Fans pledged $200M to game crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter to date

Game projects were the most popular category on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, with fans pledging $200.4 million to date.

Of the $200 million, about $19.85 million was pledged toward unsuccessful projects that did not hit their funding goals. So that money was never accepted by the crowdfunding site. That means the total amount the game companies took home was $178 million since 2009. That funding amount would add up to about 20 percent of all fundings for games, based on last year’s numbers compiled by GamesBeat.

This amount makes gaming the largest category on Kickstarter, which received $919 million in pledges in 2013. Of that, $789 million went toward successful projects. Games were 22 percent of all of the dollars raised on Kickstarter from 7,922 projects launched so far this year. The next closes category was film and video, which raised $154.3 million in successful campaigns.

The most successful game project of the year was Torment: Tides of Numenera, which raised $4.19 million in April, or 465 percent above its goal. It was the second huge raise for InXile Entertainment, headed by longtime game developer Brian Fargo.

But Kickstarter’s biggest game projects were eclipsed by Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen. Roberts Space Industries has raised more than $34.6 million from more than 332,000 fans on a variety of platforms, including Kickstarter and Roberts Space Industries’ own site.

Last year, fans pledged $83 million for games on Kickstarter. To date, 54 games have raised $1 million or more. The success rate is about 35 percent, and there ware 324 live projects raising money now. For those, $2.4 million has been pledged.

Kickstarter said it has had 53.7 million successful funded projects from 5.37 million backers. Of those, 1.57 million are repeat backers. Most successful projects raise less than $10,000, and 10 percent of projects never get a single pledge. Funding on Kickstarter is all or nothing. If you don’t hit your 30-day target, you don’t get any of the money pledged.