After 11 days on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding for ATLC 2 has been dropped.
Since the announcement of ATLC 2 and its producers’ – Jason “Amaz” Chan and Brent “Backspace” Kaskel – decision to go the crowdfunding route, the successor of the most successful third-party tournament in Hearthstone was met with mixed feelings from the community. While fans of the popular streamer firmly supported the Kickstarter initiative, the majority of the community stayed their pledges. In eleven days, the ATLC 2 Kickstarter raised 86,780 HKD out of the 1,600,000 HKD goal, a mere 5.4 per cent of the total. According to Amaz, 257 backers contributed towards the goal.
Multiple editorials have been written by major publications such as GosuGamers and DotEsports in response to the campaign, expressing the opinion that crowdfunding the lavish tournament whose projected expenses were set upwards of $200,000 may not be the best idea. Producer Backspace has also had several calls with industry journalists, breaking down the budget of ATLC 1 and that of its successor, explaining the funding channels the duo has explored (such as sponsorships and player/team buy-ins) and, most notably, admitting that Amaz Productions is determined to launch ATLC 2 even if the Kickstarter campaign fails.
The aforementioned campaign was off to a rough start itself. To clear the 1.6M HKD, it needed to raise an average of 53,000 HKD each day, but according to Kicktraq, the highest daily pledge total landed just shy of 20,000 HKD. In the last five days, pledges have slowed down significantly, and even saw a negative total on November 9. No more than two backers supported ATLC 2 in the last three days.
Despite the cancellation of the crowdfunding, Amaz and Backspace are looking forward to launching the league either way and look towards January 2017 as the possible launch date. According to sources, more teams are to be announced and the qualifiers to determine the eighth team in the league will continue as scheduled.
