EDGE - Alex Peake’s Kickstarter project Code Hero was successfully funded back in February, but some of the projects 7,459 backers are now demanding their money back fearing that the project may have stalled. Some press reports even suggested that Primer Labs, Peake’s studio, was facing a lawsuit from a disgruntled backer.
Greg Micek writes: "On December 25th 2011 indie developer, and self proclaimed hacker mentor, Alex Peake launched the Code Hero Kickstarter campaign in hopes of raising $100,000 to create a game that would teach people how to code. After a 60 day campaign that featured a sketchy update schedule Alex was able to collect over $170,000, making Code Hero the most funded video game on Kickstarter up to that time."
Seems to me the dude took off with it and is working on the game in his spare time.
Amanda French writes: "Code Hero was an educational game idea by Primer Labs meant to teach players how to code javascript. Its Kickstarter campaign ran from December 2011 to February 2012 for a total of 60 days. It raised over $170k. Alex Peake, the founder of Primer Labs, rallied followers to "make indie game crowdfunding history" with them, and break the $200k mark. They referred to backers as "The Code Hero Army" and challenged them to get their campaign on the front page of Reddit. The energy surrounding the project was practically feverish, as there were even talks of an MMO expansion. Unity CEO David Helgason even contributed $1,337 in support of Code Hero."
"It's been a year since we ran out of money," Alex Peake told me at the end of a long day he said was spent building a level in the latest version of Code Hero.
The Code Hero Kickstarter ended on February 24, 2012, raising $170,000 of a requested $100,000. The campaign, run by Peake and his Primer Labs studio, promised a full game in six months that would teach K-12 students how to write Unity code. With the over-funding, Peake tacked on "multiplayer MMO" features and a documentary about the crowdfunding process.
Behold, the dark side of Kickstarter. And behold, this is why Kickstarter will mainly be used by vets of the gaming industry (Obsidian, Double Fine, Wasteland devs, Star Citizen devs, etc) while thousands of indie devs fight over the scraps.