Is Fall of Freya a Kickstarter Scam?

Fall of Freya has all the signs of a Kickstarter scam. Launched on October 3rd, it already has $10,050 pledged to it… from three backers. Two of those are at the $25 tier, meaning the remaining $10,000 came from a single backer. That’s $10k for a first person multiplayer zombie arena game, which are a dime a dozen. If you want to see it in action yourself, check out Jim Sterling’s let’s play.

Another alarming issue is that the game is already up for sale on Steam. You can buy it on Early Access for $39.99, or $23.99 right now due to a “sale.” As you can see in Jim Sterling’s video, the game – currently designated as “Alpha 1” – is little more than two or three rooms connected by some hallways and stairs. There are numerous bugs and glitches, and the game seems to have been comprised of several pre-made assets.

Also note the Kickstarter page itself. There are no screenshots, no gifs, no images. Just badly written walls of text talking about the game and random nothingness. Some of the best entries include:

“Hey Guys! Freya is a Cooperative Sci-Fi Survival Shooter… or, you know. It’s just CoD [Call of Duty] Zombies with shiny blue lights in a cleaner environment…”

“Flushed Dahlia At the Den, players roll their hard-earned cash for permanent unlocks to everything.”

“It is not the tool that determines prowess, but how you use it. Now putting aside that obvious that’s-what-she-said joke…”

By the way, the Kickstarter page is just a copy/paste of the Steam store page.

All of the screenshots on Steam involve the player standing in the same room not doing anything. A few of them show off some character models in default ‘T’ poses in empty space.

Someone Loves It

The most troubling thing isn’t what seems to be another scam is on Kickstarter. Rather, Kickstarter themselves are enabling this kind of behavior by designating Fall of Freya a “Project We Love.” The “Project We Love” badge is supposed to be a badge of honor for great looking campaigns, given by Kickstarter as a “this definitely isn’t a scam and you should be interested” kind of stop gap measure.

When that badge is handed out so freely to a campaign that is so blatantly shady, it really makes you stop and think. Is the “Project We Love” badge given out on a whim, randomly assigned according to some robotic algorithm like YouTube’s dreadful copyright system? How can we trust any campaign with Kickstarter’s blessing if something like Fall of Freya can get it?