With less than a week to go in its fundraising campaign, Ashes of Creation has raised over $2.5 million and become the most successful Kickstarted MMORPG of all time. This milestone also means that another stretch goal has been crossed, prompting the development of a “beast-like” Underrealm race to go with those boring humans, Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves.
One aspect of the campaign that the studio is being quiet about concerns its slightly controversial referral program. PC Gamer noted that the system originally factored in pledges and reached out to Kickstarter to see if this was allowed. Kickstarter examined the situation and determined that Ashes of Creation was in the wrong and had to separate referrals from crowdfunding.
“Last year we began allowing financial incentives for referrals. But we do not allow revenue or profit sharing, which this program essentially offers through its payouts over time,” Kickstarter said.
Since then, Ashes of Creation made the necessary changes to the campaign and has revised its referral program information on its website according to PC Gamer. The game is also no longer pushing YouTubers to cover the MMO with possibilities of how much money they could make. [Intrepid has disputed part of the PC Gamer piece; see below for details.]
The team also posted a new video showing off two of the types of freeholds possible in the game. Freeholds are player housing plots that can be placed in the open world and customized as desired.
Sharif says he’s requested a retraction from PC Gamer, but as I type this, PC Gamer has not granted that request for reasons unknown to us. Sharif says that “pledges from Kickstarter will have the referral reward associated with it, that reflects it’s policy of a ‘financial incentive for referrals’ and remains in accordance with their policies and procedures at Kickstarter.”
We’ll update when we know more.
