MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Months of missed deadlines after the Code Hero Kickstarter project ran out of money finally came to an end on Friday.
The game that promises to teach programming raised $170,000 through crowdfunding, but has since gone broke and could face legal action from backers who have yet to recieve promised rewards.
The team struggled through website issues to launch the update in the nick of time to meet its February 1st deadline.
In a lengthy post on the Primer Labs website, Code Hero Creator Alex Peake provided a breakdown of expenses, announced the arrival of a new community manager, and promised refunds and rewards to backers as soon as the team has money.
Developers who continued to work on the project after it ran out of money are also promised back-pay.
Peake accepted full responsibility for his mistakes and apologised for his poor communication.
"I, Alex Peake, as the originator of Code Hero and leader of the development team, bear chief responsibility for the whole of the project," he said.
"Everyone on the team worked incredibly hard and did terrific work, and I’m proud of what we accomplished and I am responsible for not leading the team better and correcting our course early enough to narrow the scope and get a good game done with what we had instead of holding on to the original plan about what the game needed to be."
"I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes," wrote Peake, "and I’m going to take heed of all the advice and lessons learned through this to take responsibility for turning this project around and getting Code Hero back on track and funded and completed so people can play it and learn to code and make games of their own."
Peake also admitted that some of the Kickstarter funds were spent on travelling to conferences such as PAX East and PAX Prime.
He claimed however that the trips were worth the money spent as the team had received alot of feedback and advice on how to improve the game, despite not having previously said pledges would be spent on events.
For some backers, Peake’s apology and details of how the Kickstarter money was spent could be too little too late.
Dustin Deckard, who has become the voice of backers dissatisfied with progress on the game, has written on the Code Hero Kickstarter page asking for input on a possible class action proceding.
For Peake though, the only acceptable outcome is a successful release of Code Hero.
"Game development is hard and many studios and projects fail, but I can’t let you down because what we’re making is important," said Peake.
"It’s important to me personally to give all the people in the world a way to learn to code that is actually fun. I won’t let any obstacles stop the Code Hero team from completing this."
