Exactly a month ago, Bulgarian startup studio Beast Burst Entertainment began a $200,000 Kickstarter for its MMORPG Scars of Honor, and as of this morning, that Kickstarter has ended unsuccessfully, with under 20% of its ask pledged and just 261 would-be backers.
As we noted back in February, Scars of Honor is an unapologetic knock-off of World of Warcraft, with the key exceptions being its planned free-to-play business model and crossplatforminess. Its initial marketing blast made heavy use of popular YouTubers, but the Discord and KS themselves hasn’t had much recent dev interaction or commentary on the crowdfunding campaign as it’s progressed, even as the the team has talked up its official playtest on social media. We popped into the game’s Discord this morning, only to find players discussing the studio’s diminished comms themselves. One called the situation “a disaster.”
Of course, the failed Kickstarter doesn’t necessarily mean the studio will throw in the towel on development of this “MMORPG celebrating the old ways”; Beast Burst has already received several million dollars in outside investment, and it has an extensive backer package shop embedded on its website where gamers can buy everything from test access to mounts. Apparently, the ongoing testing is costs money as well, as an active sub is required to play outside of the formal test windows. Confirming that development will continue, the team did post a missive on Kickstarter today as the campaign ended.
“We sincerely thank you for your continuous support. You are the driving force behind our journey; without you, we wouldn’t have come this far. As our Kickstarter journey has come to an end, we know that many of you will have questions, so we will answer some of them now. The whole Kickstarter experience was indeed a remarkable one, and we learned a lot gaining feedback that will undoubtedly benefit our project. And now the question of the day – What happens from now on? Although the Kickstarter campaign wasn’t successful, we are continuing to develop Scars of Honor at full speed. Every week new experts are joining our team of 72 people – most of them members of important departments with amazing backgrounds in the industry. Furthermore, our development pipeline was completely reorganized which will help us develop things faster and more efficiently. So as you can see we actually had success, not financially, but with the other important thing for a project like ours.”
