Unknown Worlds, developers of Natural Selection 2, are returning to the plump crowd-funding cash-teat that so nourished them during the game’s initial development. The first person tactical shooty alien ichor sim has been out for almost a year and has received no fewer than 24 updates in its short lifetime. But all of this work maintaining and growing Natural Selection 2 is costing the developer money, money that they say they could’ve raised by charging for those updates. But they chose not to! So, you know, maybe it’s time to show them how grateful you are for that by paying them now.
They only want $550,000.
The campaign to raise funds to continue the game’s development and feed the the employees has already raised over $32,000. In return for supporting the game, depending on how much you contribute, you’ll receive different rewards, from badges and exclusive skins and taunts up to a trip to the studio for din-dins with the devs and the opportunity, for $75,000, to be Unknown Worlds’ game director for a week. All stuff that doesn’t tinker with the game’s balance or give paying customers an advantage over players who opt out of funding Natural Selection 2 for a second time.
As an alternative to microtransactions and paid for DLC, it’s an interesting approach to funding a game’s on-going development. But can crowd-funding really be a long-term solution in this case? When this half a million dollars dries up, will Unknown Worlds come cap in hand to their players for a third time, or will they turn to other ways of generating cash? Either way, players don’t seem to mind. The developer is planning to add more stock of certain tiers due to high demand.