Shroud of the Avatar’s Summer Telethon concluded last night, having raised from players $115,000 and unlocking multiple stretch goal rewards for players, including balloons and special pipe smoke shapes.
Perhaps the most interesting bit of news to emerge from the hoopla is that Portalarium is apparently using the SeedInvest platform to solicit investors in a new $2M equity crowdfunding campaign, akin to the one Crowfall studio ArtCraft carried out late last year.
It’s sent Reddit and the official forums into a tizzy as players and detractors question the game’s $25M valuation, its plans to fully launch in 2017, the story wipe apparently coming, and some of the features touted in the investment briefing that aren’t in the game, like trade routes, a fully player-driven economy, town capture, and console/mobile functionality. The investor pitch notes that the game has more than 64K “volunteer testers” (copies sold?) and over 150,000 “player registrations,” with a cash position of just over half a million dollars and a monthly drain of $230,000 in operational costs.
We have reached out to Portalarium for clarification this morning and will report back when we have better information, but be aware that it’ll be hard to get financial quotes out of them while the equity investment campaign is live.
