People were thrilled back when Double Fine announced the crowdsourcing campaign for the long-awaited sequel to Psychonauts. Instead of going through Indiegogo or Kickstarter, Schafer’s team decided to hold their campaign through new site called Fig. According to Polygon, what makes Fig different to other investment sites is that Fig allows for both your typical rewards-based system, where people give money and get a reward based on the dollar amount and for non-accredited investors to give money to the company.
Basically, before Double Fine, Fig required that any investment of more than $1000 come from an accredited investor. This is determined by net worth, so anyone with a million in assets or making $200,000 a year would be good to invest that much money. What this means is that essentially anyone can invest in Psychonauts 2, even if they couldn’t afford it.
The game was fully funded in little over a month, but this policy change slowed down the disbursement of the campaign’s funds. All the non-accredited investors needed to be reviewed by the United States Securities and Exchanges Commission before they could be approved. Now, according to Polygon, after months of review, the funds can now be collected.
The next step is the actual collection of the funds. This will be done by Fig and several development teams, Polygon says.
With the review all squared away, this makes Fig the first company to allow non-accredited investments, which is a big moment for the company. Justin Bailey, Fig’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer said this about the achievement in a press release.
Enabling fans and communities to directly support and financially benefit from their favorite games is transformative to the publishing of interactive entertainment and beyond. Fig is committed to evolving video game publishing and crowdfunding in this direction that benefits fans, communities, and developers, and ultimately to the making of great games.
For right now Psychonauts 2 is slated for a 2018 release. The game will come out on Xbox One, PS4, PC, Mac and Linux.