Games

They are fully funded already, this is for a collector's edition, and beta access so they can scale the infrastructure before the game itself is ready for release.

Shovel Knight was kickstarted and they have a total flat hierarchy, fair payment system, and evenly distributed wages and bonuses.

I work for a major games studio and if I started my own studio, I would 100% use crowdfunding. Financing in games is broken.

You tend to need someone with deep pockets willing to eat costs for 2-5 years for 10-100 people (depending on project size) in the gamble it'll pay off. Because it's a gamble, the financer (in most cases China's tencent) are constantly breathing over your shoulder and demanding the impossible (oh all the devs say this'll take three years? You have six months) and the motive changes from "make enough money for the studio to survive" to "make enough money so your financial backers can get a new boat".

Then with F2P and live service (where I work) you get the constant demand for growth and perpetual play. Forget that churn is inevitable as people's moods and desires change. Forget that there's a maximum number of people in the world that are interested in your game. You have to grow at all costs all the time. That's what leads to the predatory F2P system.

We also have to remember F2P was born out of Shareware, perhaps my favourite distribution model. In non-corporate hands, it can be a fantastic thing.

Shit ain't easy for devs. Give them some slack.