Yesterday, Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire was announced. Today, it has been fully funded, reaching its $1.1 million goal on Fig in less than a day—22 hours and 57 minutes, to be precise. To mark the moment, Obsidian has released a new teaser to remind people that while it's great that the funding goal was reached so quickly, sometimes dreams don't work out quite so well.
"We have the best fans in the world," Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhard said in a statement. "Our fans were responsible for the original game’s critical and financial success, and we are looking forward to doing it all over again with them for the sequel."
The funding total at this moment stands at a little shy of $1.14 million, nearly half of which—$526,000—comes from investments rather than reward backers. That struck me as kind of odd at first, as I had assumed (without putting much thought into it, I admit) that conventional backers would be the primary source of crowdfunding for videogames. But in fact it appears to be the norm: Wasteland 3, Consortium: The Tower, Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch, and even smaller projects like Trackless and Make Sail, all drew in more investment funding than reward pledges. (Psychonauts 2, for some reason, is the exception, but even it's almost a flat 50-50.)
Not that it really matters from the perspective of someone who just wants to play the game, although it does open the door to some potentially interesting conversations about how these projects would have fared on other platforms, like Kickstarter. Apocalypse Now, for instance, is a fairly high-profile project that's garnered plenty of press attention, and yet its Kickstarter is struggling by comparison, having pulled in just $105,000 on a $900,000 goal over three days. But the important thing is, Pillars 2 happening, and there's plenty of time for stretch goals: The Fig campaign runs until February 24.
