DoubleFine seem to have attracted a bit of a mess with Psychonauts 2 funding

Quoting: neffoLots of people in here think that they can interpret the law better than Fig can.

Investments always carry a degree of risk, and you should always get advice from someone who knows what they are talking about before putting your hard earned money near anything. Some guy on youtube is not that person. This guy has an agenda, but it likely has nothing to do with preventing people from losing money.

I just want to single out this comment because this goes back to exactly why I have a problem with Fig.

Fig has always looked like a nice way to sucker gullible gamers into funding an elaborate scheme to prop up....errrr....Fig. Fig is out to sucker the gaming community, not sucker securities investors. Securities investors wouldn't be that gullible. I would say this particular Youtuber is preventing people from losing money because the so called "Fig investors" aren't going to make a cent and may or many not get a game out of this. So the essential legal speak about the "known risks" is kind of overboard and clouds the situation a bit. Why are gamers taking on risks? I thought gamers just buy (hopefully) and play (hopefully) games. I didn't realize there was a whole level of unnecessary risk we needed to take to get a game (we probably didn't ask for) to be made. Am I doing this right?

When I first looked at Fig around 3 months ago, wow, my mind was blown on why someone would bother doing this because the "you get ownership of the game" bit was complete non-sense at face value. After watching the video and partially researching some of the securities documents (I'll need to finish reading more tonight), I can safely form the opinion that this is all exactly what I thought 3 months ago: a scheme to trick gullible gamers into funding projects that weren't probably going to buy traditionally. Wow.

I don't know what else to think or say about all of this. I'm just shocked some of you are condoning this. It's the 21st century, yet we've found a way to funnel millions of dollars to a company who could secure loans and/or venture capital to possibly get their game made. A computer game. Do yourselves a favor and go buy an indie game from a small developer instead. At full price.


Last edited by Storminator16 on 4 January 2016 at 1:04 pm UTC

I noticed that the link to the investment documents was removed, though it seems like it is still up though...
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xp4sd5sxmwhbfed/AADzoyPR6Njt76D29uu2ek2Ua?dl=0

Yeah, I've gotten screwed over by DoubleFine before, and stopped backing them, they've since screwed over other people.
As much as I think Psychonauts was a pretty good game (thanks Humble Bundle), it won't make me consider trusting them again.

That said, there are some crowdfunding projects which are good, and it's mainly due to the integrity of the company you're dealing with. The more transparent the company, the more likely they'll make good on their promises. I've found Cloud Imperium Games (the makers of Star Citizen) to be very open, transparent, and genuinely wanting to go above and beyond to fulfill their pledge to their backers and make a great game they want to play themselves. I've also backed a few other projects which have either turned out well or are going well and I wish them all the best, including a couple of hardware projects and Guns of Icarus Online. You have to be careful when backing projects, use your discernment about the people pitching and their integrity, ability and transparency, and accept the risk that the project could deliver or bust with around 50/50 chance. (My personal backed success rate is a bit higher than 50%, though it's probably around there for games).