I feel like one of these days I should write something long about the Steam Pilots crowdfunding shitshow, as we in the Anglosphere rarely hear about what happens when Japanese crowdfunding goes wrong.
A very brief summary: ex-Konami composer Motoaki Furukawa did a crowdfund campaign for a shooting game called Steam Pilots meant to invoke some Twinbee nostalgia, even roping in Twinbee/Gaiapolis character designer Shuzilow.HA. Much of the programming was to be done by Pixel, a very small (basically one-man) studio who made indie games like furry STG Horgihugh. Eventually Pixel made public that he wasn't getting paid and was leaving the project, and now nobody knows what the hell Furukawa did with the funds because he hasn't given any details on how things were spent. That's a gross simplification, of course, there are lots of details, but now there are rumblings of a potential class action suit from angry backers. Also, Shuzilow.HA has been pretty publicly dragging Furukawa and his wife/manager/co-conspirator(?) Nanako and it's vicious yet satisfying to see.
I'd heard through contacts long before this went down that Furukawa and Nanako were absolute egotists and miserable to deal with, so I've been watching the situation unfold with interest. Seems like the guy's burned quite a few people over the years and the schadenfreude has come to roost. Hopefully the backers get something out of this in the end, at least.
people tend to get confused whenever this story comes up, so, just to clarify: the Pixel who worked on Steam Pilots is Hidekuni Sasaki, president of indie dev/events company Pixel Co. Ltd, and has absolutely nothing to do with Daisuke Amaya, Cave Story or anything else.
To elaborate a little more on Steam Pilots: Furukawa initially crowdfunded the game to the tune of ¥8M+ but could not complete the game due to the contracted developer walking out on him... which, as it turns out, was prompted by them learning about how he'd screwed over the dev of one of his previous indie project, Momoiro Underground, recognising the same warning signs in their own dealings with Furukawa and cutting ties while they could.
(The Momoiro Underground dev later reissued their game globally for Steam and Switch as Dezatopia, minus Furukawa's small contributions and with a big "this game has nothing to do with Motoaki Furukawa" disclaimer on all the trailers.)
Because both of these devs chose not to say anything publicly, Furukawa was able garner a lot of sympathy from other indie devs in the retro-adjacent scenes he ran in, as well as kick up hostility and doubt about his former collaborators. Sasaki of Pixel felt for his situation and agreed to come on board to bring the game to the finish line, and before long, Furukawa had him doing damn near everything: he was designing and programming the game all on his own and drawing virtually all of the pixel art and even designing most of the characters, with Shuzilow.HA's additional designs/illustrations and Furukawa's music being the only outside contributions (and as far as anyone knows, Furukawa hasn't written/recorded anything in years).
On top of everything else, Pixel wasn't been paid, as he'd agreed to withhold payment until the completion of the project, but given how the entire game had been dumped in his lap, he requested that Furukawa allowed him to contract another artist to help get the game over the line; Furukawa agreed, and ran a second crowdfunding campaign to fund the remainder of development, bringing in ~3M in additional funds.
Cut to two+ years later: Pixel publicly resigns, stating that he still hasn't been paid a cent for all his work, he has no idea what's going on with any of the money that came in and that he's taking all of his work with him unless Furukawa pays him what he's owed; he ended up taking Furukawa to court in seek of payment. Furukawa and his wife/business partner made some very non-specific commitments to finishing the game with yet another set of contractors, but in the ~18mo since the blow-up, they've given no real indication that the project is moving, become increasingly hostile and hard to contact and have started talking more and more shit about both Pixel and Shuzilow.HA, who has recently become more openly intolerant of Furukawa & co., especially once they locked down their accounts and started directly shit-talking him to their backers. (Shuzilow.HA and Pixel have and continue to work together on other games.)
Unfortunately for Pixel, most of his agreements with Furukawa were not made in writing, so nailing him down for anything specific has proved difficult and has allowed Furukawa to skate on all sorts of ridiculous arguments and throw frivolous counter-suits Pixel's way—at one point, Furukawa argued that none of the money he'd sourced from backers was specifically earmarked for financing the game and that it was merely requested for the extremely vague purposes of "risk mitigation", and Pixel shared an extremely gun-to-my-head statement (which has since been deleted) apologising for ever stating or implying that any of the money raised to fund Steam Pilots was ever supposed to go to paying the people making the game. Last I checked, Furukawa was trying to sue for emotional damages.
This has all been bubbling to a head over the last few weeks as people have tried and failed to coerce a sufficient response from Makuake, the crowdfunding platform, and as Furukawa & co. have made it increasingly difficult for any of their backers to contact them at all, let alone give them credible updates on what is or isn't happening with the game. Furukawa's ruined his own reputation in retro circles and has become one of go-to domestic examples of crowdfunding going wrong, and he doesn't seem to care.
(Incidentally, this all ties in to the potential impending expose on the making of Thunder Force VI—one of the many criticisms levelled against that game relates to Furukawa's contributions to the BGM, which were directly and unabashedly recycled from a CD of generic royalty-free music he'd released years earlier, and there's been some conjecture about whether Furukawa might have Tallarico'd em when they commissioned him for original tunes.)
After months of pressure from backers and evident hostility from Furukawa & co. towards providing any credible updates, the crowdfunding platform Makuake has finally intervened—despite their attempts to coerce something out of Furukawa, they've lost faith in his ability and/or intentions to deliver and are forcibly delivering refunds to those who apply for them, which people are interpreting both as some small justice for the backers but also a tacit admission from Furukawa & co. that they're never going to deliver the game they promised (and that they could have delivered if they'd paid the one guy who was actually doing all the work!).
The lawsuits between Hidekuni Sasaki of Pixel Co. Ltd and Furukawa are still ongoing, but one would hope this turn of events is going to swing things in their favour. Whatever the case, Furukawa's completely torched his own reputation and become the boogeyman for domestic crowdfunding, and even those closely involved with him struggle to understand why.
