The Kickstarter for Shenmue 3 broke records — because Sony lied to backers 2015

At E3 this week there were few announcements larger than Sony’s press conference. One of the key underpinnings was the announcement of a crowdsourced campaign to fund the creation of Shenmue 3, the lost conclusion to a planned trilogy of titles that debuted on the Dreamcast. Now, it’s been confirmed that Sony is actually bankrolling the project, and the entire affair is likely to leave an extremely sour taste in backers’ mouths.
Let’s start with the obvious. The original Shenmue was widely reported to have cost $70 million, though the game’s creator, Yu Suzuki, has claimed that the figure was inflated and that the real cost was $47 million. Either way, that’s far more than the $4 million stretch goal that the Kickstarter set (currently at $3.3 million as of this writing). Developing open-world, expansive gameplay has only gotten more expensive in the 16 years since Shenmue debuted, not less, and stretches credulity to think that a team of developers could deliver a sprawling adventure across multiple locations (or an incredibly detailed portrayal of a single location) in less than a tenth the original game’s budget.

It’s now clear that the entire affair was simply a PR stunt, a way to raise money and demonstrate public interest in a game. And that’s a real problem. Whether or not the campaign is legal or technically fulfills Kickstarter rules, it’s another example of how “crowdfunding” doesn’t actually buy you anything at all. Not a stake in the title. Not a say in whether or not the company sells itself to an enormously profitable social media company. And now, it doesn’t even buy you an assurance that someone else isn’t bankrolling the project.
I understand Sony’s reasoning, of course — the company didn’t want to commit itself to a game with the legacy of Shenmue and a history of some fairly large development costs without knowing it might make a decent return on its investment. The problem with what’s happened here is that people didn’t pledge funds to “demonstrate interest,” and they didn’t give money knowing that the project was actually completely underwritten by a multinational conglomerate with billions of dollars in annual revenue. Shenmue’s Kickstarter page discloses none of the relevant information and does not inform gamers that they are participating in a marketing experience to gauge interest in the title.
Right now, three people have pledged $10,000 or more to this project. 19 have pledged $1,000. And while it’s absolutely true that pledging a campaign on Kickstarter doesn’t guarantee you anything, including an acceptable final product, hiding Sony’s critical involvement and funding goes beyond caveat emptor. It’s one thing to pledge funds in the belief that it’s the only way to see a long-desired project come to fruition and another to pledge them to a company that’s planning to take your money, pocket it, and claim the entire campaign was an attempt to assess interest. Kickstarter should kill the project cold — but if they don’t, Sony should cancel it of their own volition, thank people for demonstrating support for the franchise, and go make the damned game.