Coral Island was a success with fans and critics when it launched in 2023 and is developed by Stairway Games and published by Humble Games. The game was meant to be coming to the Nintendo Switch, but this now seems in doubt due to the recent restructuring at Humble Games, which has seem a number of staff made redundant. This move has also affected the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of Coral Island as the Stairway Games says they are unable to push out current and future updates to the console versions of the game. Backers for Coral Island have obviously yet to receive a Switch version, and in a new message posted to X, Stairway Games says that the only thing they can do for Switch backers is offer them a Steam Key for Coral Island, which they admit isn’t ideal. You can read the full message below.
Just a thought, but how about their money back?
That’s the problem with backing usually. The money is used for developing the game, not for purchasing the game in a traditional manner. The money is already gone when things flops.
That’s the one BIG thing that annoyed me with crowdfunding (especially when big companies like Platinum Games do it): the fact that investing money into something is a risk. Risk “costs” in the sense that you don’t know if you’re getting what you paid for. That’s why risk analysis and similar activities cost money. That’s also why high-risk ventures and stocks aren’t considered a good option by many—because you don’t know what you’ll get. Also, big companies like PG could take that risk on their own bill because they have the money.
Crowdfunding just shifts those costs and risks to the end user, who might end up with nothing in the end. The business doesn’t have any creditors or board members to answer to when their nonexistent proper risk analysis wasn’t in the picture to begin with. Just an “Oops, we’re sorry, bye.”
I don’t know this specific situation well enough to have an opinion on what’s going on here, but that’s my general gripe about crowdfunding.
Yeah that makes sense. It just annoys me because humble games is own by IGN and they’re own by a billion dollar company (Ziff Davis) I completely forgot publishers like PG and Deep Silver did this.
What happened with my comment :(?
Not sure. This is the only reply I’ve gotten from you 🤷