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Time for the weekly look into what’s happening in the world of Kickstarter gaming campaigns.
First as always, an update on previously covered campaigns and we have a fair mix of both good and bad news this week. Starting with the bad, we don’t have any campaigns that have concluded without having met target, but we do have a number of them running out of time with a lot of funding to make up. These are Soul’s Light and INTERSTELLAR ROGUE, both with a decent amount to make up, 4 days and 9 days to do it in respectively. Trouble For Hire is also running out of time, but is a lot closer to goal so could end up reaching its target in the last few days. It has another 7, so we’ll see.
On the other side of the story, a few campaigns have finished a success. These are OtterBash! and Q-YO BLASTER, with another campaign, Forsaken Castle, due to wrap up in less than 2 days having more than doubled its goal. Two other campaigns have reached their targets too, although they still have time to run. These are two from last week, Kynseed and spaceBOUND.
First up we have a game set in the near future, in the midst of a new Ice Age.
You play as Edward Jones, a man sentenced to life for the murder of his wife. The game is a first-person viewpoint game, in which you as Edward need to learn to acclimatize and survive the harsh wintery landscape you have been sent to as part of your punishment. You have been sent as part of the government’s ongoing mission to determine the reasons behind the climate change and the increase in radioactivity in the area.
BLANK has a €5,000 goal of which it has made €800 so far. It has a further 16 days to run.
Abstract Arena is set in an abstract-themed artstyle world, as the name suggests. The game is described as “a top-down action-shooter game” in which there up to six different ‘shape’ ships can fight at once. Each different ‘shape’ has abilities that are unique to it as well as those abilities that they all share. There are many different features listed on the campaign page including 12 different gadget to use, free-for-all and team based matches, LAN play or local split-screen multiplayer and full support for x360-like controllers.
Abstract Arena has made €70.88 of its €300 goal and has 18 more days to run.
Next up, we have a re-launch of a campaign I previously covered just under two months back.
Fake News! is the rebranded Lizard People game, and the concept is much the same. This is a card game for 3-7 people in which you have to use your hand of cards to form the best fake news headline you can and impress the player who is the ‘editor’ at that time. The one that impresses most gets the point and ‘trends’ on social media. The player that reaches 5 trending headlines first wins!
Fake News has 18 more days to run and has made $2,102 of its $15,000 goal.
Lost Cities is a game by Reiner Knizia, and will be coming to Windows, Linux and Mac with a success here. The game is about explorers on expeditions to discover lost cities and other related finds. You place bets on expeditions and how successful they will be. After three rounds of adventuring, the player who has had the most success will win. You will be able to play against the AI or actual players, with gameplay continuing even if your opponent is currently offline.
Lost Cities has a goal of $3,000 of which it has made $339, with a further 16 days to go.
Right now there’s a lawsuit ongoing over two developers who have been making unauthorised mobile versions of Dota, something Valve is obviously not a fan of. Now the defendants are seeking to prove that Valve doesn’t own the rights to Dota at all, hinging their argument on a forum post over 10 years old.
The forum post is from 2004 and is from one of the original creators of Dota, which could prove that far from Valve owning the rights Dota is actually open source and has been all along. This story all began back when Blizzard and Valve launched the lawsuit in question against the two defendant developers, Lilith Games and uCool, publishers of two very popular Chinese mobiles games – Dota Legends and Heroes Charge. Both use Dota characters, hence the problems Valve has with them. It’s uCool who has brought up the question of who owns the rights to Dota, and if they’re right then Valve doesn’t actually own the trademark to the original Dota and thus would be unable to bring this claim against uCool.
Already another argument that uCool brought about Dota being a collective work has been shot down, but judge Charles Breyer is investigating whether the purchase of the Dota name to Valve by creators Icefrog and eul could infringe upon the original EULA for Warcraft 3 from which Dota draws its roots as a mod. The Warcraft 3 EULA forbids the distrubution of mods fgor “commerical purposes” and the sale of Dota to Valve has been said by Breyer to be “as commercial as uses go.”
Further, the aforementioned forum post from 2004 shows that eul seemingly abandoned his ownership of Dota stating that “whoever wishes to release a version of Dota may without my consent” although he does also “ask for a nod in the credits to your map,” so whether he did give up ownership or not is up for debate because of that. It will be up to the jury to decide whether any perceived rights abandonment will apply for everyone (including companies like uCool) or if it was just for “the motley group of modders making up an informal Dota online community.”
This will all be sorted out in a court case to determine whether uCool and Lilith Games are indeed in violation of a trademark that Valve is the owner of. If the judge finds in their favour, expect to see more Dota clones or Valve seeking to close the loophole as soon as they can. If the judge finds in favour of Valve, expect the two defendants to be paying a hefty sum for their trouble.
