The dinosaur survival game, The Stomping Land, was one of the most prodigious Kickstarter titles of yesteryear, raising more than $100,000 for the upstart game studio Supercrit. Things were going smoothly for quite some time, with frequent updates that lead to an alpha build available for purchase on Steam. I was personally excited to see this title grow, since I’m a huge fan of dinosaurs, and watching the gameplay trailers caused me to look forward to the game’s final build. Unfortunately, not much has been heard from the dev team in the last few months, and updates have been nonexistent for quite some time now.

The project lead, Alex “Jig” Fundora, issued a statement after fan outcry, claiming the reason for no updates was the fact that his team was porting the game into the Unreal 4 engine, an upgrade from 3. He said, “The move has put a bit of more work on my plate, but the already discovered opportunities using UE4 are exciting, and I’m confident fans will be satisfied with the long-run decision.” This assuaged some people’s fears temporarily, but the only update following that one was their PR agent in July, stating that while the game was still being worked on, his contract was ending.

Many viewed this as a bad sign, and feared for the worst. And unfortunately, their fears were made reality when The Stomping Land‘s purchase option was removed from Steam. What is even more troubling is that Supercrit’s site is no longer available, and the developer is unable to be reached for comment. If the game is really defunct, this sets back the crowd-funding community as a whole. How can we trust an ambitious developer to deliver on their claims when so many have gone the way of the dodo? Events like this cause me to be wary of investing in Kickstarters, which is a shame.