Wren has contacted Indiegogo and Steam to ask that Sinking Simulator be hauled off their websites, and Racicot has since published a notice on the Indiegogo page warning visitors against donating.Īccording to Wren, Racicot has already paid the Steam Greenlight fee and an artist and he for work already completed. Wren added in a blog post: 'The game is going to go in much more interesting directions if I don't make too many promises early on, and I'd rather surprise than disappoint.

I guess you should consider the project failed.' There is also no way he should be trusted with so many people's money. 'There is no way Pac0master should be involved in the development of the game,' he said, 'so it's now going to be developed independently. Qualifying this feature, the Steam Greenlight page says it 'may or may not get implemented'.īut it wasn't until his 'latest fantastic promise' that Wren fired his client. One feature mentioned in the Steam Greenlight pitch is NPCs, 'like crew members and civilians.' Crew would keep everything in order and civilians would panic and die if in water for too long. He's also a bit of a liability, making wild feature promises and expecting me to be able to keep to them.' In a letter to Indiegogo published on his blog Wren wrote: 'He's made zero contribution to development. Wren describes Pac0master, whose first language is French, as an 'ideas guy'. It had raised over $4500 before it was shut down. The Indiegogo campaign, which Racicot launched to raise money to pay Wren for development duties, asked for just $500. It was Racicot who commissioned Wren to create Sinking Simulator. Sinking Simulator is the work of student Luke Wren, but its Indiegogo and Steam Greenlight campaigns were the work of one Francis Racicot, aka Pac0master, a French-Canadian living in Quebec.

In the case of Sinking Simulator, an eye-catching 2D physics sandbox game that lets you create a structure before sinking it, the crowd-funding campaign was cancelled - and the brains behind it sacked from the project. What happens when a crowd-funding campaign for an in-development video game promises features that are unlikely to ever materialise?Īnd what if the creator of the video game didn't want the crowd-funding campaign in the first place?

Titanic sinking simulator