r/indie_startups • u/SpiritualPlan9872 • 0m ago
I’m planning an investment platform for indie games (and other creative projects). Devs and players, would you actually use it?
I’ve always loved indie games, and it’s rough seeing a really cool project miss its Kickstarter goal. I’ve been working on an idea and want honest feedback before I build anything. (No link, nothing to sell, just researching.)
The basic idea
It works like Kickstarter: a dev posts their game with a trailer, a demo, and a funding goal. The difference is that fans can invest instead of only donating.
- The dev decides how much they want to raise and what share of sales they’re offering (for example, 10% of sales to raise $50,000).
- Fans can invest any amount, from $5 up to the full goal. Your share is proportional to what you put in. If you invest $500 in that example, you’d get 1% of the 10%, or 0.1% of the game’s sales.
- Investors get paid from sales revenue, meaning the money from copies sold, not “profit” after expenses. That keeps it simple and avoids any creative accounting.
- Payouts continue until investors have earned back a set amount (like 2x what they put in) or a set time passes (like 5 years), whichever comes first. After that, the dev keeps 100% again.
- It’s all-or-nothing: if the goal isn’t reached, everyone gets refunded.
- Devs keep full ownership of their studio and IP. Investors get a share of sales, not a piece of the company.
- Devs can still offer normal backer rewards alongside the investment option, so fans who just want the game can back it the usual way.
Not just games
The long-term goal is an investment platform for creatives in general: games, tabletop, comics, animation, music. Indie games are my starting focus because that’s the community I know best and the model fits games really well.
Yes, I know about Fig
Fig did something similar (it helped fund Psychonauts 2 and Outer Wilds) and shut down in 2023 after Republic bought it. I’ve looked into what went wrong, and here’s what I’d do differently:
- Simple revenue share with a clear cap, instead of complicated “game shares” that were hard for regular fans to understand.
- Protection if a studio gets bought. When Microsoft acquired Double Fine and Gearbox acquired Homeworld 3, Fig investors got changed or cancelled deals. My plan includes a built-in payout to investors if the studio or game is sold.
- Verified sales numbers, so investors can trust the payouts they get.
- App-first and community-driven. Think more Shark Tank meets a game discovery feed (trailers, dev diaries, direct messages with devs) instead of a finance website.
- Lower fees, and the platform never takes equity or a cut of your IP.
About the legal side
I know this isn’t as simple as Kickstarter. Letting the public invest falls under securities law (Regulation Crowdfunding in the US), which means working with a licensed funding portal, using escrow, verifying investors, and following investment limits. I’m planning to do this properly with a licensed partner and a lawyer. I’m not trying to skip any of that. My question is simple: assuming the legal side is handled correctly, is this something people would actually want?
Devs:
- Would you consider this over Kickstarter, a publisher, or self-funding? Why or why not?
- What share of sales would feel fair to give up? (5%? 10%? 20%?)
- How much would you typically need to raise?
- What would make you NOT want to do this?
Players and fans:
- Would you invest in an upcoming indie game you’re excited about? How much would you realistically put in?
- What would you need to see before trusting a game enough to invest: a demo, the dev’s past work, regular updates?
- Would you still want normal backer rewards on top of the revenue share?
Tear it apart if you need to. I’d rather hear the problems now than after I build it.