In less than 10 months, the long-awaited, much-anticipated Shenmue 3 will be available for fans of the series to get their hands on and play. In order to make the game happen, a large crowdfunding campaign via Kickstarter had occurred to raise funds for covering development and publishing.
This initial Kickstarter campaign, labeled #SaveShenmue, amassed a whopping $6,333,295 from 69,320 backers in late 2015. It gained $2,000,000 in just nine hours and was fully funded due to it. This clearly hadn’t stopped fans from supporting the project considering the $6.3 mil it ended at.
After the #SaveShenmue campaign ended on Kickstarter, the developers created a second crowdfunding campaign on their own site titled “Slack Backer” which ran for three years before discontinuing in September. Today, the developers announced the final figures that combine both campaigns to produce a complete report.
$7,179,510 USD in total was collected over both campaigns, which amassed exactly 81,087 supporters. They announced the final figures through their official website and via a Kickstarter Backer update post, which had some nice sentiment to it.
“Quite an impressive score, isn’t it!?” developers Ys Net posted to the Kickstarter page, adding that “Seeing the final numbers” makes the team working on Shenmue 3 “feel all over again the immensity of the support everyone has given to make this project come true! Thank you!”
Shenmue and Shenmue 2 both released within 2 years of each other, firstly in 1999 and the sequel following in 2001. A third entry seemed unlikely for until its surprise announcement in 2015. Fans had been eagerly awaiting another game in the series and as you can see from the crowdfunding totals, they are as supportive as ever.
Shenmue 3 releases on August 27th, 2019 for PlayStation 4 and PC. If you to play the first two games in the series as a refresher before the third game launch, you can get Shenmue 1 & 2 on Amazon.