Kickstarter reaches $1 billion in pledges
Kickstarter backers have pledged over $1 billion to projects on the funding platform in the lifetime of the site, which first launched in late April 2009. That monumental chunk of change was pledged towards 135,344 projects, according to Kickstarter's perpetually-updated stats page. Of the money pledged, $859 million was deposited into 57,133 successfully-funded projects.
The games category led the crowdfunding service with $215.82 million pledged, $189.89 million of which was invested into 2,945 successful video game and tabletop game projects (the games category includes both). Games were also fourth-worst among the categories in terms of their success rate, which Kickstarter listed as 35.15 percent.
The big numbers offered by Kickstarter only say so much about crowdfunding as a whole. Our Crowdfund Bookie data found that $23 million was raised on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo in a six-month span last year, and that crowdfunded video game projects earn roughly $25,000 on average. Funding projects is one thing, but launching them is another, as previous research from Evil as a Hobby indicated a delivery rate of 37 percent for video game projects on Kickstarter.
[Image: Kickstarter]
