Obsidian Accuses Publishers Of Trying To Exploit Kickstarter

<p><a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;kickstarter&period;com&sol;projects&sol;obsidian&sol;project-eternity" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank">Obsidian have a Kickstarter project going on<&sol;a> for a game entitled <em>Project Eternity<&sol;em>&period; Said project reached its required &dollar;1&period;1 million funding target in 24 hours and is breaking through the stretch goals like nobody&&num;8217&semi;s business&period; As such&comma; Obsidian&&num;8217&semi;s CEO&comma; Feargus Urqhart went online last night to answer some questions and&comma; in the process&comma; revealed something rather a bit sinister about the whole &&num;8220&semi;major developers asking for Kickstarter money&&num;8221&semi; business&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><em>Eternity<&sol;em> backer Steven Cameron asked the question&comma; &&num;8220&semi;With the popularity of <em>Project Eternity<&sol;em>&comma; <em>Wasteland 2<&sol;em>&comma; Double-Fine&comma; etc&period;&comma; do you think Publishers might look at making games like these or are they too far gone&quest;&&num;8221&semi; What Feargus put as a response is very interesting indeed&period; Here it is&comma; unedited and direct from the Kickstarter comments page&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<blockquote><p>We were actually contacted by some publishers over the last few months that wanted to use us to do a Kickstarter&period; I said to them &&num;8220&semi;So&comma; you want us to do a Kickstarter for&comma; using our name&comma; we then get the Kickstarter money to make the game&comma; you then publish the game&comma; but we then don&&num;8217&semi;t get to keep the brand we make and we only get a portion of the profits&&num;8221&semi; They said&comma; &&num;8220&semi;Yes&&num;8221&semi;&period;<&sol;p><&sol;blockquote>&NewLine;<p>Several fans then immediately demanded further information &lpar;quite rightly so&comma; in my opinion&rpar;&comma; and Feargus was was all too happy to help clarify in a series of posts&period; Again&comma; these quotes are delivered straight from the source and unedited&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<blockquote><p>The best way I can answer it is that in actuality&comma; almost everyone I know at publisher is a great person&period; Heck&comma; I was at a publisher for almost 12 years&period; The challenge for the publishers is that they have a bunch of different departments that all have different goals and as a whole they have a huge overhead &lpar;hundreds &sol; thousands of people and office space&rpar; that they have to pay for every day&period; So&comma; that creates infighting and the success of one group comes at the expense of another&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&nbsp&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>For a developer&comma; it means you are not only working to make a game &&num;8211&semi; which is hard&period; But&comma; you have to be able to work through all of the politics of your publisher&period; I know somethings have been said publicly by us about Bethesda&comma; however they are not political&period; They are still human&comma; but they work very hard to make games the focus and not the rest of the BS&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&nbsp&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>I think they were trying&comma; honestly&comma; to be able to do something with us and they felt that was the easiest way to do it&period; They would then not need to go get budget approved and deal with the challenge of that&period; What I don&&num;8217&semi;t think they did was to think about our side of it and what they were really asking&period;<&sol;p><&sol;blockquote>&NewLine;<p>The very first quote was then picked up by a NeoGAF user and I&&num;8217&semi;m sure it&&num;8217&semi;s only a matter of time before it circulates the web&period; But&comma; still&&num;8230&semi; Holy sh&ast;t&excl; That&&num;8217&semi;s both unbelievably greedy &lpar;for trying it&rpar; and ridiculously stupid &lpar;for thinking that the big developers would accept such a deal&rpar; of the unnamed publishers&period; Also&comma; kudos to Obsidian for actually speaking out about it&period; That takes balls&period; We need more developers willing to speak out against such things&comma; nowadays&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>You can still help fund <em>Project Eternity<&sol;em>&period; Just follow <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;kickstarter&period;com&sol;projects&sol;obsidian&sol;project-eternity" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank">this here link&period;<&sol;a><&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Via&colon; <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;kickstarter&period;com&sol;projects&sol;obsidian&sol;project-eternity&sol;comments&quest;page&equals;5" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank">Project Eternity&&num;8217&semi;s Kickstarter Comments Page<&sol;a>&comma; <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;neogaf&period;com&sol;forum&sol;showthread&period;php&quest;t&equals;492070" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank">NeoGAF<&sol;a>&comma; <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;destructoid&period;com&sol;publishers-accused-of-trying-to-exploit-kickstarter-235292&period;phtml&quest;utm&lowbar;source&equals;feedburner&amp&semi;utm&lowbar;medium&equals;feed&amp&semi;utm&lowbar;campaign&equals;Feed&percnt;3A&plus;Destructoid&plus;&percnt;28Destructoid&percnt;29" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank">Destructoid<&sol;a><&sol;p>&NewLine;