Valve: Let fans fund games development!

The Gabe said:
One of the areas that I am super interested in right now is how we can do financing from the community. So right now, what typically happens is you have this budget - it needs to be huge, it has to be $10m - $30m, and it has to be all available at the beginning of the project. There's a huge amount of risk associated with those dollars and decisions have to be incredibly conservative.

What I think would be much better would be if the community could finance the games. In other words, ‘Hey, I really like this idea you have. I'll be an early investor in that and, as a result, at a later point I may make a return on that product, but I'll also get a copy of that game.'

So move financing from something that occurs between a publisher and a developer… Instead have it be something where funding is coming out of community for games and game concepts they really like.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5318368/valve-let-fans-fund-games-development

Now that doesn't sound half-bad. It's super contradictory to how games are funded today, but especially for smaller projects or prototypes, this could be great idea.

Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting that could work for some games. Imagine investing $50 in a game that sells a lot and you get $300 back and a free copy of the game.

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Aaron's Stuff