Information on Kickstarter Rewards for Patreon Supporters

First things first! To close out our Kickstarter campaign, Paul, Fred, and Dan will be hosting a special send-off stream on Twitch at 4pm PT. We know time zones are hard, but we hope you can join us as we express our heartfelt appreciation for being along with us on this 30+ year journey. Bring your enthusiasm and snacks to share with everyone.

Now, let us get down to business. In case you have never heard it before: running a Kickstarter campaign is exhausting! We wanted to carve out a moment to thank everyone who’s part of our Patreon for helping us come so far even before we launched our Kickstarter and answer questions some of you have had about how we’ll be handling digital rewards for Patreon supporters after the Kickstarter closes. Finally, we wanted to speak to our future plans for our Patreon.

How will I receive digital rewards?

We addressed our intent in a previous post, but the short version is: if you’ve supported us here on Patreon, we’ll convert whatever funds you’ve contributed into an equivalent digital reward tier on Kickstarter. We’ve partnered with BackerKit to help us with post-campaign fulfillment, which means that 2 to 3 weeks after our campaign closes, we’ll be sending out a survey through them to backers on Kickstarter.

We'll simply include all of you in their system, using the email addresses you used on Patreon. From there, you’ll be able to identify your rewards there and use the survey to choose options like what platform(s) you would like your game keys on or name for the Lost Crew Log. Then, when we’re ready to deliver digital goods like the game keys, we’ll be using BackerKit just the same as if you had supported us on Kickstarter.

Can I sum my contributions with what I pledged on Kickstarter?

Yes, for any digital rewards, we should be able to help you handle this if you’re eligible and looking to do that. For example, if you backed us at the $30 USD game key on Kickstarter but have been supporting us on Patreon for another $70 USD, you are eligible for the $100 USD Digital Founder’s Edition. We may need to contact you directly, and we can only do this if your email addresses for both Patreon and Kickstarter match. If they don’t, please shoot us a message as soon as possible and we will try to help!

What’s the plan for Patreon after the Kickstarter?

When we started our Patreon, we wanted to focus first and foremost about the studio we were building in addition to our game. While our game is the shuttle that is taking us into orbit, we have plans and dreams for both the present and future. You supported us along the way! We couldn’t have even launched our Kickstarter without you, and Patreon has even given us a platform where we can share our own bits of development, Channel 44 videos, and Fred’s technology, Simple.

The Kickstarter, on the other hand, was all about the game! Its goal and stretch goals were set up to align with a development budget on its own. What about Patreon? Any additional support we receive here we can still use to make the game better, and it is likely what we will do with that funding during development. However, it also affords us opportunities to do things for our communities. We have sometimes received requests to do things like host and support a community wiki for the Free Stars universe, and we could actually afford to do that now. If our Discord server—where most of our community interacts—grows a lot, we might be able to support paid community helpers, allowing us to provide better resources for our community.

Those are just a few examples, but we intend to be here on Patreon as long as we’re operating and find ways to be with our community here. If we had enough support here, this would truly be an ideal funding model for us! We would just provide games for free. Unfortunately, giving games away for free is poor marketing and generally unproven business for the games we want to make, but we are truly serious about that 4.4 million dollar open source goal from the Kickstarter. Sure, we made it as a talking point, and we never really expected to reach it… but it represents our intentions. So long as we can fund our future, we are happy to give. Right now, our future is squarely invested in seeing Free Stars: Children of Infinity through to completion and making a great game. Beyond that? A universe of possibilities.

To wrap up… our Patreon was and is about building our vision of the future. Without being on the soap box for too long, we believe there have to be better ways of making video games that respects both developers and players. We can barely go a week without hearing about developers of successful games losing their jobs. We have received the pressure first-hand from investors to sell more, how there’s always room for one more microtransaction or a way to somehow make a great thing even bigger. What’s in it for the developers? What’s in it for the players? We want to make something better, together, where the focus is on making games sustainably for players to enjoy—not for infinite potential growth—and where our players feel they are truly valued.

Besides our behind-the-scenes development updates we will continue to share, being part of our Patreon means you believe in what we’re doing and want to be a part of it. We understand if you are just here for the game, but we want you to know that it means a lot to have you here for the vision we are working towards.

Let us know if you have any questions, and we hope to see you on Twitch at 4pm PT.

Note: This post was edited at 11:50am PT to clarity that BackerKit will be able to help us deliver your rewards.