Certain publishers are looking to take advantage of Kickstarter to develop new IPs and generate money without having to invest, Obsidian’s CEO Feargus Urquhart has claimed.
Urquhart mentioned on Obsidian’s Project Eternity Kickstarter page that he had been reached out to by ‘some publishers’ looking to use the developer as a front.
We were actually contacted by some publishers over the last few months that wanted to use us to do a Kickstarter,” he said.
I said to them ‘So, you want us to do a Kickstarter for, using our name, we then get the Kickstarter money to make the game, you then publish the game, but we then don’t get to keep the brand we make and we only get a portion of the profits’ They said, ‘Yes’.”
If true, the revelation that certain publishers are looking to get a rather fat piece of the Kickstarter pie is troubling at best. The site is a source for individuals and teams with a legitimate lack of funding to bring their creations to life – not a hotbed for experiments profitable companies would rather not invest personally in.