Obsidian CEO claims publishers attempting to exploit Kickstarter

The whole idea of Kickstarter is for developers to make games without publisher investment (and complete control, delays, and DRM), but apparently some publishers didn’t get that memo. According to Obsidian boss Feargus Urquhart, “some publishers” have attempted to persuade him to sign over his studio’s Project Eternity game, basically defeating the whole point of Kickstarter.

“We were actually contacted by some publishers over the last few months that wanted to use us to do a Kickstarter,” he said in a Q&A with fans on the game’s Kickstarter page. “I said to them ‘So, you want us to do a Kickstarter for you, using our name, we then get the Kickstarter money to make the game, you then publish the game, but we then don’t get to keep the brand we make and we only get a portion of the profits’.

“They said, ‘Yes’.”

He’s not naming any names, but you know everybody’s going to assume it’s EA anyway, and in two weeks, people on YouTube and Reddit will be talking about how EA tried to buy Kickstarter and force backers to use online passes. Or something like that.