A
fan-made Gothic remake is already in the works (forums
here and a nice mod demo video
here and right
here is one of the latest updates from about a month ago). OK, it might take another 10 years but a Gothic remake is covered, OK?
As for Kickstarter, PB's CEO Michael Rüve
confirmed just yesterday that there are no plans to hop on the KS bandwagon in the near future. They are bound by contracts and currently working on the next project. Splitting their small team is not an option. They are fully focused on the ongoing project. He actually said literally that with regard to their size (or lack thereof for that matter) taking on another project would be either "ultimate idiocy" or a case of "fraud" even (fraud with respect to their current investor who requires their undivided attention).
As far as the future is concerned, Rüve repeated what he always likes to say in this context (he always says the same when asked about a continuation of the Gothic series for example) which is that he is now 40 years old and that retirement age is a long ways off and that lots of stuff might still happen in between now and then. In other words: Wait and see.
Rüve is also known as a very conservative guy who realizes that he carries quite a lot of weight and responsibility for PB's employees and their families on his shoulders. We can be sure that he won't bet the whole company on the vague prospects of a successful KS project. From further comments in that thread and elsewhere we can also see that Mr. Rüve is fairly sceptical with regard to the long term success of KS. He compared it to the
dotcom bubble which they barely survived (shortly after Gothic 1 PB's back then mother company Phenomedia went bankrupt and PB barely emerged alive). He said he'd hate to relive that kind of experience. Rüve is certainly a "safety first" kind of person so when given a choice between a project funded by a publisher (near zero risk for PB) or a KS project then it's fairly safe to assume that Rüve will opt for the traditional publisher model.