Indie dev left devastated after troll ruins its Kickstarter
Mystery €7000 pledge turned out to be fraudulent right at the death.
An indie developer was left devastated after a troll ruined its Kickstarter - right at the death.
The people behind Dutch developer 2Awesome Studio were celebrating after they received a €7000 pledge to the Kickstarter for comic book-styled shoot-'em-up Dimension Drive just hours before its was due to end.
The pledge pushed the Kicktarter just shy of its €30,000 target, causing the studio to tweet its thanks to their mysterious saviour, known only as "Jonathan".
It then only took another €200 for Dimension Drive to be funded. The money came in and the party started - live on Twitch.
But jubilation quickly turned to devastation when late last night Kickstarter told the developers the €7000 pledge was fraudulent, the money had been pulled and Dimension Drive went from dramatic Kickstarter success to dramatic Kickstarter failure in the blink of an eye.
As you would expect, the developers were heartbroken. The entire episode was streamed live on Twitch (there's a VOD below).
Kickstarter has since banned the user's account, but there isn't much more to be done. As it stands, the Kickstarter for Dimension Drive has failed, with €23,481 pledged of its €30,000 goal from 490 backers.
Some have called on Kickstarter to grant the developer an extension - and a number of high profile developers have already promised to pledge money if this is done.
2Awesome Studio received an outpouring of support on social media, and it left matters in the early hours of this morning with a positive tweet.