Indie devs see successful Kickstarter sunk by fraudulent backer

Dutch indie team 2Awesome Studio seems to have had the rug pulled out from under it today, as the Kickstarter campaign to fund development of its game Dimension Drive barely reached its goal in the final hours due to a €7,000 pledge by a single backer, then failed with 31 minutes to go after Kickstarter banned the same backer and cancelled their pledge. 

"We really do not know what happened, it seemed to be a troll," Dimension Drive lead programmer Alejandro Santiago told Gamasutra, after Vlambeer's Rami Ismail drew attention to the incident. "What we do know for sure is that someone made a fraudulent pledge in our campaign that got removed by the Kickstarter guys 31 minutes before the end."

Gamasutra confirmed this with a Kickstarter representative, who stated that "we've suspended the user's account and are canceling any pledges they've made" due to suspicious activity.

It's yet unclear whether this troubling incident was an isolated occurrence or symptomatic of a greater problem with Kickstarter; Santiago tells Gamasutra that the team is hesitant to offer further speculation on what happened until they know more, and that they have no idea whether other campaigns have been torpedoed by this sort of behavior.

"It has been an exhausting month for us," said Santiago. "Right now we are speechless, demoralized...you name it." Select posts from the dev's Twitter account during the incident are reproduced below.