Even though it looked like they might meet their pledged goal of $325,000, the team over at Elastic Games has cancelled the Kickstarter for Police Warfare. According to them, however, this isn’t the end for the game; in an update on their Kickstarter page they thanked the community for their “incredible response” and promised that more news would be coming. This is really the first time we’ve seen a project get some early hype and then cancel it the all together. Given the fact that the people working on the project have previous experience in the industry working on projects such as Far Cry 3, Gears of War, Crisis 1&2, Assassins Creed 2, and Grand Theft Auto, It seems likely that this isn’t a huge gaffe or fundraising error, but more likely that they received funding for the game from somewhere else.
This is just speculation on my part, but you don’t cancel a would-be successful Kickstarter unless you’ve acquired funding from some other source or you’re cancelling the game. Since they aren’t cancelling the game it seems likely that their early hype gave them the attention of someone with deep pockets. I would imagine the next update surrounding the project will confirm that Police Warfare has indeed befriended a publisher is some way, shape, or form.
Unlike some of the other successful projects we’ve seen on Kickstarter, this is an FPS, and from people with experience making them no less. Publishers don’t have a problem ignoring a point-and-click adventure game or an old-school turn-based RTS, but a hyped FPS? Someone got interested, fast. When the big publishers started snooping around, looking for a piece of the successfully Kickstarted Wasteland 2, Brian Fargo had no problem telling them that “an ARMY of fans” were better than any marketing team, but perhaps Elastic Games were more open to discussion as an FPS is more palatable to larger publishers.
Regardless, the game is still getting made and the fans, even though confused, are still on board. If they’re smart they’ll let their backers know what’s going on as soon as they can, after all they are the reason this game has any hype to begin with. Until then we’ll just have to wait and see which publisher(s) couldn’t resist the alluring call of another FPS.
Source: Blistered Thumbs
