TLDR I do not know what is personally going on at Harebrained, but given the terms it is safe to assume that this had significantly less to do with "Oh, an easy 7.5 million, YEP!" and more to do with "Business is war, and we cannot afford to fight alone"
Additionally, I really hate how people get after companies like this, not understanding just how hard it really is.
[i]Too Long to Read/i]lmgava: For 7.5M looks like a really dumb move to me, considering all the means of financing a developer already known can have access to nowadays. Also considering now you can basically sell a game twice, once to the backers and once again to the general public.
Today it's a paradise compared to the 80s-90s, as long as you produce good stuff you are free, making money, and having a job you like.
You don't have much security, but if that's what you want probably it's not the right line of work.
Kickstarter, Fig, all of those so called "Backer" gimmicks are just that, Gimmicks.
Backers are too stupid to realize they're "Investors" and sometimes investments do not work out. (In other words, backers complain to high hell about their investment not being what said backer wanted it to be... and act like the pittance of money they supply means something.)
In many cases, "Online Backer Programs" are REALLY just ways of securing much larger investments from sources that see the amount of people willing to back a project as an indication of its profitability. Most projects do not operate purely on backer finances and those that try to often fail with backers claiming nonsense like "Since you did not deliver, I will withdraw my investment" (In explanation, if you withdraw an investment after you've made it, all you've done is bankrupt a developer. The money has already been spent, where do you think it goes, into magical puppy land? Yet read over and over how people see it as their right. Investment carries risk, if you are not willing to accept that risk you should not invest in anything.)
Compared to the 80s-90s where people were making games out of their Garage... today is absolute hell. You need to have lots of money to waste on graphics because gameplay does not matter nearly as much as how cool the game looks. Remember that your target audience is illiterate, if you do not have voice acting for every line of text, no one will care about story.... and better to shorten it down to 140 characters or less.
Before, people would buy your game at your asking price.... now they wait until the summer sale because they know that the game's cost will go down... so this means you either have to participate in the sales and increase your asking price or accept losses from decreasing your asking price... confusing!
Before, people did not need to have all this interaction with developers, but now without it they'll start hammering the developers to hell and claiming the devs took our money and ran.
Let alone how PC Gamer no longer offers ways for small companies to get big business... now you "need" to be on a popular distribution platform. You cannot be a sole distributor because very few people will buy direct anymore. That means more paperwork for you, more headache, and no one to care about your financial problems.
In the real world, no one can keep an honest business going based on internet dollars. I hear far too often how people think business works like this
1. Make something really good
2. ????
3. Profit
Popularity is not inherently profitable... selling user data? That's profitable... but simply being popular doesn't turn into money. These days, you have people pirating $5 games, not because they cannot afford it, but because somehow popularity is supposed to translate into "developers are all rich".
You cannot run a business based on popularity alone, not when we live in the age of entitlement and "I shouldn't have to pay for this." Or even "$50!!! I like it, and am filthy rich because I have the latest smartphone, but I am not paying $50 for that!"
