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Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter hits $2.4M, DLC will be free for backers
Yooka-Laylee, the spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, has continued to plow through every funding goal it sets, and the “buddy duo platformer” has recently broken $2.4 million in contributions with over a month still left in the campaign. As a result, all backers will now receive future DLC for the game free of charge.
Kickstarter continues to be a source of new life for game genres that have previously been considered dead by the rest of the video game industry. Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen has become the posterchild of successfully crowdfunded niche market games, having raised over $80 million since its initial Kickstarter campaign in 2012.
Crowdfunding has also given game development veterans the opportunity to create the games they want without the oversight of a publisher. For example, PlayTonic Games, the studio behind Yooka-Laylee, is made up of ex-Rare devs who left the company after it had been purchased by Microsoft Corp. Another example is the team behind Underworld Ascendant, which is made up of many of the same developers who worked on Ultima Underworld.
“There’s a lot of love out there for this genre and developers like us”
Gamers have been flocking to crowdfunding campaigns to support new projects from the same people who created some of their favorite games, and Yooka-Laylee’s incredible success is just another example of this phenomenon.
“It’s been incredible,” PlayTonic Managing Director and Creative Lead Gavin Price said in a recent interview with Jimquisition. “Not just for our game, but because it shows there’s a lot of love out there for this genre and developers like us. We’re not business men by choice, we’re just a team of developers who want to make great games ‘our way’, because we believe we can achieve an even greater quality working this way. The Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter allows us to do that and at the same time reach all fans of this genre across multiple platforms – and now we’re extra-determined to deliver a great game.”
Price added that Yooka-Laylee is only the first project for PlayTonic, and the team is looking forward to working together on other games.
Price said: “I have dreams of how Playtonic will shape up over the next few years and having amazing, passionate fans behind us already – the sort of following you don’t expect until a company’s been around for years – is genuinely a dream come true.”
Image credit: Playtonic Games
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