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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is now the most-funded video game on any crowdfunding platform since 2015. Obsidian Entertainment’s crowdfunding campaign for Pillars of Eternity 2 wrapped up today with $4.4 million in pledges from more than 33,000 backers — the biggest success in the Fig platform’s short history.
The campaign’s original goal was $1.1 million.
Obsidian pitched Pillars of Eternity 2 as a direct sequel to the first title in the series, Pillars of Eternity, which itself was released in 2015. Like the original, Pillars of Eternity 2 is an isometric role-playing game. It will take players into a new part of the world of Eora, on the hunt for a 700-foot tall statue possessed by a reborn god. The team has promised a long single-player campaign, smaller parties along with a reworked combat system and user interface.
Stretch goals that have helped push the game over the $4 million mark include the addition of a player-owned ship, which will be a kind of mobile headquarters. A statue on offer also seems to hint that players will be fighting with that stone god from the deck of their ship as it rises up out of the ocean.
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The first title in the series began on Kickstarter, where it earned more than $3.98 million in 2012. It remains among the top 25 most-funded projects ever on that platform. In 2015, Obsidian announced that it would take a seat on the advisory board at Fig, a new crowdfunding platform that bends rewards-based crowdfunding with equity investment. Pillars of Eternity 2 is their first project to be hosted on the platform, and the most successful one at that.
Crowdfunding on Kickstarter as a whole was down for the first time last year. The games category itself was down nearly 60 percent. The last big year for that platform was 2015, when Shenmue 3 earned more than $6.3 million and Bloodstained earned more than $5.5 million. The success of Pillars of Eternity 2, and Fig generally, speaks to its place as a significant competitor.
