Fig Crowdfunds Video Games, Lets Players Share The Profit

A new crowdfunding site promises to help designers make better video games, and give players a way to make investments, not just donations.

The platform, called Fig, launched Tuesday morning. In contrast to crowdfunding web sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, Fig will host only one campaign every month, highlighting a single game chosen by the company. Participating game studios will work closely with the site to make the fundraiser successful, and then receive continued mentoring during the design and production of the final product.

Users can support each title through a traditional reward-based crowdfunding model, but accredited investors can also use the platform to buy shares in a production company created exclusively for each title, and receive a cut of the game’s eventual profits.


A screenshot from the video game funding platform Fig.


CEO Justin Bailey, formerly the chief operating officer of Double Fine Productions, helped run several of that studio’s successful Kickstarter campaigns, and says Fig was born out of the sharing of information between indie designers who wanted to fund their own projects.

“We had a bunch of developers coming to us asking if they should consider crowdfunding, and then when they decided to it, we helped structure and then give feedback for their campaigns,” says Bailey. “We finally figured out, we’ve got this amazing ecosystem that exists, we should formalize it.”