The second Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of Shadow of the Eternals has officially failed. Precursor Games was asking for $750,000 in crowdfunding for their self-proclaimed “spiritual successor” to Eternal Darkness, but the campaign ran out of time with just $323,950 pledged from 5,932 backers.
After shutting down both of their original crowdfunding efforts for Shadow of the Eternals on June 6th, Precursor Games relaunched the second Kickstarter (this time asking for half of their original $1.5 million goal) on July 25th. The first two days of the rebooted campaign gained over 3,000 backers and over $120,000 in pledges, however, things quickly fell apart after the first week and the campaign basically stalled out at 30% by the halfway point.
Crowdfunding for Shadow of the Eternals has been an uphill battle ever since it was first revealed last May. Initially, many were concerned about Denis Dyack’s involvement with the studio and the project. This issue was addressed with a video response by Dyack, however, at that point many saw Precursor Games as nothing more than a rehash of Silicon Knights.
During the downtime between the two Kickstarter campaigns the studio faced additional image problems when it forced to fire one of the project’s key players, Ken McCullock (a long-time Silicon Knights employee and the main writer on Eternal Darkness), after he was arrested on three charges related to child pornography.
Precursor Games has not yet announced how, or even if, they intend to carry on now that the second Shadow of the Eternals Kickstarter has failed. As soon as they reveal their future plans we will let you know.
[Update] Precursor Games has updated their Kickstarter page with the following statement about the company’s future plans:“After we take a one week break, we will be upgrading the forum software to help improve the experience of our community. The Order forums will remain open for all those who have pledged on the Kickstarter for the next few weeks.”
“It is unfortunate that we were unable to crowd-fund this project at this time, but we have not given up. We intend to pursue other avenues with the ultimate goal of having our games come to fruition. Please feel free to migrate over to our Community Forums at www.precursorgames.com/forums, as we will be keeping our forums open for people to enjoy and discuss everything Precursor Games.”
