of March with a reduced funding goal. In the meantime he plans to continue his development stream over on Twitch. It was definitely the right call. After looking over how much he was able to put together in just 30 days it’ll be interesting to see what he comes back with later.