Kickstarter Games - The End of Scarlet Republics

@vanedor has spotted that the Scarlet Republics project had ended, unfortunately failing for multiple reasons detailed in their last update.

Scarlet Republics was a renaissance-inspired tactical RPG, which had a very successful campaign. It reached its goal on October 1st, 2020, with 46523 EUR pledged of an initial 10000 EUR goal.

The End of Scarlet Republics

We have failed…

Now it is time to talk about it.

We have given it our best, tried everything to push through our obstacles and challenges. Despite our best efforts, we have run out of energy and money to sustain Audacity Interactive and the development of Scarlet Republics.

We faced many challenges along the way, and those challenges wore us down slowly. We have to look reality in the eye: we have run out of steam. Also, it has taken a toll on our health, with several members having symptoms of stress and experiencing burnout.

Here is what happened on the inside.

[…]

Demo and Other Assets

We will make the latest playable demo of Scarlet Republics available to download. We will also look into potentially releasing other content, such as the game code, the writing, audio and visual assets. If it's feasible with proprietary third-party licenses, hosting, and the like.

Lessons Learnt

Here are some of the lessons we take away from this experience.

1. Creating and running your first startup business is HARD. It is really hard. There are so many things you don't know, and we made so many mistakes.
2. We started out way too big, we would have been much better off with a smaller scope of the game.
3. We pushed forward with a strong, and sometimes blind, optimism. It is important to not let that optimism drive you past a sustainable state of operation. You can't force things.

[…]

Thanks vanedor!

More information.

I can sympathise, although I also feel bad for all the people who pledged money and will never see anything for it. Really a situation with no winners, pretty sad to see.

Good luck to them and hopefully all those who pledged learned a lesson too. Sometimes you have to know what to support, not only to save some money for yourself, but also save overly ambitious developers that can't gauge where their ceiling is from themselves.

How sad!
The trailer/short gameplay teaser they released last May showed a game with good potential.

Ahhh yes indeed, the perils of the whole kick starting concept. It's a shame when it ends like this. -xxx. Sometimes the lessons of Icarus come to mind.

At least they were brave enough to confront their backers. I always respect this more than when they just disappear, which I've had a few times.
I wouldn't support an unproven team anymore unless they are making something I really, really wanted to play and its a kind of game that wouldn't be made otherwise. In that case I think the risk is worth the potential loss of money, and I don't feel too bad about it.

The main problem is developers don't ask for the actual amount of money they need anymore. Instead of asking for $500,000 they only ask for $25,000 to get funded.

The second problem is backers who see a high amount & those who wont back a game anymore. I hate to say but crowd-funding for PC games is basically dead now.

It's all publishers, investors, and Early Access now.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
The main problem is developers don't ask for the actual amount of money they need anymore. Instead of asking for $500,000 they only ask for $25,000 to get funded.

The second problem is backers who see a high amount & those who wont back a game anymore. I hate to say but crowd-funding for PC games is basically dead now.

It's all publishers, investors, and Early Access now.

Yeah, I think Early Access has taken over from kickstarter. To be honest this makes some sense to me.

A lot ks pitches were high level ideas with nothing to show for it. I only backed a few of those and I've been lucky that almost all of them became fun games, but I have been burnt a few times including by the Gothic musician who did a ks for an album.

At least in early access you have something tangible already. It may never be finished, but if you want, some of these early access games can provide more fun than some completed games even.

I played over 30 hours of baldur's gate 3 and at least the same on colony ship.

Very happy with those.

Yeah, I think many Kickstarters, if they were to be honest, would say in the Risks section, "The funding you're providing is only a fraction of what we really need, and if we can't find another source of cash later, the project is screwed."

Lots of work went into this and a good amount of assets were generated. What will happen with all that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij3WiG4Ycow

Originally Posted by mercy
Lots of work went into this and a good amount of assets were generated. What will happen with all that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij3WiG4Ycow

The answer is in their post, or the summary above…

I don't really mind the money I lost for this game. It's part of the risk when you decide to kickstart. Still, I'm pretty sad of the demise of this game. I thought it had a lot of potential and the writing seemed pretty good. I enjoyed the short story they gave us a couple of months ago.

I'd like to see something survive this wreckage, a phoenix rising out of the remains of this project would be a gift to us all, as it looks like quite a bit of work went into this project before the lights went down.