Joanna Mueller writes: "Developer, Josh Parnell, received $187,865 to fund his infinite algorithm space exploration game, but it's over three years later and backers are still waiting to see results.
Limit Theory had an extremely positive reception back in 2012, when it far exceeded it's Kickstarter goal of $50,000. The game engine was being built from scratch with a projected release in the, at the time, far off future of early 2014. As with most extraordinarily (overly) ambitious projects being run by single person development teams, this one seemed destined to fall off the rails."
Limit Theory is a procedurally-generated space exploration game with a vast universe ready to be explored, exploited, and conquered.
Another Kickstarter project bites the dust. Bad companies like this make it that much harder for legitimate offerings to get the proper funding.
I don't think this is one of those cases of a bad company doing bad things. The developer worked their backside off trying to make a good game. Communication was good, and progress (by a 1 man team) was being made. But health comes first, especially mental health - and unfortunately this guy couldn't continue.
Yes, there are some utter shit KS projects. I would never recommend backing any video game KS as it is impossible to sift through what is actually 'legitimate'.
Even those KS that look legitimate can go wrong. Look at Stonehearth. A great dev, making good progress and for years looked like the real deal. They get bought by Riot Games and the next thing they are pushing a sloppy, buggy, unfinished V1.0 lacking many of the promised features out the door and waving goodbye. And they have the balls to still sell it on Steam, AND take it out of early access.
Very few, if any backers are criticising this dev for his efforts on Limit Theory. He is now cleaning up the code so he can release it as open source. And a few community members are already talking about carrying on his work.
So all I have to do to get away with taking over $800K of investment money with nothing in return is to get a shrink to declare me loopy? Damn, what a sweet deal.
More seriously, this is why Kickstarter is too risky. There aren't enough safeguards in place, either for investors or for the completion of projects. (E.g., see "completion bond".) Better than Vegas bets, but not by much.
Then he should have not taken on a project he couldn't complete. He has my sympathy but if people lost money on this, that's just wrong.
Agree some what, if the guys genuine then I hope he gets better, mental health is increasing in today's world we live in.
Having said that, it does leave a loop hole for the scammers saying they have mental health problems. It wouldn't be too difficult for someone who has experience in game development to take aload of cash, engage with updates to the kickstarter backers for a a couple of yrs showing updates on the project to then cancel saying mental health.
I don't want to come across as mean but that's the world we live in unfortunatly.
Josh Griffiths writes: "It's never a good sign when the most recent update on a Kickstarter page is titled something along the lines of "Still Alive!" but dated nearly a year ago. Such is the case for the space exploration game Limit Theory, an ambitious multi-genre hybrid that has received over $180,000 of backer support."
Josh Parnell "I'm both exceptionally pleased and...extraordinarily nervous to finally be returning to you after what must seem like ages to you all. For me, it seems more like a rather long, unpleasant dream. No doubt many, if not most of you, are pretty upset with my disappearance by now. Although I can't possibly take back or even completely explain away the 'dark months,' I really hope that shedding some light on it will help you all to understand why I've acted the way I have."
How do people take so much money from others and just leave them in the dark? Shady as he'll.
This is why I only back games that has a team of devs that have a history in the industry.
It's always a risk to invest. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.