BackerKit, one of the three major crowdfunding platforms catering to tabletop creators, tells Polygon it did great in 2024. The San Francisco-based company claims a three-fold increase in revenue from initial backers to tabletop projects, which makes sense given that last year was its first full year offering that service. However, unlike competitors Kickstarter and Gamefound, the company elected not to share its year-end totals with Polygon. That makes a side-by-side comparison with its rivals impossible.
| Campaign name | Creator | Initial funds raised | Backer count |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCDM RPG | MCDM | $4,600,520 | 30,177 |
| Munchkin Big Box | Steve Jackson Games | $1,313,127 | 9,197 |
| Ars Magica Definitive Edition | Atlas Games | $841,123 | 5,046 |
| Old Gods of Appalachia: Deeper Still | Monte Cook Games | $803,832 | 5,211 |
| Caverns of Thracia | Goodman Games | $654,928 | 5,231 |
| Household – Welcome to the Garden | Two Little Mice | $554,502 | 3,438 |
| Welcome to Night Vale Roleplaying Game | Renegade Game Studios | $529,977 | 6,654 |
| Outgunned Adventure | Two Little Mice | $517,595 | 3,490 |
| Our Golden Age | Exalted Funeral | $489,412 | 4,071 |
| Mothership: Wages of Sin | Tuesday Knight Games | $483,428 | 6,018 |
BackerKit had previously limited its work largely to late-pledge (post-campaign) and pledge management (logistics and more traditional e-commerce) activities before launching its own crowdfunding solution out of beta in mid-2023. That makes 2024 the first year it directly competed with Kickstarter and Gamefound in that category. The company tells Polygon it hosted a total of 259 successful tabletop campaigns, which it says is “over 3x the amount of signups from 2023.”
A blog post published Dec. 20, 2024, calls out some additional anecdotal data, which draws from non-tabletop categories as well. The company claims a four-fold increase in projects launched on the platform and a more than doubling of its total funds raised via initial crowdfunding. It also saw a 70% increase in new users. It’s unclear what that means for tabletop creators specifically, or how that data compares with its competitors.
In an email exchange with Polygon, the company said that it was “very curious to explore group crowdfunding” further within the tabletop category. Its first effort, Mothership Month, raised more than $1 million for a collection of more than 20 creators who banded together around indie publisher Tuesday Knight Games’ Mothership, an award-winning tabletop role-playing game with a science fiction horror theme.
Other anecdotes about Mothership Month included in the blog post (emphasis BackerKit’s) are as follows:
• 68% net new backer rate: On average about two-thirds (68%) of backers who pledged to a Mothership Month Group-Collab project were brand new to that creator. Just under a third (32%) of backers were part of the creator’s existing email audience.
• 45% of backers backed more than one (1) project and generated 72% of all total funds raised
• 31% of backers backed five (5) or more projects, generating 61% of all funds and gaining access to the Supply Pod Group-Collab incentive.
• On average, backers pledged to 3.39 projects — over 2x the average amount of projects a backer backs each year
• 105 backers backed all projects
