Precursor Games’ second Kickstarter attempt to fund the development of Shadow of the Eternals, the so-called “spiritual successor” to Eternal Darkness, has now reached the halfway point in its campaign. With just 15 days left on the clock and a mere 30% of its $750,000 goal obtained, the crowdfunding effort is tracking well off pace and is in serious danger of failing for a third time.
After shutting down both their original crowdfunding effort and the first Shadow of the Eternals Kickstarter on June 6th, Precursor Games refocused their efforts and relaunched the new Kickstarter (this time asking for half of their original $1.5 million goal) on July 25th. The first two days of the rebooted campaign were extremely successful, with Precursor reporting over 3,000 backers and just over $120,000 in pledges in their first update. Unfortunately, the effort quickly lost momentum during the first week, and it has been downhill ever since.
Following the first update, the next three days (ending on July 29th) saw an additional 1,000 backers pledge another $50K, which averages out to $16.67K each day. These levels fell over the next three days (ending on August 1st), to 480 backers pledging an average of $5.67K each day. The average daily pledges increased slightly over the next three days (ending August 4th) to $8.67K, but it dropped off again to a mere $3.67K average over the course of the last three days (ending August 7th).
As it stands at the time this article was published, Precursor Games has attracted 4,926 Kickstarter backers who have pledged a total of $225,411 towards the development of Shadow of the Eternals. With that as a starting point, pledge totals would need to rise to almost $35K for each of the remaining 15 days — which is just under 10 times the most current three day average — in order to meet their $750K goal.
While anything is possible, it seems unlikely that the Shadow of the Eternals Kickstarter will be able to suddenly gain and then (more importantly) sustain that much momentum.
We will keep an eye on the Shadow of the Eternals Kickstarter over the next 15 days, and will let you know of any new developments. In the meantime, if this is a project that you would like to see happen, now would be the time to jump in and help fight the uphill battle.