Ghost Theory is another kickstarted project that will most likely never see the light of day, even though it did meet its initial Kickstarter goal. The game was meant to be a first-person adventure horror game in which players would investigate real haunted places. However, Dreadlocks made a terrible decision to switch engines and that is basically the main reason why the game may be cancelled.
Ghost Theory was originally powered by the Unity Engine. However in 2016, the team decided to switch to CRYENGINE. Here is what the team had to say when it was interviewed by Crytek.
“We successfully developed our previous game, Dex, with Unity3D and we originally thought we’d also use it to develop Ghost Theory. But after a few months of development, it was clear that Unity3D wouldn’t do this time. Ghost Theory is just too large for it. And so we had to look for a new engine. Cryengine was the ideal choice for us, both technologically and financially.
We’re currently in the process of transferring everything we have from Unity3D to CryEngine.”
Now while this makes it sound like CRYENGINE was the perfect engine for this project, the team decided to switch engines in order to get its game funded by Crytek’s Indie Development Fund program, despite the fact that the game was already funded in Kickstarter.
In case you weren’t aware of, in 2016 Crytek launched the Indie Development Fund program. Basically, all users who decided to make a contribution for utilizing CRYENGINE V could allocate up to 70% of the sum to Crytek’s Indie Development Fund; a grant program that will see Crytek directly supporting promising indie projects around the world.
Apparently Crytek has decided to pull the plug on this program and was unable to offer any money to the winners and as you may have guessed, Ghost Theory was among them. Still, Crytek did offer a free license to CRYENGINE to all the winners. Obviously, though, this was not what Dreadlock was looking for.
Now I want to be crystal clear that this was a shit move from Crytek. However, Dreadlocks is also to be blamed here for lying to everyone. Here is what the team had to say to its backers in its latest update.
“We were lured into a competition for millions of dollars, which also required a change of the game’s engine, and we spent months with it. It was our last big hope. But after GT was unofficially marked as a winner, we were then told: “sorry, we actually don’t have any money for the winners.” As a compensation, we received free licenses for our new game engine, which was totally pointless as we couldn’t pay salaries to developers who would actually use it. Today, all of this is brushed under the carpet and the competition site was simply removed,like it has never existed.”
Dreadlocks claims that although it got a free license, it’s pointless as it couldn’t pay salaries to developers to use it. Wait what? Back in 2016 the team claimed that it was already transitioning from Unity to CRYENGINE. It didn’t claim that without the price money it would not be able to make it happen. What about the kickstarted money then? Why change engines if you are not sure whether you can finish the project that gamers have already funded via your campaign? Why bet everything on an Indie Dev program? Or how about, why don’t you re-fund everyone that contributed to your Kickstarter and then, from a fresh start, apply to the Indie Dev Fund program?
This is another case of a developer lying to those that supported them. And this is precisely why we’ve stopped covering most Kickstarter projects. I’m pretty sure that Dreadlocks changed engines with the best intentions but it’s a bit similar to what Nightdive Studios did with the upcoming System Shock Remake and what 3D Realms did with Duke Nukem Forever (that wasn’t a Kickstarter project but still).
So, dear developers, when you launch a Kickstarter campaign, set realistic goals and stick to your fucking plan. Release the game that your fans have funded via Kickstarter and stop adding or changing things afterwards!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Dreadlocks deadlocked.
Does the backers can sue this shady developer??
hopefully. im sure jew lawyers wont do it though.
No, those idiots invested their money into project and investments fail, which Kickstarter is.
You can try and sue in Civil court but good luck trying to get any money out of it.
alison road, pt and now this.
WTF?
all 2 sp00ky 4 m3 meme games… what a coincidence! im sure all of these games werent scams on purpose! im sure if you look into it it isnt the same group of a certain nose type of people doing it.
hahaaahahhaa
it was a konami thing, i said its weird that horror games died
Alison Road? Last time I checked, it is still in development.
They have been broke for years, it’s their normal state at this point.
As a consumer I have noticed an increasing amount of issues with games using Unity the last year or so to the point where I shudder when it is used but at the same time this was a dumb move by the dev.
So, dear developers, when you launch a Kickstarter campaign, set realistic goals and stick to your ‘f*****’ plan.
LOL john. Take it easy. That was a bit harsh from your side. As a journalist, you shouldn’t be using the F word, imo. 😀
journalist ahahahahahha
What’s so funny about that part anyway ? Editor/writer/journalist ?
Dont expect a serious answer.
Correct my memory if wrong but wasn’t the initial funding for Star Citizen slightly different from this example in that folk were given two options, i.e. to contribute directly to the dev’ or Kickstarter, as opposed to Ghost Theory being a Kickstarter-only project?
Yeah, switching over to CryEngine as late as 2016 was an awful choice. Only reason CryTek is still around is to try to profit from litigation.
They didn’t “lie” to backers. Also clearly written in the update says that “just a few months after the success of our KS campaign our investor decided to re-evaluate his priorities and we lost his financial support.”
So they banked the creation of the game on this “investor”, and without that investor, they didn’t have all the money needed.
John, you really need to stop trying to sensationalize your articles. It doesn’t look good for you. There’s plenty here to criticize Ghost Theory and kickstarter in general, without making up stuff.
LOL are you some KS fan boy? This is happening so much that it will affect people who make honest KS with realistic goals. You cant be “reevaluating things” in the middle of project with that shortage of money because it would mean youll need more money. Totally agree with John here, devs went greed and they got what they deserves.
You can go to PCgamer and lick some dev 4ss3s, thats the magazine that will tell that nothing is happening.
When you do a kickstarter gaming project be sure the engine you use is good enough.
They were making a walking simulator so first of all, good riddance. “Investigating” in modern games means walking around and pressing the use button. Just look at the recent Cthulhu game.
Now here comes their story on why they switched away from Unity:
“Ghost Theory is just too large for it.”
Too large for Unity? Unity has no problems with scale. Not the kind of scale this walking simulator would have had any way. I’m sure they wanted nice graphics out of the box without paying a graphics programmer. But UE looks nice out of the box and is easier to use so why would a small studio go with CE? Only the expected money from the contest could have persuaded them. They heard “millions” and the next moment the kickstarter backers were a distant memory. So yeah, John is right in suspecting lies here. No way they meant to switch to CE before there was money on the line.
Speaking of you, John, can you explain this passage?
“So, dear developers, when you launch a Kickstarter campaign, set realistic goals and stick to your f*king plan.”
You have a loose grasp on the English language even for a non-native speaker and you’ve never tried particularly hard to come off like a real journalist but even you should realize that this is inappropriate. It’s also very odd because you censor profanity in the comments, citing google search algorithms as the reason. Don’t you want this article to be available via google search?