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Code Hero, one year later: Money, lawsuits and poker
"It's been a year since we ran out of money," Alex Peake told me at the end of a long day he said was spent building a level in the latest version of Code Hero. The Code Hero Kickstarter ended on February 24, 2012, raising $170,000 of a requested $100,000. The campaign, run by Peake and his Primer Labs studio, promised a full game in six months that would teach K-12 students how to write Unity code. With the over-funding, Peake tacked on "multiplayer MMO" features and a documentary about the crowdfunding process. Peake promised a new, alpha version of Code Hero would launch during PAX Prime 2012. It didn't. The game didn't come out on any of its following release dates either, and Peake stopped posting updates on the Kickstarter page. Backers, angry and disappointed, took to the comments section, murmuring about refunds and lawsuits. Today, the Code Hero and Primer Labs websites just recovered from weeks of downtime and include links for "beta preview" builds. It's been five months since Peake posted an update on Kickstarter, he's out of money, backers openly discuss the logistics of lawsuits and they have no idea what's going on with the game. Peake says a new, beta version should launch in September, around PAX Prime. Déjà vu.
Code Hero's buggy Kickstarter has backers preparing to draw legal lines in the sand
Code Hero's Kickstarter concluded on February 24, 2012, with 7,459 people pledging $170,954, almost doubling the project's requested amount and pushing that cash straight to developer Alex Peake. Peake described Code Hero as a game to help people, especially kids, learn how to code, and said he would use the money to launch a version of the game on August 31, with a Code Hero webseries and MMO also in the works.Ten months later, on December 12, Code Hero had yet to launch in any form and Peake was absent from the Kickstarter conversation. Backers of the Code Hero Kickstarter fumed in the comments, informally requesting their money back, asking Peake where their rewards were, and questioning if Code Hero was a legitimate project at all. Leading the comment swarm was Dustin Deckard, a backer who had given Code Hero $300, but was now considering legal action against Peake and his studio, Primer Labs.That night we spoke to Deckard and Peake in a Google Hangout. Peake expressed regret over his poor communication and promised he would launch alpha 2, a new version of Code Hero, as an update on its Kickstarter the next day, and that he would provide updates to the Kickstarter on the first of every month.By January 8, 2013, the second alpha had yet to materialize on Kickstarter or the Primer Labs website, and January 1 passed without a whisper from Peake.
Code Hero: The dangers of a Kickstarter success story
"It's totally not abandoned," says Alex Peake, developer of Kickstarter project Code Hero, his face filling the screen of a Google Hangout window. Late on the night of December 12, Peake responds to comments on the Code Hero Kickstarter page, inviting backers and journalists to join him in a video chat if they have any questions, and apologizing for a lack of updates on the project.In the chat, he answers our questions directly. "Code Hero is my reason for living. It's not like –"One of Peake's friends jumps in. "I can second that," he says. "I can second that."Peake continues, "No matter what, I will make Code Hero because that's why I live. That's my purpose in life."Peake finds himself defending his commitment to Code Hero following a string of events that began when he established the Kickstarter late last year – events that, for his backers, represent some of the greatest concerns of Kickstarter funding.
