The second Shadow of the Eternals Kickstarter campaign has met with failure, drawing less than half of its target funding.
Precursor Games aborted its first crowdfunding attempt due to “exciting new developments”, though the project found only enough backers to raise $128,000 of its $1.35 million goal in three weeks.
This new campaign did better, raising just under $324,000, but with Kickstarter’s all or nothing policy nothing short of the targeted $750,000 would do.
Precursor has some outside backing – the reason the campaign was relaunched with a lower target figure – but it’s doubtful if that would be enough to begin development, or if the deal is still in place without the additional backing of fans.
Shadow of the Eternals is dubbed as the spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, and has drawn a good deal of criticism due to the history chief creative officer Denis Dyack.
Dyack was the founder of Silicon Knights, and has been faced with allegations that he siphoned resources away from X-Men Destiny to create a demo for Eternal Darkness 2.
In the hiatus between the two Shadow of the Eternals campaigns, one of Precursor’s co-founders was arrested on child pornography charges,
Silicon Knights itself closed after losing a legal battle with Epic Games over the latter’s accusation that the developer had stolen Unreal Engine technology for use in its games.
More directly related to the campaign, the controversial terms and conditions of the Shadow of the Eternals campaign proved to be lifted from another site, which Precuror told Develop was simply a mistake.