Gamefound fell short of its goals, but still ate at Kickstarter’s lead

Marcin Świerkot, founder of the upstart crowdfunding platform Gamefound, set an ambitious goal for his company in 2022. He and his team hoped to bring in $67.5 million — 25% of competitor Kickstarter’s revenue from tabletop projects in 2021. But he was far from achieving his goal. Gamefound, a Polish company based in Poland, increased its revenues by more than 45% and earned $28.3million for new projects.

Set against Kickstarter’s own $33 million decline in the tabletop category over the same period, it’s clear that, despite not reaching its financial goal, his team is quickly gaining on the Brooklyn-based crowdfunding giant. Its growing problems are now the minor problem.

Gamefound was in beta at the beginning of 2022. It had four campaigns per month and grew to over 30 within a matter of days. This exponential growth on the platform caused some disruption to new customers. Polygon spoke with several companies who complained that they didn’t get the attention and service they wanted last year. In response, the company grew even faster — in part by taking on significant investment from 139-year-old board game publisher Ravensburger (Disney Lorcana). But the maneuver still wasn’t fast enough to satisfy all of the creators that flooded his platform — especially after Kickstarter’s very public meltdown over a proposed transition to blockchain technology.

“I don’t want to make any excuses,” Świerkot told Polygon in an interview. “What I want to make is just [a]Better platform […]Here’s what I have to say about those creators [is that]Please tell me what you think [the]Negative things. Please let me know what you’ve experienced. Then we can fix it.”

Gamefound, aside from customer service problems, was midyear blindsided by the news that Backerkit (San Francisco) was getting into tabletop crowdfunding. Several of the space’s biggest creators — including GloomhavenAnd Frosthaven publisher Cephalofair Games — fled to that platform instead of his.

“If those campaigns would be at Gamefound we would definitely be closer to the number,” he said. “Which, you know, it’s fine… ish.”

Polygon reached out back to Backerkit and asked if they would share their data for 2022. Polygon reached out to Backerkit, asking if it would share data for 2022. The company declined, noting that the organization is still in the beta stage of its development. Regardless of Backerkit’s success, Świerkot thinks he may have underestimated consumers’ loyalty to Kickstarter, which has raised some $2 billion for tabletop games to date.

“Kickstarter still has a super-strong brand,” Świerkot said. “There’s the old saying, you know: ‘The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.’”

Unfortunately, the devil was always in the details in 2022 for creators. Many were required to raise additional funds well after initial campaigns had been funded in order to meet the higher cost of global logistics. Świerkot said that Gamefound is doing what it can to buoy backer trust on his platform, including with its new Stable Pledge program.

Going forward, Świerkot has adjusted his goals for 2023 — $50 million in backers’ crowdfunding dollars by the end of the year. However, macroeconomic headwinds continue to increase. That’s clear, he said, based on the subpar performance of some high-profile campaigns in 2022. In addition to Wyrmwood’s and Hasbro’s own enormous crowdfunding failures, even surefire licenses like Elden Ring, Last of UsPlease see the following: Take down the SpireHis opinion was that underperformed. His own publishing house, Awaken Realms, also did poorly in his opinion.

“This year we had [the] King of Ruin: The Tainted Grrail campaign. Back in 2019, Kickstarter raised $6million for the first campaign. We now have the second campaign which did better. […] But this one did $4.5 million.”

So what can Świerkot do to reach Gamefound’s aggressive goal of nearly 50% growth in 2023? Outside of a focus on day-to-day creator and backer service issues — and in building back trust with customers burned by shipping increases in 2022 — not a whole lot.

“The economy, realistically, we have nothing to do [about it],” Świerkot said. “We cannot guarantee whatever will happen [with] inflation. [We have absolutely] no influence [there].”