Gridiron Thunder Ouya Kickstarter concludes with $171k, many questions
Gridiron Thunder's Kickstarter project ended over the weekend, earning $171,009 in its 30-day campaign.
Gridiron Thunder was under suspicion when it first met its funding goal in late August, thanks to curious funding spikes witnessed by backers. To reach its goal, it received more than $10,000 apiece from a limited number of funders, as revealed by Kicktraq. It was one of two games that reached its goal as part of Ouya's Free the Games Fund, a program that rewards successful Kickstarter project creators by matching the crowdfunding results in exchange for six months of Ouya exclusivity.
The game had just 183 total backers, making for a rate of $934.48 per person. In recent months, the closest any project has come to that average is Yargis, which had an average of $275.05 per backer thanks to a lone $5,000 pledge. The results of 84 projects in the past three months revealed a mean average of $50.59 pledged per person, making Gridiron Thunder a statistical anomaly.
The other Ouya game in question, Elementary, My Dear Holmes, was suspended by Kickstarter on Friday after the developer addressed concerns to both Kickstarter and Amazon surrounding "suspicious accounts" that backed the project. The game's creator, Sam Chandola, said the developer "wanted to get on top of this and did not want anything to do with any of what was happening as it was an extremely negative campaign for us." Kickstarter declined to comment on the project's suspension.
