UK Crowdfunding

2020 Stats

UK Video Games Projects Kickstarter Revenue. (ICO Partners, Mar 2020)

• UK games projects on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter raised £3.16m in pledges in 2019, a 105% increase on 2018 revenues (£1.54m), reversing the steady decline of the previous four years. Of those projects, £2.9m (91%) was pledged to successful projects. (ICO Partners, Mar 2020)
  • 159 UK video game projects were funded, an 8.5% decline on the previous year and a continuation of the trend since the peak of 379 projects in 2014.
  • Of those 159 games projects in 2019, 42 projects (29%) reached their funding target.
  • Of the 42 funded projects, 24 were for targets less than $10k and a further 12 for targets between $10k-50k. 5 projects were funded between $50k-100k and one project was funded to more than $500k. (ICO Partners, Mar 2020)

2016 Stats

• Globally, $20m was pledged across 330 crowdfunded video games in 2016. (GI.biz & ICO Partners, December 2016)

2015 Stats

• Looking at UK Kickstarter video games projects, between Sept 2011 and Jan 2015, 119 (18% of total) projects were successful in reaching funding target, raising £5.5m. (Nesta Feb 2015)

• 5 projects raised 60% of the total funds. They were (Nesta, Feb 2015):

• • Elite: Dangerous (£1.6m)
  • Project GODUS (£527k)
  • Broken Sword – the Serpent’s Curse Adventure (£479k)
  • Carmageddon: Reincarnation (£402k)
  • War for the Overlord (£211k)

• The top 25% of projects raised 91% of the funds, similar to other creative markets usually dominated by a few blockbusters followed by projects with smaller budgets. While shooters, sports games and adventure arcade games dominate the consumer charts, it’s strategy, adventure, “other” and multigenre that lead on Kickstarter, which hints at platform’s potential for niche games. (Nesta, Feb 2015)