The life of an indie game developer isn't an easy one, and most never achieve the success they are chasing. When Kickstarter launched back in 2009, its goal was to help make this process a little bit easier by offering indie developers a place to raise money for their projects. We've seen several great success stories come out of Kickstarter, but as more and more large companies use it to promote new games, it's becoming increasingly difficult for indie titles to take advantage of the platform.

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No example of this is more egregious than the use of Kickstarter by PlatinumGames. The creators of the wildly popular Bayonetta series have recently decided to launch a campaign to raise money to self-publish The Wonderful 101: Remastered. At first glance there doesn't seem to be much wrong with this move. After all, self-publishing is a monumental task and certainly requires a large influx of cash.

However, PlatinumGames was recently the recipient of a capital investment from Tencent — one of the largest organizations in China — and PlatinumGames stated that they "hope to use this capital to strengthen our foundation as a business and expand from game development into exploring self-publishing."

So, what exactly is the purpose of the Kickstarter campaign then? It's hard to believe that after pulling in an investment from Tencent, PlatinumGames still needed to cobble together a few more pennies in order to self-publish. Even more damning is the fact that the Kickstarter campaign only had a goal of $49,430! You mean to tell us that Tencent refused to invest $50,000, so now we consumers must foot the rest of the bill?

This is a clear case of PlatinumGames taking advantage of the platform without a real need for fundraising. Kickstarter's success as turned it into something different than what it set out to be. Instead of helping raise money for fledgling developers, it's now a popular marketing tool for games of all sizes.

The Wonderful 101: Remastered has raised nearly $1.5 million, with 27 days left in the campaign. That's money that could have been going to fund passion projects of developers who are actually strapped for cash. Nobody is going to claim that all the money donated to The Wonderful 101: Remastered would have been funneled back into smaller indie titles if its Kickstarter campaign didn't exist, but the fact that large companies can steal the spotlight away from indie developers is a damn shame.

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