Out of Pod Experience

It's coming. But strangely, not unless we pledge enough money, which is a novel way to fund game development.

I know a lot of Eve fans enjoyed Nexus as I did, and so I thought I would bring this to everyone's attention, as it doesn't seem too well publicized and I almost missed it with only 2 weeks remaining.

Get over there and donate!

The amount of pledged money per supporter is... impressive.
€112842 raised (28%) out of €400.000 goal with 403 supporters
-> 112842/403 -> average of ~280 EUR/contributor ~= 360 USD/contributor.
Wow.

How exactly does that sound like a scam in any way ?

According to Google sources (and "close enough" Romanian levels) the average monthly computer programmer salary (cash in hand) in Hungary is about 1150 EUR, which would probably translate (after various tax burdens) into something around 1750 EUR raw income needed (to actually have that much cash left in hand), extremely rough ballpark figure.
400k EUR should be sufficient to keep around 25 full-time positions occupied with people that were "diverted" from other projects (they're a game studio that's already developing other stuff that pays just fine) for about 9 months (until a rough expected release date of the game "Q4 2012") at the average salary level of a computer programmer... and I assume artists and such are paid less, plus they might not be needed full-time, and there was some noticeable development done on the game already in the past years. The whole company is only 30-man big plus up to 10 various subcontractors, so again, that should pretty much cover a large chunk of their remaining development costs.
I don't know about you, but that sounds within the realm of "doable".

Very big ticket contributors get a combined 50% revenue share out of the total profits of the game (if any), everybody else gets some contributor credit (to various degrees) and of course, the game itself on top, from as little as 20 EUR already (in comparison, the first Nexus-TJI wouls have been well worth a 40 EUR price tag at launch day, and it still sells for 10 EUR on Steam - http://store.steampowered.com/app/6420 - not bad for a nearly 8 year old game).
If the goal is not reached, no money is charged, since those are "pledges".
ASSUMING the game gets completed on time, even if the game only sells 50k copies (not unrealistic at all, I would say) in Q4 2012, at say a 20 EUR net income per unit, even after the tax burden that's still nearly 1 mil EUR profits, with half of that up for grabs for platinum supporters, which would actually end up as getting back slightly more money than you've put in already even if most people would have gone the platinum supporter role.

I suppose it might sound a bit like a scam, but chances are very good it's a quite legit business opportunity.
Sure, it's not without risks, since quite a few things can go wrong, but still.

...

P.S. No time to argue more about it since I'm about to leave town for the rest of the week
...and DAMN! why did I waste so much time explaining this here ?

If they want the public to invest in their game, go public, sell shares and do it the right way if you want me to consider it. Video game business is very cut throat business. Failure rate in this business is high and often results do not meet expectations.

Perhaps if I met them in person, looked at their books and reviewed their resumes I might have a change of heart. Until then its a concept I would not consider. I wish them the best as this business is very brutal.