InSomnia’s backer’s are mad as hell at the latest update, but is it unwarranted? InSomnia’s developers released an update recently detailing everything they’ve added to the game. They have increased the gameplay time to 40 hours, transferred all their data to Unreal Engine 4 and overall have made some ferocious progress. Basically, all that is left to do is polish and improve what they have. Unfortunately, and very predictably, they ran out of money a long time ago.

Insomnia

It does not take a degree in accounting to know that a game of this scale could not be completed on $92K, which is how much the Kickstarter raised. According to developers they have spent $140K of their own money on top of the Kickstarter funds and with their bigger team now spend an average of $18K a month. The InSomnia Team aren’t ready to resign just yet, they’ve put too much work into the game.  In the update they told backers that they would be launching a second crowdfunding campaign in February.

“We still need at least $80.000 to complete the game without any loss in effectiveness and time so our team can release it until September 2016.”

I doubt the developers could have predicted the landslide of negativity that reigned down upon them. There were backers who even went so far as to say that when the new campaign came out they would back it long enough to actively dissuade other backers from funding the campaign. I’m not saying that I can’t understand why people are upset, the game was originally much smaller and due out last year. Still, it seems like backers didn’t predict this, which boggles my mind a little. Some have taken issue with the tone of the update, believing that the developers were too happy or flippant about running out of money. They also seem to have taken the idea of the team trying to get additional funding as an insult, despite the fact they needn’t be the ones putting money in.

Insomnia

What do you think? We have seen Kickstarters run out of money before for less valid reasons than trying to provide better quality than originally promised. Should the InSomnia team simply give up on their game as some backers have? Do you think it is necessary for the developers to grovel? Taking into account the previous coverage of InSomnia I’m not ready to go gentle into that good night just yet.

About the Author

Stephanie Smith

Stephanie Smith is an English Teacher in Mianyang China with a passion for gaming. Stephanie is dedicated to Edutainment and wants to bring video games into the classroom and help other teachers do the same. She's a little too overly enthusiastic about collecting Steam badges and fairly grumpy if she doesn't get her daily dose of Markiplier and Game Grumps.

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