Psychonauts 2 and Homeworld 3 crowdfunding platform Fig goes offline tomorrow

Crowdfunding platform Fig will go offline on Sunday, May 28th, and all pages related to previously funded campaigns will disappear along with it. That means that creators who were continuing to use the platform to communicate and deliver rewards to backers are currently scrambling to transition to alternative methods, including the likes of Double Fine and Gearbox.

Double Fine, who funded Psychonauts 2 through the platform in early 2016, posted an update to their Fig page earlier this week stating that they had "been informed that the Fig website is going to be brought offline on Sunday." They still need to deliver certain backer rewards, including "plushies, art books, physical editions", and say that future communication about these rewards will come via email. They've also moved all the previous project updates over to the Double Fine site.

Gearbox Publishing posted a similar message related to Homeworld 3, stating that communication will come via email and project updates will eventually appear on the official Homeworld site.

Fig launched in 2015 as a crowdfunding platform specifically for video games. It differed from Kickstarter in that, as well as being able to back projects, some users could also invest in projects and receive a share of potential future revenue. Several well-known industry figures sat on Fig's advisory board, including Tim Schafer, Brian Fargo and Cliff Bleszinski. A number of games were successfully funded through the platform aside from Psychonauts 2 and Homeworld 3, including Outer Wilds, Wasteland 3, Kingdoms and Castles, Pillars Of Eternity 2, and Phoenix Point.

In 2020, Fig was purchased by Republic, a platform through which users can invest in "startups, crypto, real estate, art, music, and more." Republic previously announced their intention to eventually close down Fig, but seemingly only confirmed the exact date for going offline this week. While legacy campaigns are not being migrated to the new platform, live campaigns have already moved across and will not be impacted by tomorrow's closure.

If you try to access the old Fig.co homepage, you'll instead be redirected to a Fig category on Republic. You can, at the time of writing, still find the old Fig homepage at fig.co/legacy.